guppy breeding?

[Smallfry]

Hello to all I am anew member but have wacthed for along time you are all great. I do have a couple of questions.

1. If a guppy can have fry for three months with no male after first being breed do I need to isolate her for that long to insure I get the color match I want in the breeding. (She had first batch today around 23 ).

2. I am looking to increase the tail size on my guppies do I use the female dauhter from the large tail male and the color male I am looking for will this get me the color and tail size I want ? Kinda alittle cross breeding and line breeding combined.

a thank you in advance

 

[cheirodon]

1. If you want to do it "by the book" yes.

2. In theory, this should work, but you could be using a large tail female that has Large Tail as a dominant-recessive characteristic (paired), if this is the case, then maybe Large Tail won't be passed on to all of the next batch. I'm not sure exactly how it is, but I do remember it's harder when you start, cause further down the line, you will have mapped some generations back, and know what to expect, but your first pairing is wild, as you have no previous data, only the fenotype of that one particular individual.

Most importantly, bear in mind that breeding for characteristics is serious stuff. It's good that you picked only two (size + color) to begin, because it can get very complicated!

 

[guppymonkey]

Female guppies can hold the sperm for three pregnancies but sometimes will "drop" the sperm and pick up some new sperm and a pregnancy will be half from one parent and half from the second.

Usually when trying to breed for a specific trait (like tail size or color) its best to breed for one trait at a time. For instance, breed for size first and then try to get the coloration after the size is the way you want it after several generations. Breeding for two traits at the same time can work sometimes but if it does its usually just blind luck. In most instances its a lot harder to work with multiple traits at the same time.