World Of Guppies Forum

Duck and Dive · Site Admin Joined: 05 May 2008 Posts: 59

A Guppy? Which Type!

As I am sure that all of us have either kept a guppy or heard of them. A guppy is on of those fish where you can choose what the fry will turn out like by selecting the right parents, this is classed as selective breeding in which i will go into more detail later on. The guppy is part of the millions fish family meaning millions of different colour fin and tail variations as well a the albino.

Colour

Guppies come in all colours of the spectrum going from light blue to blood red. There are a variety of colour patterns as a result of selective breeding i which they choose what colours go with what and determine the colour pattern. Because of this varieties and strains are created for example the snake skin guppy (pictured), or a red-tuxedo, there are many more but the list would go on forever.

Snake Skin

Colours are split into two types;ground colour and cover colours. Such as a blond which has a light coloured base or ground colour, and then secondary or cover colour of a light blue and orange. Most Guppies will follow this principle apart from single coloured guppies. All of this can be determined down to precise selective breeding programs.

Tail Variations

As well as having many different colour types and patterns, the guppies tail (cadual fin )
also comes in many shapes and forms again due to generations of selective breeding.
Tail variations are created from breeding a pair of guppies right from the start and then choose the longest finned male and female from that batch and breed them and so on.
This is called creating a strain of guppy.

But guppies don't just come with long tails, they come in many different shapes such as a swordtail, delta tail (pictured), short fin, pin tail, lyre tail an many more.

Delta Tails

Combining The Two

By combining the different tail types and colour variations creates a unique guppy, so it is hard to find a guppy 100% identical right down to the last mm in the tail and the last pigment in the skin. This gives you enough choice to choose a fish that you like.

Obviously with lots of different types of colour and tail varieties there will obviously be guppy shows, where breeders try and breed the guppy with the best colour and tail combinations to create the 'perfect' guppy. It takes a lot of hard work to breed a show quality guppy, this includes many generations of selective breeding and countless fish tanks set up around the house or in a shed full of them, otherwise known as a 'fish house', with such hard work sow quality guppies are not cheap as thy can be £35+ for a single adult or juvenile male guppy, whereas you would find them for £2.50 at your local fish store.

Selective Breeding

Selective breeding is when you choose the colours and tail patterns to your specific requirements, by doing this it takes a lot of breeding. By firstly selecting a pair of guppies that are near to your requirements, you would then choose the best pair from the first batch of fry then breed them. You can do this until you get the perfect guppy. This is then 'selecting' the parents and then 'breeding' them to create the fry to your taste or the judging board in show cases.

In Summary

If your looking for a bright colourful fish with many different types of colours and tail shapes and being able to breed many different patterned guppies, and because they are so easy to breed anyone can, but it is not easy to create strains of guppies as it takes a lot of selective breeding. Or you can just have fun and breed them for the excitement of breeding and caring for your own little baby fish.

Hope you found this interesting or helpful Smile

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