Breeding fancy guppies by Cees Lensink

Guppy books I can recommend are listed in the books section.

Why is it that the fancy guppies you see in magazines or books are so much nicer than the ones we see in the local pet shops or even in our own tanks? The fancy show guppies are invariably larger, more colourful and display more vitality than the average common guppy. At international shows you will be able to see extremely beautiful guppies produced by a select group of breeders who manage to produce these wonderful guppies year after year. Why is this, and is it possible for us to achieve the same level of quality? Part of the answer lies in the breeding plan or scheme used to produce the next generations.

When I say breeding fancy guppies I do not mean producing a lot of guppies. That is too easy. What I mean by breeding is the consistent production of fancy guppies that are large, colourful, full of vitality, and more importantly, all look pretty much the same from one generation to the next. You cannot expect this to be possible with any old guppy and you cannot expect this to happen overnight. What one needs in order to breed a better than average fancy guppy is a lot of patience, stamina and some special knowledge.

Crossing of unrelated fish:

When you want to start a guppy breeding programme you need, of course, a breeding pair. You can go to the local pet-shop and buy a fancy male guppy with a nice colour, a large tail and other characteristics you like. Provided of course you can find a shop with guppies for sale, let alone guppies of a reasonable quality. This seems to become harder and harder these days. Once you find the male it should not be too difficult to find a female guppy as well. These two animals are placed together in a tank and after an average of five weeks you can expect our first batch of baby guppies.

However, soon you notice that something is not right. The new males do not resemble their father at all, or only resemble him vaguely. What you have in the tank is a mixture of colours and shapes. What happened?
Chances are that our breeding pair are two unrelated fish. Both must have come from different, unrelated strains and carry different genetic information. Furthermore, it's very likely that these two animals were not from established strains and therefore produce offspring even more diverse.

The offspring from the crossing of two unrelated fish are called hybrids (even though the scientific meaning of hybrid is different). These fish are usually very strong, large and often very fertile. Even though they do not look like their father, they can be more beautiful. If, however, we cross such hybrids with each other, we observe virtually always a decrease in quality. The original fancy, colourful parents were probably produced by some sort of 'selective' breeding with selection of desirable genetic traits. The mixing of genes results in a reversal towards the wild-type guppy and some traits such as a large and colourful tail may not show up any more.

Inbreeding of guppies

Line breeding of guppies

Books I can recommend

	Proper care of guppies by Stan Shubel
	Guppies Today: A complete and up-to-date guide by Spencer Glass