Tokis-Phoenix
^_^
A long post and sorry for any spelling mistakes...
Ok so a couple of months ago i started a project into improving the guppy fish's imune system- somthing that has become very poor of late due to the mass amounts of inbreeding in the fish to obtain some of its more very attractive variations and colors/patterns.
I started of by selecting a load of females who had "boring" colors like greys and yellows(the original colors of the guppy fish in the wild) and a couple of greys with traces of reds/greens in their tails and 2 black tuxedo female guppys.
I bought a diamond german blue male guppy who was very attractive in the hope of crossbreeding his genes into the lesser inbred females to create guppys with ok/better than normal imune systems and good colors; i also bought a cross-bred red cobra male guppy too who is very attractive in his own way but would not be acceptable by any means as a pure bred cobra guppy male.
I had 2 males and 6 females in total.
I shall write this as a "long story short" because if i went into the finer details i could go on forever; i made many observations during this experiment/project due to being at home most of the time and the fish tank always been in sight of where i work in my home.
After 3 weeks, the blue male died very dramitically and suddenly- i simply found him dead on the bottom of the tank having shown no signs of desease/sickness or injury. During the time i had him the females and other male took no interest in him and although he shoaled with them all and he seemed to be attracted to the tuzedo females, he never mated once.
I lost 2 of the more inbred females to birthing difficultys(no they were not in a breeding net- i recreated the tank as close to a natural habitat as posible with almost all of the tank bottom covered in plants and rocks and let the males and females mate and give birth as they pleased); the females died giving birth and i only ended up with 6 fry from the 2.
The tank had been mature for 4 months when they first enetered the tank and the only other occupants were 4 albino corys and a 5inch common plec to help keep the tank clean.
I replaced the females with same type of greys and i replaced the blue male with a very fancy cross breed; he was a mixture of blue, red, orange and green dots/areas on his body and looked like he was a cobra cross of some sort and had a very long fancy tail fin- i decided he was on the same inbred level as the blue male.
The new male developed a split in his tail fin after 1month although there was no sign of agression between him and the red male(i have heard this is quite common in long fancy tailed guppys).
I treated the tank with melafix and his tail began to rapidly grow back although a week later after it had almost grown back another split appeared.
A week after that he died very suddenly and it was pretty much the same story as the blue male- none of the females or other male took and interest in him although they did shoal with him and showed no aggression towards him.
About a fortnight before all this happened, i got a batch of 30+ guppy fry from 2 of the grey females.
The most inbred of the pair who had already been pregnant when i bought her, produced a batch of fry which all had symptoms donating inbreeding- their tail fins were very pointed and not fan shaped like normal fry and i am still debating over whether i should put them down.
The second pale yellow female produced very healthy fry which are growing very fast in comparison to the inbred females fry.
I could go on into other details/incidents butbasically this is what i have gathered from the experiment so far;
a. Guppys are not nesarsarily "hardy fish"; the only fish that have survived the experiment all the way through were the most dull colored/less inbred ones while the realy inbred fancy ones only lasted weeks.
b. I have also noticed that the inbred ones were alot more prone to sudden deaths/sickness and hardly ever mated with each other in comparison to the lesser inbred ones.
c. the lesser inbred guppys have always shown high levels of health/activity/mating and produced larger batch's of fry in comparrison to the more inbred guppys.
d. The more inbred females on occasion produced very poor batchs of fry or suffered birthing difficultys while the lesser inbred females always produced high quality/healthy fry in much larger batchs and never had any birthing difficultys.
e. The lesser inbred females all prefered the lesser inbred male red guppy while paid no attention to the more inbred males.
There are more results but that was the general jist of it- the experiment has run for about 3months+ now and has been very enlightening to guppy survival and social lifes but also very heartbreaking.
People always go on about dyed fish and walmart- they say why bother dye fish when there are so many colorful fish like guppys etc.
But after this experiment the way i see it the consequences of the amounts of inbreeding to obtain these vibrant colors/shapes/patterns has been very cruel- if not crueler than say dying fish for example.
Inbred fish can go through alot of suffering throughout their entire lives and while a dyed fish only has to experience its pain throughout its lifetime, the consequences of inbreeding can make generations of fish suffer.
..... ...... .....
During the whole experiemnt water quality was always extremely good and never had any problems.
I shall continue the guppy project and hopefully get the time to give you a more indepth/acurate report; thank you for your time and any coments are appreciated.
Ok so a couple of months ago i started a project into improving the guppy fish's imune system- somthing that has become very poor of late due to the mass amounts of inbreeding in the fish to obtain some of its more very attractive variations and colors/patterns.
I started of by selecting a load of females who had "boring" colors like greys and yellows(the original colors of the guppy fish in the wild) and a couple of greys with traces of reds/greens in their tails and 2 black tuxedo female guppys.
I bought a diamond german blue male guppy who was very attractive in the hope of crossbreeding his genes into the lesser inbred females to create guppys with ok/better than normal imune systems and good colors; i also bought a cross-bred red cobra male guppy too who is very attractive in his own way but would not be acceptable by any means as a pure bred cobra guppy male.
I had 2 males and 6 females in total.
I shall write this as a "long story short" because if i went into the finer details i could go on forever; i made many observations during this experiment/project due to being at home most of the time and the fish tank always been in sight of where i work in my home.
After 3 weeks, the blue male died very dramitically and suddenly- i simply found him dead on the bottom of the tank having shown no signs of desease/sickness or injury. During the time i had him the females and other male took no interest in him and although he shoaled with them all and he seemed to be attracted to the tuzedo females, he never mated once.
I lost 2 of the more inbred females to birthing difficultys(no they were not in a breeding net- i recreated the tank as close to a natural habitat as posible with almost all of the tank bottom covered in plants and rocks and let the males and females mate and give birth as they pleased); the females died giving birth and i only ended up with 6 fry from the 2.
The tank had been mature for 4 months when they first enetered the tank and the only other occupants were 4 albino corys and a 5inch common plec to help keep the tank clean.
I replaced the females with same type of greys and i replaced the blue male with a very fancy cross breed; he was a mixture of blue, red, orange and green dots/areas on his body and looked like he was a cobra cross of some sort and had a very long fancy tail fin- i decided he was on the same inbred level as the blue male.
The new male developed a split in his tail fin after 1month although there was no sign of agression between him and the red male(i have heard this is quite common in long fancy tailed guppys).
I treated the tank with melafix and his tail began to rapidly grow back although a week later after it had almost grown back another split appeared.
A week after that he died very suddenly and it was pretty much the same story as the blue male- none of the females or other male took and interest in him although they did shoal with him and showed no aggression towards him.
About a fortnight before all this happened, i got a batch of 30+ guppy fry from 2 of the grey females.
The most inbred of the pair who had already been pregnant when i bought her, produced a batch of fry which all had symptoms donating inbreeding- their tail fins were very pointed and not fan shaped like normal fry and i am still debating over whether i should put them down.
The second pale yellow female produced very healthy fry which are growing very fast in comparison to the inbred females fry.
I could go on into other details/incidents butbasically this is what i have gathered from the experiment so far;
a. Guppys are not nesarsarily "hardy fish"; the only fish that have survived the experiment all the way through were the most dull colored/less inbred ones while the realy inbred fancy ones only lasted weeks.
b. I have also noticed that the inbred ones were alot more prone to sudden deaths/sickness and hardly ever mated with each other in comparison to the lesser inbred ones.
c. the lesser inbred guppys have always shown high levels of health/activity/mating and produced larger batch's of fry in comparrison to the more inbred guppys.
d. The more inbred females on occasion produced very poor batchs of fry or suffered birthing difficultys while the lesser inbred females always produced high quality/healthy fry in much larger batchs and never had any birthing difficultys.
e. The lesser inbred females all prefered the lesser inbred male red guppy while paid no attention to the more inbred males.
There are more results but that was the general jist of it- the experiment has run for about 3months+ now and has been very enlightening to guppy survival and social lifes but also very heartbreaking.
People always go on about dyed fish and walmart- they say why bother dye fish when there are so many colorful fish like guppys etc.
But after this experiment the way i see it the consequences of the amounts of inbreeding to obtain these vibrant colors/shapes/patterns has been very cruel- if not crueler than say dying fish for example.
Inbred fish can go through alot of suffering throughout their entire lives and while a dyed fish only has to experience its pain throughout its lifetime, the consequences of inbreeding can make generations of fish suffer.
..... ...... .....
During the whole experiemnt water quality was always extremely good and never had any problems.
I shall continue the guppy project and hopefully get the time to give you a more indepth/acurate report; thank you for your time and any coments are appreciated.
.
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/www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auc...pies&1114308112
