Have My Wild Guppies Been Cross Breed

[Az-Hudson]

Pritty much as the title says, I purchased 3 pairs of wild guppies a few month ago, the 3 females where all carrying fry and looked rather large within a few days the first gave birth to 1 fry and died while i was at work but the other 2 females gave birth a few weeks later no problems.

Recently i have been able to sex the fry as they are starting to get there colours, but the males look like they have been cross breed with yellow snakeskin guppies as there caudal fins are showing the same type of markings, but the parent fish have clear caudal fins.

I know the pictures are a bit poor but you should be able to get the idea, so what do you think ?

 

[nmonks]

If you are worried about hybridisation, isolate the females for six months or six "litters" of fry, whichever comes first. In that time all the embryos resulting from previous matings will be used up. So she'll be ready to mate with a male of your choice.

Why six months or six litters? Because this is the record for poeciliid livebearers under lab conditions. It's actually Heterandria formosa that can store embryos the longest, so it's a conservative benchmark where guppies are concerned.

I'm not sure you can tell by looking whether the males are wild-type or not. By definition, genes we see in fancy guppies must be present in wild fish, even if they aren't very common.

Cheers, Neale

 

[helterskelter]

They look like a tiger endler or snakeskin guppy.
like Neale says they can store sperm for several months and untill they stop dropping fry for 2-3 months u can never be sure who the father truly is.

 

[Az-Hudson]

They look like a tiger endler or snakeskin guppy.
like Neale says they can store sperm for several months and untill they stop dropping fry for 2-3 months u can never be sure who the father truly is.

Cheers for the advice gents, much appreciated. Just going to have to wait and see now.

Just hope that the females are true wild guppy and not snakeskin/tiger endler.

 

[fishnovice]

I have a tiger endler. His tail is similar to yours in pattern (snakeskin) but the body is striped ie."tiger"

 

[dunchp]

Sorry guys, although that advice is technically correct, in the context of the question that has been asked I am not sure I am 100% sure the advice is completely right.

When breeding wild and rare livebearers, there is no room for chance, you need to be 100% sure of the pedigree of your fish and take care not to contaminate them with unpedigreed or 'cultivated' fish. If you have any doubts it is best to drop them and get some fish that you know are pedigreed. If you want to go to the trouble of breeding true wild guppies (or any other wild fish for that matter) then you may as well start off right.

The problem with your female guppy is that you cannot tell 100% whether it is a true wild guppy, it sounds like she is throwing out tiger patterned fish and you cannot be sure whether it is due to paternal male or the fact that she has some tiger genes in her own gene make up. In my opinion you would be far better off getting a few pairs of pedigreed wild fish and breeding from those.

On the bright side, wait until (if) you start getting into fish with collection data attached to them; that is where the care against 'contamination' really starts. Hybridisation is not the right word as they are the same species.

 

[Curiosity101]

Also the genes seen in captive bred guppies don't need to be present in the wild population at all.
With how many generations of guppys have been bred in captivity it is fully possible that what started out as a yellow pigment in one fish was combined with a black pigment in another fish (to create the very first snakeskin...though it wouldn't have looked like one), this then was then developed over many many many generations and therefore not actually present in the wild populations which would be either yellow, or black. And there is a strong possibility that a solid bright yellow tail gene was also developed over the generations so technically doesn't exist in the wild (judging by all the pictures I've seen of 'wild' guppys). Then on top of all that two genes may not even meet in the wild as they might be from completely different areas.
Plus even after all that the only reason there is now a snakeskin gene is because it has been line bred, it wasn't an 'accident' or a 'sexually selected trait'.
I reckon in fish with a snake skin gene that prominant...they aren't true wild fish (or of course the female may have been crossed with a snakeskin male at some point).

I agree with dunchp, if you're really interested in breeding wild fish then I wouldn't put the effort into seperating the females for 6 months unless they were very expensive to purchase.
I would try to source more that were confirmed as being wild. And not just wild, but wild and not contaminated with captive bred guppys...which is a small possibility.

 

[OldMan47]

I must agree with Duncan. If you are getting into wild fish, you want fish that are directly descended from wilds that have collection data. I have started to go in that direction myself and have several goodeids with collection data. You may not consider crossing one wild guppy with another as a cross at all, but to a purist, crossing two guppies from different locations can lead to a fish that would never exist in nature. The single thing that I would bring in from Curiosity's write up is that you may introduce genes to each other that would never exist in the same place in the wild. Your fish are now on their way to being domesticated if you do that.

 

[dunchp]

Curiosity, it is not difficult to get pedigreed wild fish, even guppies, you just need to know where to look. It is more difficult than popping into your local fish shop.

If you live in the UK then start off at the www.britishlivebearerassociation.co.uk forum; if you are in the US then start off at the www.livebearers.org website. Post on the forums there and you may find someone local who has appropriate stocks.

 

[Az-Hudson]

Thanks for all the replys gents.

I'm not looking to breed wild type guppys, but rather keep them for my pleasure, just a shame that it looks like i have a contaminated blood line.

I would ideally like to keep a pure wild guppy, but it seems a shame to kull my fish because they are not pure.


What to do !!! if i keep the fish then at some stage i will have to move some stock on then it becomes a problem.

 

[OldMan47]

It is not unusual to see fish described as "wild type" with no better description.In the case of a guppy I always figure that means undeveloped, not truly wild. It does mean very low value in the market place as the highly developed guppies can demand a decent price and wild with collection data can also demand a decent price from hobbyists who know the difference. Fish that have been allowed to breed freely outside their original population but have not been brought up to the standards of "fancy" guppies are in a no man's land where no value has been established. There are always a few people around like me that had guppies before much of the innovative fins and colors were developed who might buy a few for nostalgic reasons, but not enough of us to really create a market with high values.
In addition to the club sites that Duncan suggested, there are commercial sources of guppies with collection data such as Swampriveraquatics in the US.

 

[fish48]

View attachment 58519
i keep some true wild guppies above/ from uppur aripo

 

[helterskelter]

where are u from Az-Hudson?

 

[Az-Hudson]

where are u from Az-Hudson?

I'm from Newcastle, but live in Liverpool.

 

[dunchp]

It should be easy to find people with wild guppies in the UK. I thought (from your name) that you were from Arizona or New York