Guppy Line Breeding Project Log

[cockroach]

These guys were put in a tub on the roof. Winter is not too bad this year so they should be fine.


These guppies are so nice. I am looking at how to get them a bigger tank or perhaps adding them to the breeding rack and putting the el silverado in a tub. I have 2 little males starting to color up nicely now.


The rack after a thorough gravel drain, glass clean and siphon. Also rearranged a bit after sending the load to the pond.


The whole rack.

 

[cockroach]

I recently reached out to a very well known master guppy breeder here in Taiwan called Gary Lee. He is under the mentorship of Alan Bias. I spoke to Gary and asked if he would mentor me in breeding more professionally with the goal of attaining show quality guppies but not necessarily participate in shows as such. After initial contact he was super friendly and a very nice guy with an astounding amount of knowledge and understanding of genetics.

I am really excited to take this next step and start breeding properly. I have had so much fun with the initial pond guppies, then the red grass guppies and working with the el silverado endlers as well. However, these were always going to be a stepping stone and a project to learn from and get familiar with the routines.

I sadly had to get rid of the endlers and red grass guppies. But I could not bring myself to drop them in the main pond in our community with all the other culls. So I decided the blond el silverado, red grass and 6 of the regular el silverado would go into 3 tubs on the roof.

The bottom sword el silverado that I had I decided to put them in the Nannochromis transvestitus tank as I can't find a male. The lone lampeye killie was delighted with the company. The endlers were delighted with the tank. I didn't feed them for the first week to get them to start chowing on the overgrowth of algae and aufwuchs.


Yeah, sorry. I cannot for the life of me get a pic of these guys as they move erratically and non-stop.

 

[cockroach]

One of the first things I was instructed to do was thoroughly clean all the tanks out. This meant removing all the gravel, then with a scouring pad clean all the glass. I did not refill the gravel all the way as after discussion, it was decided it would be better for long term health and cleanliness if I placed a sponge over the gravel that can be removed and cleaned. It has been ordered and should be here soon.

Did not realize how dirty the tanks were.

I went up to Taipei and dropped into to Gary's guppy room and had a look at his setups, his projects, his results and we talked about the potential strains I could breed. One of the reasons I decided to reach out to him was he bred many of the tail types I prefer. I love a beautiful delta or veiltail but they have always looked labored while swimming especially when you start getting into the larger strains.

Swordtails and speartails have always looked so delicate and elegant in my opinion. After sharing this with Gary, we decided I would start with 2 trios of speartail. One is zebrinus genes and the other is silverado genes which Gary developed from scratch. His ARTICLE from his site.
The speartails are the challenge in my breeding attempts.

I am also getting a trio of Vienna Zebrinus Double Swords. These are to have fun with as results will be easier to achieve. Gary has a long line of pedigree with these fish so they are excellent quality. They were not cheap but considering what I am getting a very fair price and nothing as outrageous as I have seen online.
They should all be arriving this week sometime. Just in time for Chinese New Year with some well needed time off to play fish.

I have to update my BBS hatchery and will make a post about that later.

 

[cockroach]

The guppies finally arrived this afternoon. They have just finished acclimating floating in their tanks. The sponge arrived yesterday. I could not find the exact size I wanted and after doing calculations I went with pieces that were 60cm x 45cm x 5cm (24"x 18" x 2"). This allowed me the fewest cuts and least waist to get 6 30cm x 15cm x 5cm (12" x 6" x 2")pieces.

They fit so snug.


The fish as they arrived. Gary was awesome enough to send me a bonus albino double sword male. He said, "I let you do more ". And he is sweet looking.


I have been hatching BBS for a good while now but never bought a full can before. All my fish gonna be reaping these rewards. Lol

 

[cockroach]

Just picked up the tank for aging tap water in. It will go on top of the rack. Just need to move some things first.
Tank measures 150cm x 30cm x 40cm (5' x 1' x 1'4“). 180L or 48gal.
It is drilled for an inlet to top up and a lower outlet to drain and fill tanks.

 

[Chub_by]

Wicked, will be interesting to see how this turns out now you're getting more serious about it

 

[cockroach]

The one of the larger trio females dropped fry. I noticed too late and the male snacked on some.
I managed to snag 3 little guys and get them in the breeder box.
And so the tank filling starts....

 

[fishdance]

I've been following with interest, glad your getting good advice about reducing the number of strains.

Not sure how much brine shrimp you use but look into decapsulation of cysts as the next step of your journey. Google research will provide you with the advantages and the experience gained by your students will be well regarded if they choose aquaculture or fish hatchery streams.

If you don't use a lot of brine shrimp, humidity is your enemy in storage. Deep freezer is the best place to store (not refrigerator) because air moisture is frozen out. Put the tin in a zip lock bag and allow the tin enough time to reach room temperature before opening the bag or you will get condensation which will ruin the hatch rate. Which loops back towards decapsulation.

I'm sure you will post info about your brine shrimp hatchery but three hatchers on 12 hour staggered rotation will provide 36 hours incubation time. Optimal for best nutrition. You don't want the naupili to grow.

 

[cockroach]

@fishdance I have seen them for sale. Perhaps when I start having more fish to feed I can look into them. As mentioned humidity is a huge issue in Taiwan in general. With a ambient humidity of 80% we constantly have issues with it. I keep my BBS eggs in a Ziploc bag with about 12 small packs of silica gel to keep them dry.

I currently run 2 hatcheries and have a stash of freshly frozen BBS on hand for days I don't have any ready.

Thanks for posting.

 

[cockroach]

The guppies have been slowly growing and starting to drop fry.
It's amazing how quickly fry grow with power-feeding!
Water changes are a bit of a PITA as I currently do about 40% changes 4-5 times a week. I have a routine but need to tweak a few aspects to get it running better.


I redid some of the roof tubs and scaled it down from 9 tubs to 5. 4 tubs house strains from the fish room and 1 is just pond guppies and oddballs from the fish room in mutt guppy pond.
Relocated them to a slightly more sheltered area and raised them off the floor to stay cooler. I will put high density foam under the two still on the floor.


The Mutt Guppy Tub



The Blonde El Siverado's


The metallic red grass group. Quite a few more males than females at the moment.



The red grass group. The males in this strain were not strong. Even in the fishroom I was having issues with them. Hopefully being outdoors will foster some of those hardier genes.