Selective breeding help

[SkySouza]

8 months ago I purchased some tequila sunrise guppies off of a mixed auction on aquabid. The guppies were a bonus to some fish I'd been looking for for awhile and they grew on the girlfriend, warden, boss, or anyother synonynm you'd prefer to call your lady.

Anyway they like all guppies I've kept are breeding prolificily, however, the fry grow up to look very different from their parents. Some are all red, others all yellow, some have snakeskin like patterns, but very very rarely do I find a young guppy with the original yellow tail with a red outline like the ones I received from the auction. With the auction I received mixed sizes, ages and sexes and I got them from a reputeable fellow. I've been culling a lot of the guppies by feeding them to my many other larger fish in larger tanks haha but I'd really like to figure out how to produce the same fish as the ones that I originally purchased.

Any pointers? Is selective breeding the only way of achieving this? Do I need to start with a new more pure strain of tequila's inorder to accomplish this? help me bring some new tequila sunrise guppies into this world. Will post pics of fry later.

 

[Didgeridoo]

Most likely the strain isn't very strong or your females aren't pure tequilas. It's important to have "virgin" females, meaning they haven't been with a male for atleast 3 months, and then you know that the father of the fry is the male that you put with her. That's the extent of my knowledge though.

 

[SkySouza]

Thanks. I appreciate your knowledge frontosa are my specialty not meager guppies haha jk

I'm honestly debating culling most of em and starting over with a new group out tellin the wifey. She'd be pretty pissed to find out I fed my fronts with her beloved guppies. If I were to cull the group what would be the best way of doing it? Basically which fish should I cull? Should I take all the males out and put em in a different tank? Or should I pull em out and feed em to my fronts and start with a new group of males from a reputeable dealer? Or would I be better off culling the females?

What do you guys think I should do?

Now I do have an 8' long tank divided into 8 tanks that I bought from a lfs going under. I could try seperating the males and females into their own tanks then try em on an almost 1 to 1 basis in the other compartments? Any idea how I could best utilize that tank with my problem here? Or is that a bit over kill? Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[SkySouza]

Bump

 

[tr6]

Post pix of your females.
They may not even be TS females.
Many guppy breeders WILL NOT sell females at all.
Worse, some guppy breeders will intentionally sell the WRONG female, to keep others from breeding the line.

In the guppy world, you create a fish, and you have to keep ahead of the next person in order to continue to win awards and make money.

So you may have the wrong females.

You also may have a line in which the trait is not fixed.

I'd try to get a couple more TS lines now that you have that tank set up.
Find one that breeds true.

 

[jus1time]

you could try and get the best females that look like what you want and breed them back to the male, then do the same thing again and again separating and culling the unwanted colors and traits until you get exactly what you want.ie right size fins,eyes, color, shape, size. Then get some pure ts males and start all over again until you got what you want. It may take alot of time and careful breeding but.......
If it all doesnt work, at least the fronts wont be hungry!!

 

[TheFishJunky]

Post pix of your females.
They may not even be TS females.
Many guppy breeders WILL NOT sell females at all.
Worse, some guppy breeders will intentionally sell the WRONG female, to keep others from breeding the line.

In the guppy world, you create a fish, and you have to keep ahead of the next person in order to continue to win awards and make money.

So you may have the wrong females.

You also may have a line in which the trait is not fixed.

I'd try to get a couple more TS lines now that you have that tank set up.
Find one that breeds true.

Well said.