Hi all, long long time no see!
In the last 12 months I've just had guppies in my tanks and let them do what they do, to be honest they were just something cheap from the pet store to keep the tanks cycled and active. I started out with 6 (2M 4F) and now I have in the vicinity of 50-ish males and just a handful of girls. not bad considering, weird breeding though with the M2F ratio.
However I noticed today that some of the guppies looked much smaller than the others and had interesting looking patterns and tails. When I went to the pet store for some matching females and explained what they looked like, I was told they could be an endler throw back if the original ones I had purchased were a hybrid.
So my question is, could I potentially isolate the endler traits and essentially breed pure endlers from these guys? I know endlers are endangered so to me it would be something worth while if that's the case.
I'll update with pictures as soon as I can, at the moment I'm trying to isolate the males with these traits in another tank to breed with the females I bought.
Also, I deliberately brought what the pet store thought could be endler cross females and another possible endler cross male. I picked females that were pretty gravid so I won't have to wait long to clear out their fry into a growing tank (and then into the main tank later on) and start a proper breeding program.
Looks like I may be setting up my spare 3ft tanks again at this rate LOL
Cheers,
Celeste
Edit:
I grabbed what photos I could - the little buggers are mighty fast, and the tank is still a bit cloudy from the water changes so I apologise in advance.
As I cannot usually sex guppies very well, I'm unsure if the fish on the bottom left is a Juvenile male or a female, however either way it fits the breeding that I want to pursue with these.
The yellow little guy with the snakeskin patterns is the male I bought, but his pattern under the snakeskin seems close to the ones I bred, which is why I bought him.
As you can see, they're nothing like the common guppies you get in pet stores, and about half the size of the males I've brought before as well even though they seem fully grown. There are about 10 from my tanks that I put in here - I left a few back in the old tank so that they could keep breeding there just in case.