Guppies And Inbreeding

[tireroaster]

ok i have some guppy fry and i would like to keep them as i have a 55 gallon tank with only 5 fully grown guppies, what can i do to prevent inbreeding and can they even inbreed like cats and dogs

 

[ZephyrStarPlaties]

ok i have some guppy fry and i would like to keep them as i have a 55 gallon tank with only 5 fully grown guppies, what can i do to prevent inbreeding and can they even inbreed like cats and dogs

Inbreeding isn't an issue for them physically, but if you inbreed them too much they can become colorless like most of the females at chain stores. My only suggestion would be tank dividers.

 

[Neptune54]

+1

 

[helterskelter]

ok i have some guppy fry and i would like to keep them as i have a 55 gallon tank with only 5 fully grown guppies, what can i do to prevent inbreeding and can they even inbreed like cats and dogs

Inbreeding isn't an issue for them physically, but if you inbreed them too much they can become colorless like most of the females at chain stores. My only suggestion would be tank dividers.

Correct inbreeding is not much of a problem, if you get ill fish it's usually to do with the rearing thats the problem.

Feed a variety of food's, flake, frozen and live

 

[snazy]

You would really need to do a few years of inbreeding probably to get ill results if any.
As for them becoming colourless, guppy genetics is complicated and if you don't control the breeding but just let them do their own thing as us humans do(only joking ), then they will eventually look loose their original fancy type features.

 

[OldMan47]

It can only take a few generations to significantly improve a strain through inbreeding. That very inbreeding is why all guppies don't look like wild ones. The fancy ones didn't just happen along. Their characteristics were carefully chosen from among wild stock, maybe a color or pattern or fin shape came closer to what was wanted in a particular fish. After the choice was made, the fry were checked to see who was moving in the right direction and it was bred back to either a sibling or a parent. Eventually the target color or fin shape or whatever was actually seen in a particular fish, not just a hint of what it might be in some future generation. Next came all of the inbreeding required to "fix" the gene in a strain. Eventually a fish that produced that feature reliably was found and then you could count on the fish breeding true. Finally that fish strain was reproduced by the tens of thousands to make the fish in your LFS.

When I first started in the hobby, black mollies and red swordtails both commonly gave birth to a large percentage of the "green" color morphs. The red in swordtails and the black in mollies had simply not been fixed yet. The green throwbacks reflected the fact that the fish were not yet breeding true. Today you can count on black fry from a black molly or red swordtails from a red swordtail drop. The colors have been fixed in their populations.

After these many dozens of generations of inbreeding to develop a particular look from good starting stock, I don't worry about the trivial amount of it that happens in my tank. I am not that careful to only buy a strain that is breeding true and keep it well separated from other guppies. Even if I did, the breeding in my tank would go much like the commercial production phase of that long development path.