Short body guppies

[Niki_up]

So I have been breeding guppies for about a year now. They are fun to grow cross and color match.

Well I just made a discovery and I’m not sure what to do with them. I found a short body guppy in my tank...looked in my other tank and there’s a second short body guppy. Do I grow it out? Cull it? I’m kind of curious what it will look like full grown.

I do know I don’t want it out in the hobby.

has anyone seen a short body guppy before?

 

[ryansmith83]

"Short-bodied" fish have a spinal deformity where the spine is shortened. It can and does occur in most species. I see it in fry from wild cichlid pairs all the time. I cull for it; it shrinks the size of the body cavity by about half and causes all their internal organs to bunch up into an area 50% of the size it should be, leading to the "balloon" shape that you see in short-bodied fish and giving rise to the common name (balloon molly, balloon ram, etc.). I personally think it's cruel to breed specifically for this trait when it could be detrimental to the health and longevity of the fish, so I don't keep them in my fish room. What you do with it is up to you, but I'm guessing you wouldn't want to incorporate that fish into a breeding program where the likelihood of passing on those genes would then become amplified.

 

[Niki_up]

"Short-bodied" fish have a spinal deformity where the spine is shortened. It can and does occur in most species. I see it in fry from wild cichlid pairs all the time. I cull for it; it shrinks the size of the body cavity by about half and causes all their internal organs to bunch up into an area 50% of the size it should be, leading to the "balloon" shape that you see in short-bodied fish and giving rise to the common name (balloon molly, balloon ram, etc.). I personally think it's cruel to breed specifically for this trait when it could be detrimental to the health and longevity of the fish, so I don't keep them in my fish room. What you do with it is up to you, but I'm guessing you wouldn't want to incorporate that fish into a breeding program where the likelihood of passing on those genes would then become amplified.

Absolutely not! I don’t want more genes of short body.
I have another one that is worse than the first one, they are both females. I was surprised bc I never thought of short body guppies before. Never knew they existed! I also personally don’t like “balloon” fish

 

[Hybridfish7]

There are indeed already short bodied guppies. I got one from petsmart about a year ago (not being sold separately, I just happened to be there at the right time) just as a novelty because he was $2 and looked funny. I named him chad (he has since died). There are also fancier guppies that come in short bodies that are actually being bred for such. The short bodied gene itself usually comes out in fish as a result of inbreeding, though I have seen it pop up within 2 generations of inbreeding. Once it does pop up though, it is a recessive gene, so even if you did get those females pregnant from normal bodied males the fry wouldn't have any signs of it. Around a quarter of the fry of those fry would though, if bred together.

 

[phreeflow]