Environmental Effects On Body Colouring Of Guppies?

[Ludwig Venter]

I had some 300 Guppy fry in a 3ft tank inside the fish room, all from the same breeding group and all with the same genes stretching back to 1995 when the culture was started with about 2 males and 5 females.....

A while back, I moved 50% of these to an outside pond and reared them seperately to the fishroom batch......

Today... I also moved the fishroom batch to the outside pond to join their brothers and sisters after about 4 months of seperation...

Looking from the top down into the pond, it is clear to see which of those fish comes from the inside (fish room) tank and which had been outside all along..... The fish room lot are much more darker in body colouring than those which were reared outside.....

Anyone got an explanation for this..... and also.... how can this phenomenon be applied to develop desired colour strains

 

[Neptune54]

Maybe the outside ones got more sunlight, so they got lighter in color so they reflected more light back? I'm sorry I don't have a better explentation, never been good at this type of thing...

 

[helterskelter]

It's the light affecting them that changed the colour.

Guppies you normally see are classed as gray and the cream are called blong, these are knows as background colour's, in fact there are 10 types

• Gray
• Blonde
• Gold
• Blue
• Pink
• Albino
• White
• Silver
• Crème
• Lution

The other's are very rare but had a shock when i visited Fish48 and found he had a few unusual types!

 

[helterskelter]

Here are some photo's and text from Germany so you may need to translate to read it.

http/www.guppy-aktuell.com/grundfarben.html

Gold

 

[Ludwig Venter]

Here are some photo's and text from Germany so you may need to translate to read it.

http/www.guppy-aktuell.com/grundfarben.html

Gold

I was hoping that you would respond Helter and I also understand that you do get a variety of body shades, but what I do not understand is how this lot, from the same batch has pronounced different body shades exclusively due to the area in which they were raised??....

 

[helterskelter]

i would suspect it's more to do with the natural lighting, has the other fish that has been added to the pond not turned the same colour!

 

[OldMan47]

A significant effect can be seen when different foods are provided. Are you feeding all fish the same thing? One thing to consider is that the ones outdoors are eating any bugs that happen into their water. Our common livebearers are opportunistic feeders so they may well be eating less of the artificial foods you supply them.

 

[snazy]

That's interesting.
Do you mean they are from the same strain and have the same colour, just lighter than the ones reared inside a tank?

Edit: I did read once that natural light affects the developement of guppy fry but I always presumed this was leading to a positive result rather than washed out colours compared to the ones grown with artificial light.

 

[OldMan47]

I find an outdoor tank, I use a 150 gallon stock tank for mine, gives me great growth and good health in my fish. I have never tried it with guppies though. Mine are almost always goodeids in my stock tank.