Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Is it Fryday?


In my Red Cobras, the smaller of the two females dropped her fry early this morning. I think there are around 35 of them and they look pretty good. I did lose the large female yesterday though. She never really adjusted from the move, so I was not surprised. I do have around 15 of her 3 week old fry though.

This strain seems to grow fairly slow which is surprising to me given the huge size of the females I purchased. They have the exact same water temp, feeding schedule, and water changes as the Blue Solid Snakeskins, and yet those are HUGE compared to these guys. Just shows you how much the hybrid vigor does. The Blue Solid Snakeskins are crosses between 2 large lines, and are growing like weeds. I had originally planned to sell that strain and just keep the one female and her offspring but after seeing how well they grow, I think I will keep it and work with it a bit more. At the very least it will be a great outcross where needed for my Blue Snakeskin line.

My Blue Solid Snakeskins and Tequila Sunrise fry all need to be sexed today. They are all getting big. The Snakes should not be too difficult but those yellows are still not showing much difference!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Ribbon Fins!

They arrived yesterday and I am still working on getting really good photos.

The Blue Grass Ribbons she sent me 5 of, which was wonderful. Two non-ribbon females, 1 ribbon female, 1 ribbon male, and 1 non-ribbon male. I have the non-ribbon male in with the 3 girls to get a start on getting some fry so I have a bigger pool of fish to pick from. They are still pretty young, probably 2.5-3 mos old at most I would guess. The female ribbons are so incredibly beautiful. Here are some photos so far.
This is the Ribbon Female.

Non-Ribbon male.

Ribbon Male (cannot breed).

The fact that the Ribbon males cannot breed means you have to use the non-Ribbon males to the Ribbon females(preferable to keep the ribbon gene showing in as many offspring as possible) and to the Non-Ribbon fin females who carry the gene. Since my pool is limited at first I am breeding the ribbon carrying male to all 3 females. When these fry grow I will use only ribbon females to males from the ribbon female. That means that I will have to keep these first drops separate so I know who is who!


I also got 15-20 Tequila Sunrise Ribbon fry. These guys are much younger. Probably between 2-5 weeks old. Sexing these guys is a bit of a challenge as the gravid spots are pink and do not show up well against their lovely yellow bodies. The same breeding guideline will be followed for these as the Blue Grass however I will hopefully be able to start with a greater number of the pairings I want. I have no idea how many males and females I have at this point or which will be ribbon. Another challenge! It is a good thing I like challenges!

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Guppies Guppies Everywhere!

I now have 7 tanks and 2 one gallon jars full of Guppies. Well one of the tanks and one of the jars is not currently full but they will be shortly. I ordered a few more fish from Toni Milligan and they should be arriving any day. I decided after hours of oogling her fish site that I wanted some Ribbon Fins. So I ordered a young trio of Blue Grass Ribbons and some Tequila Sunrise Ribbon fry. I am still trying to decide which strains I want to focus on, or which crosses I might like to do, but I have some time yet.

In the meantime the Blue Snakeskins and Solid Blue Snakeskins are reproducing like crazy. I cannot get over how fast the Solid fry are growing! They are at least 2x the size of all my other fry that age. I definately want to use one of those girls as a cross to my Blue Snakeskin male. The Blue Snakeskin girls that were hit already have been dropping an amazing amount of fry for the size that they are still. These girls do tend to be fry hunters though so I am sure they snacked heavily. Next time I will put so many plants in the tanks they won't be able to move! Still with the snacking we have around 25 fry which is a good number. The girls have beautiful full tails so far with lacey black and yellow markings. The Solid Snakeskin girls have long flowing tails rather than the fan shape of the other line.


For my Red Cobra(ish) line, I am having trouble with these a little more. So far we have 1 drop from them, the other female looks like she will drop in about a week. Once she does I think I am going to put the girls and boys back in my community tanks and raise the babies to breed from. I think the girls are in the 6-8 month old range and they are getting a little finiky. The fry from the first drop did not do well. She dropped about 20 of them, within 2 days it was down to 15. Not because she was eating them but I would find dead fry on the bottom of the tank. It could have been from the preventative Levamisole treatment I did but I did not lose any fry in any other tank. None of them flock to the top of the tank for food like the rest of mine do either.

The Spanish Dancers are growing and coloring up nicely. The most colorful male is looking quite pretty now. His brothers who have not colored up as fast are passing him up now for size which I expected. I had to cull one of them tonight for a bent spine. Not my favorite part of animal breeding but it had to be done. It was a pretty severe bend that had become more and more severe over the last week or two. The girls are getting a little bit of color in on their tails now and are getting hefty. They are all still virgin and will stay that way for another month or two till I know which boys are the best.


I think that is everyone for now. I will post pictures when the new fish arrive.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Photos - Red Cobras

These guys are very pretty. Even the girls are pretty. They have a red tint to their bodies that intensifies over their back. The tails are red and yellow with black spots. The girls are also HUGE. They are the biggest female guppies I have ever seen in person. I have heard of them over 3" but never seen one. This girl in the jar is easily 3" long. Her sister is about 2.5" long.


This is my favorite of the males. He has the most spotting on his tail. I want to try to increase that as well as have the snakeskin pattern continue the full length of the peduncle, and increase the size of the caudals.



This is the second male. His tail is longer.

Photos - Spanish Dancers

These are the young Spanish Dancers I got as fry from Toni. I LOVE these fish. They are sooo hyper and flirty! I can't wait to see these boys all grown up.



This one is my favorite so far.


I have 9 girls and 13 boys so I decided to share a little with some local people. One of my friends is getting a pair, and then the local Guppy guy is going to get 2 pair. That will leave me with a good number and enough room to let them grow well.

Photos - Blue Snakeskins

These are my Blue Snakeskins.

This guy is one of the Solid Blue Snakeskins from Rod. Lovely fish! I am selling these guys locally to make room for some others. I really like them but I had to pick my favorites and the snake tailed are it.


This is the Sharktailed Solid Snakeskin female that I kept from Rod. I am hoping to use her as the outcross for vigor reasons. Plus she is large and her tail is lovely. She should be dropping fry any time.


This is my young male Blue Snakeskin from Toni. I love this little fish. He is just so fancy and shimmering. The males of this strain have huge half round tails. He is only about 4 months old so he has a lot of growing to do yet.

Hello! Welcome to my Guppy Obcession!

I needed a website and I thought a blog might be easier for now. Much easier for me to update at least till I get my website finished. I started all this after my father-in-law got some pretty Multi Grass type guppies from a LFS near us. I set up a tank for some of the extras he would have and ended up bringing home some others from the LFS myself. Well long story short, they had camallanus worms and all ended up needing euthanized during treatment. By then I had purchased the fish listed below as well as some show type Blue Deltas. I decided that I was not crazy about the Blue Delta color and sold them to a local Guppy enthusiast.

I currently have the following strains:
  • Spanish Dancers (from Toni Milligan of Visions Guppies in CA)
  • Blue Snakeskins (Some from Toni and some from Rod of High Desert Guppies in OK)
  • Red Cobras (purchased with a community tank from a non-breeder)
I am also hoping to add a couple more so I can do some experimentation. I do plan to stick to the red/yellows more, but I love my shimmering blue snakes. Finding room for them has been the hard part! Our house is not very big and I am having to get very creative in tank placement!

I have had the Spanish Dancers and the Blue Snakes for almost a month now and they are doing great. The Dancers were purchased as fry and are still growing. The boys are just getting colored up now and practicing their aquatic moon dancing. I split the girls into a different tank so they would be virgin.

My Blue snakeskins were a young trio with some fry and they are developing nicely too. The females have both dropped once since being here and look to be about a week or two off from dropping again.

I also added another quad of Blue Snakeskins from Rod. They are solid tailed. After much thought I decided to just keep the largest sharktailed female from the quad and sell the others. I like the shimmery snakeskin tails better than the solids. I also have some of the solid snake fry in the Snakeskin tank so there will be quite an assortment in there in a few months. I'd like another tank for them but am not sure where to put it yet.

The Red Cobras were from a med student that did not have time to do the water changes needed on a 15 gallon community tank. So I bought the whole thing. There were 2 HUGE females (2.5-3" in length!) and 10 males plus some other fish in there. I immediatly removed the females who were harassed constantly by the large number of males. I put them in a 10 gallon with the 2 nicest males. They are still a bit timid and freak out when I turn the tank light on. I have no clue why. They have some fry in there now though which is promising. After I sell the remaining boys I may put this quad back in the community tank and just raise breeders from their fry.

So I think that is all for now. I do plan to purchase some more fish from Toni and the local guy may go in on a combined order to split shipping costs.

Photos to follow!