breeding guppies

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MOMO

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 8, 2007
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lawton
ok i have a trio of red deltas and i dont think the blood line is pure but they are very nice fish. i was reading that if you let them breed to much it will weaken the blood line.is there any way to fix it. and i was wanting to make my own strain and i was wondering wat other types of guppies i could breed them with
 
guppies will breed with all guppies, so choose a color you think will mix nicely with what you have. Also, breeding the same trio over and over won't weaken the bloodline, however, breeding the offspring of the trio with them would, so if you are worried about that, just remove the fry.
 
Guppies can inbreed safely for several generations. The problem is that the guppies you have are probably heavily inbred already so their fry being bred to one another would further weaken their genetics. That said youd probably be fine for a few generations before you had major problems. You can do what is called outcrossing which is to take similar guppies who are unrelated and cross them with your guppy's fry.

If you want your own strain... that is a lot of work :). I am in the process of doing that myself and can give you more detailed advice if you like. Just PM me.
 
First Id let the females birth out all the fry they are carrying,this can take a few months they can carry sperm to fert more than one batch.Then breed the male to the females you got.Keeping parallel strains to backcross every few generations can help alleviate inbreeding problems,and always keep an eye out for males with the traits you are breeding for to outcross to.
 
It'd be very difficult to create your own strain of guppy. Everything has been done before. Of course, some odd colours may appear that arent very attractive.
 
Mystix212;1260295; said:
It'd be very difficult to create your own strain of guppy. Everything has been done before. Of course, some odd colours may appear that arent very attractive.

That's not really true. Not everything has been done before. True enough there are loads of different types of guppies, but there are new and interesting strains being developed all the time. Some strains may already exist elsewhere but be unavailable in a given region and so still rare enough. I have a male guppy I'm fairly certain is not duplicated anywhere else, never seen a semblant picture, however, I don't know if I will be able to get any fry looking like him, that's the hard part of creating new and interesting strains.

First problem is figuring out what you want. Do you want a different colour or colour combination? Do you want to create a different fin configuration or style? Do you want fancy females or are males your only concern? The next problem is figuring out how to go about doing that, and then getting even one fish with the desired traits. Once you've produced the fish, your next problem is finding a suitable mate to produce similar offspring and then it is fixing the genetic trait through line breeding so you can reliably produce fry that resemble the desired parents. The next problem you come across is inbreeding because fixing a trait requires inbreeding. Now you have to find a way to outcross (mate fry with desired trait who produce fry with desired trait at 80% or higher to an unrelated guppy) without losing the desired trait.

It is a painstaking process that can take years and which requires patience, creativity and a certain bit of ruthlessness (culling) and there's no guarantee you'll get anything nice for a long time. Breeding guppies is easy, raising the fry successfully is a bit more difficult, breeding a new strain of desirable guppies is a task not for the beginner or for the impatient.
 
Mystix212;1260295; said:
It'd be very difficult to create your own strain of guppy. Everything has been done before. Of course, some odd colours may appear that arent very attractive.

Not necessarily. There are unlimited strains of guppies; remember, fishkeeping is not like video games. There are unlimited possibilities.
 
Nabbig2;1260593; said:
Not necessarily. There are unlimited strains of guppies; remember, fishkeeping is not like video games. There are unlimited possibilities.


Quite true. I have yet to see a full vibrant violet/purple guppy.
 
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