I recently got my first lot of guppies, and I'm so excited as I now have babies everywhere. I got such a shock, I'm used to looking for Betta fry which are tiny!

I have 3 Tuxedo male guppies, red tail and dorsal and black body, and 2 females that I'm not sure of.

For selective breeding;

How do you make sure that the pair you want to mate have mated?? Obviously you separate them :lol: But I'm wondeing how long you need to keep the females isolated to make sure that they are not storeing sperm from when they were in the shop tanks.

Dianna

You have to keep them isolated pretty much from the time they're born until you want to put the male with them and then from then on. There really isn't any way to guarantee they aren't storing sperm. At the minimum it's about 6 months, which is a good chunk of the lifespan of a guppy.

Oh that long! Thanks Ira,

So a female from a mixed tank in a shop is pretty much a marked woman :lol:

How early can you sex fry? what do you look for?

Dianna

I think my guppies, before I lost them all it took about a month or two before I could tell which is which. Might be less for someone with more practice and if you feed them better so they grow fast.

Easiest way to tell is that males have a longer anal fin and females just have a little triangle one.

The 25 that I have are now approaching two months of age and only now are the colours fully coming out. So fascinating to watch. Guess I had better separate them all before they all interbreed. Are you setting up separate tanks for the males and females Delta??

You are probably too late already goldie!

Guppies are just about born pregnant (gravid)

They can drop their first lot by six weeks old, and can take twice this time to dry them out, but even then, there's no guarantee that they will throw true to type.

I have some nice round tailed ones on the go at the moment, and a buttercup coloured one that is about to drop any time now.

I also have several good looking males that I hope to improve on.

An example is :

We recently bought some Sailfin Black Mollies.

These were hand picked for their true black colour and shape of the finnage.

They are still throwing rubbish (mottled... patchy... poor fins...) even after their third drop, depite having top notch males.

No other livebearers are with them, or have been with them since they were purchased.

Takes lotsa time and space Dianna if you want a quality guppy

But don't give up, the end result is usually worth it, even if it is only for your own satisfaction.

Regards,

Bill (Pegasus)

Goldie, I have divided tanks for the Bettas which I have put the guppies in for the moment. A three foot tank divided into 5 setions, one section has male guppies, another for the females, and the remaining 3 sections have been opened up for fry growout - there are also 20 betta fry in with the guppy fry which I cant count (going crosseyed from trying)

I spotted the obviously gravid females in the shop and thought I'd give them a go. I'm getting a bit frustrated with having to keep the fighters separated and for all the fighters beauty which is what attracted me to them in the first place I find I am missing watching fish swimming free and interacting.

One of my males(Black body/red tail and dorsal, fantail?) has a white dorsal fin, I don't know if this is a major flaw, or common, but I think it looks nice so I want to breed with him and see what I get.

I haven't seen round tails yet Pegasus, I'll have to keep an eye out, are they large like the fantials but rounded, or a smallish round shape???

Pegasus knows I love the "cascade" system so I'm keen to set one up for guppies now and I spotted the "Hamburger mat/sponge???"filter which I think will work in each of the tanks on the overflow end(act as a fry catcher too) so thats the state of the nation in my house.

cheers,

Dianna

Hi Dianna,

haven't seen round tails yet Pegasus, I'll have to keep an eye out, are they large like the fantials but rounded, or a smallish round shape???

The rounded tail is not quite as large as the delta tail (not yet anyway... as these are still young) but I imagine by the time they mature that it would be about 15mm or more in diameter, and hopefully I can improve on that. Often you might get a great tail, but the rest of the fish is poor, or the angle of the fin is wrong, so it takes a lot of dedicated time to get the results you want.

There may be bigger ones (rounded tails) out there at the moment (I don't get to the LFS's much) but there's plenty on the websites that show the varios types, along with line breeding and such.

Cees posted a couple of links (A Few Guppy Links) in this section that were quite good. Guppys 'R' Us is another good site.

Regards,

Bill (Pegasus)

HI all,

There's a nice little site here that is not too technical, and has heaps of info on tail shapes and colouration (purples etc)

http://guppyplace.tripod.com/index.html

If you want to get deeper into the subject, then inputting "Guppy Genetics) into your browser will .....................send.......

.........Argggg .... you .... absolutely..... potty ..... with ..... info :)

ty ty First place I head when home from work is the fish forum. well after watching my own fish for awhile and seeing how their day has been that is

So enjoy all the chat and information that flies around.

Finally got a bit of time to check out some of the links (thanks for those BTW) and wouldn't you guess, to link above, site temporarily unavailable!!!! :lol:

My guppy fry are doing really well, and are having a really good effect on the Betta fry that are with them.

I had a really small spawn of around 20 Betta, from eggs that I hatched artificially without the bubblenest. 10 Betta fry are in with umpteen guppy fry, and another 10 are on their own.(I separated some in case the guppy fry ate them, not knowing how fast guppies grow)

The ones on their own are tiny, while the ones with the guppies are noticeably larger and way more active. I think the activity of the guppy fry is encouraging these Betta fry to eat more???

The Betta fry are easy to spot as you can see the air bubble of their developing labyrinth, in case anyone was wondering how I could tell which was what amoungst the guppies.

cheers,

Di