Guppy Challenge Entry: <<Nemo>>

Description: Firstly the guppies that I am using for the challenge are Tequila Sunrise Guppies, I will be breeding my one chosen male to 3 females of this strain. The males and females of this strain are all blondes, so if they breed the fry are also all blondes. This is bred this way because the color of the fish looks better on the light colored(blonde) guppy than on a gray bodied guppy.

Setup: These guppies are housed in a tank with dimensions of 30cm(l) x 23cm(h) x 22cm(w) = 15.15L(Low tech). I will post a pic at a later stage.

Breeding stock:


Male:



Description: Tequila Sunrise male(blonde).
What I like about it: He has very nice coloration, a good body size(not thin), a nice ratio of red to yellow on the tale and he is the best looking male out of the 3 I had to choose from and has the longest dorsal fin between the three.
Where it comes from: I got them from professor Dirk Bellstedt about a month ago. He was lucky enough to find them in a petshop in Pietermaritzburg a few years ago where the males and females were next to each other in separate tanks where he figured that they are possibly the same strain, took the chance and so they were.
What traits I would like to breed forward: I would firstly like to get the tail size even bigger as well as longer dorsal fins. Secondly I would like to intensify the color of the red and yellow as well as create a better contrast between the two.

Female 1 and 2:



Description: Tequila Sunrise females(blonde).
What I like about it: They look very neat and have a nice red and yellow in the tail which is a nice to see in female guppies.
Where it comes from: Same as the male.
What traits I would like to breed forward: I would like to get a more intense tail color on the females as well. If I can breed them to have bigger tails as well that's also an option.

Female 3:



Description: Tequila Sunrise female(blonde), but she has that pinkish color in the tail which is a specific gene she carries. (Andrew- @pHish_man please help out on the name of this gene).
What I like about it: The same as the other two but specifically the pink in her tail.
Where it comes from: Same as the male.
What traits I would like to breed forward: I would like to breed more of those that carry the gene for the pink in the tail and see what the males look like and possibly form a separate strain from there.

Goals: To achieve the traits I am trying to breed them for.

 

Wow some really nice starting stock Nemo, expect big things from you now

Would have loved for Prof Dirk to have had been here with all his knowledge and experience.

 

Nice fish, and a well set out thread. Thanks for showing the way.

 

I forgot to mention that I already have 4 fry from them, they are about 2 weeks old and I am expecting more in the next few days. Thank you for your comments @Broder and @Vis. I am lucky enough to live about 1km from the professor, credit goes to him for getting the fish to where they are now.

 

Very nice looking Guppy's you gotvi like the pink idea

 

One of the females got 3 fry yesterday, yes, only three. The females are still young and fry are born being about 1cm which is big for fry. The 'pink' female will drop some fry in the next few days.. Thanks @cliffy.

 

Love the bright color! One of the lines I am breeding do have some Tequila Sunrise genes working there- will post some pics of them soon.

Lennard

 

How many lines do you have at the moment @lennard? Perhaps you can try the sunrise x black as well..

The pink female dropped about 4 fry today.. On a total of about 11 fry from three different batches.. haha, these really need to produce more fry at a time.

 

I see 4 new fry and there might be more coming from this female, the other two females will also have new fry in the next few days.

The first few fry are going on about 2cm at the moment.

 

Another update: I have separated all the biggest offspring from the parents, which are now about 2.5cm in size. There are 11 of them and it seems like they are all females.

I am gonna keep them away from males until I have a brother for them to mate with and until they are much bigger. Or should I rather breed them back into their father? Any suggestions? My thought is that it would be better to breed them to a brother that looks better than the father, but I'm not sure.

There are about 15 fry from 1-1.5cm still with the parents, I will remove them when they get to about 2cm as well.

 

Are these the first offspring?
Are you looking to improve the traits of the Father?

 

@Vis, yes it is, 4 of them might be from the other two males when they were still with the females as well. I guess the whole idea of the challenge is to breed for the best looking guppies we can in SA? So yes, I want to improve the traits of the father even though they are already not bad, I mentioned what I want to improve in my first post of this thread..

I would also want to know, if I get a better looking male than the father(his offspring), if I must breed him back to the mothers or only to his sisters?

 

Breed the biggest best looking females back to the Father then breed the best looking male from that with his sisters.

Discard the males from this batch except maybe one or two for backup.

 

Thanks @Vis, I understand now. That is still a long way to go though..

 

Yes not a quick challenge this but following this you should have a nice solid strain in 2 years.

 

Update time: Just a pic of the first fry finally growing up, 10 females and 1 male. Here are pics of 2 females and the one male.




I will separate the next few youngsters tomorrow, they are still in with the parents.

 

Stunning tail colours there. Looks like the strain is breeding quite uniformly already. Nice!

 

Nice going, these would look really stunning if the yellow covered the entire body with that orange flash in the tail.

 

Thank you @Broder! @Vis, the yellow does go up to where the dorsal starts and from there the body is a metallic white with a very nice pinkish-red stripe from the eye to where the dorsal begins. This can be seen on the young male, but it is a lot more intense on the adult males.

 

It seems that the coloration is sorted out - very lucky!

Now you can pay attention to dorsal and tail size and shape - this being difficult because I have found that tail and dorsal fins do keep on growing and change shape over time?