Endlers from guppies?

[Celeste84]

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.

Edited March 11, 2013 by Celeste84

[KillieOrCory]

Hi Celeste,

Nice looking guppies there, well done with them.

Essantially your guppies are turning into wildtype guppies which are smaller in general. Fancy guppies are selectively bred for colour, fin shape but also for size. That's why most if not all fancy guppy strains are larger than wild type guppies.

As for your question:

Guppy is Poecilia reticulata

Endler is Poecilia wingei

Basically you cannot create a different species by selectively breeding. Once you have a hybrid you can not get back to a pure species through selective breeding either. What you have is some nice looking wild type guppies, which are very interesting in their own way.

Hope this helps a little. If you are ever in Canberra, I can give you some pure endlers for free.

Edited March 12, 2013 by KillieOrCory

[Celeste84]

Thanks for the advice Serkan, I was hoping that since they contained endler DNA it might be possible to selectively breed for the traits and get something close to a purebred again - but oh well! they're extremely pretty in their own way, so I might just go from here and see what traits I can breed into a line Hahaha not bad considering that I pretty much ignored them for 12 months!

I just don't get why we don't see more of these wild colourations about? they're certainly as pretty as a lot of the fancy varieties. I'd never even seen wild guppies that looked like this before, the one's in my grandmother's creek were all completely colourless.

I'm guessing that If I want to continue the line, it may be best to try and find a spawn sister for these guys? I'm sure there are a few in the tank, just gotta try and find them.

But how can I tell if the pair have mated? I was thinking of keeping 1 or 2 of the nicest males from my guppies in here, along with the yellow snakeskin and then if I could find them, maybe 4-6 of their sisters that don't appear pregnant.

Maybe I should just set up another tank for the snake skin male and a pair of girls??

Ahhh so much to think about. unlike guppies, betta were much easier to keep track of who was mating with who and when. >_<;;

[Rod]

I'd say your guppies have endler blood in them.....I have hybrids that look like yours

If you are serious about breeding guppies or Endlers....you should separate males and females ASAP

Then only allow the best males contact with females.....otherwise you soon loose the traits you want...;)

[Celeste84]

Yeah I know, but at this point it doesn't really matter - the girls have been in there too long, so I'll just have to start seperating them out in the next gen :-/

And I also discovered that these boys and their sisters are much more prolific than the other types in the tank so my idea last night was to set up a 3ft grow out tank, put the yellow/orange snakeskins in one tank to breed and the black/white marbles in another, and then leave the wild types in the 3ft to do their thing. Just a basic set up, but as I'm low on space atm it's the best i can do. as I get set up more I can start separating out the ones I want to breed with for the wild types.

And I was thinking of catching some local wild guppies from my grandmother's creek and setting them up in a tank/tub to see what I can do with them as well. not sure if they are native or if they got chucked in there by locals who didn't want to keep guppies anymore so it should be interesting at the very least.

[Bettarazzi]

Welcome back Celeste! I love those guppies. I'm trying to develop a double sword wild type guppy-endler cross. The endlers I used were already snakeskin hybrids. Going extremely slowly at the moment because I find the need to sex them early and separate a bit of a pain. I never seem to get around to it.

[Big azza]

I love those guppies