In this post, I am gonna share with you guys my experience with a strain of Guppies known as the Japan Blue Guppies or also known as the Aquamarines.

Out of a line of Galaxies, it happened that a Japan Blue guppy came out from a batch of young. It became the first strain that I managed to fix. My thoughts is that the Galaxies were crossed with the Japan Blues to improve the Galaxy’s iridiscents and sheen. If I am not wrong, the Japan Blues characteristics are quite dominant and I guess some breeders might have figured out that they could improve another line’s colour and brilliance and in this case the Galaxies by out crossing them with the Japan Blue strain.

Why are they called Japan Blues, you might ask.

Most people say that the fish was developed in Japan, hence the name. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were actually bred in Japan. My perception of the Japanese in fish breeding is that they take what they do seriously and be quite meticulous when it comes to the details of doing things and achieving their objectives. I am not saying that other nationalities lack this sort of punch but the Japanese have shown that they can produce good fishes.

Anyway, let me tell you more about the Jap Blues. When I first got the male Jap Blue from the Galaxies, I managed to cross it with its sister which happens to be a female Galaxy. The resulting F1 turned out to be approxiamtely a 50-50 ratio of Jap Blue males and Galaxy males. From this batch, I chose a Jap Blue male and crossed it with its sister and continued doing this. By F3, I managed to fix the Jap Blue line. All the Japan Blues that came out from here onwards looked quite similar in terms of colour and size. Most however, did not have a good dorsal size and shape and this is one area that could be worked on if I had enough tanks and space.

One interesting thing to note is that there were no physical or colour difference between a female Galaxy guppy and a female Japan Blue guppy. I find this really interesting and was wondering whether the Japan Blue guppy characteristic only shows in the males and not the females, thus explaining this occurence. I suspect that this could be the case as the female Japan Blue guppies really looked identical to the Galaxy guppy female in terms of size, shape and colour. Simply amazing.

The finnage of the Jap Blues are average in my standards. One characteristic that needs to be improve is the size of the dorsal. Nevertheless, selective breeeding efforts did pay offa s can be seen in the picture below. I managed to improve the dorsal fin to a certain extent. Improving a few fishes finnage is one thing, getting the whole batch looking that way is another. That is why the challenges of Guppy breeding keeps me coming back to this hobby.

Let me conclude, I find that Jap Blues is a hardy line and breeds prolifically. They grow to a large size and is one of the easier strains to keep. It will make a good strain to start with as it is not as demanding as the other strains that might be a lil bit picky in terms of providing them the best kinda conditions.

Do give the strain a shot if you happen to come across any.

PS: I have found a Jap Blue line with blue body and pink tails. More about this guys. I am outcrossing them to another strain to see what happens. Stay tuned!!!

Ishykiel

I attended the Singapore Guppy 2007 competition to check things out and was surprised to see that the competition was carried out together with the National Discus competition and the Betta Competition.I am not complaining here as I was expecting just the Guppy competition but lo and behold, I was greeted with some of the most beautiful Discus and Bettas that I have ever seen. Anyway, in this post,I am just gonna talk about the guppies. I see that the Guppies that were being shown were mainly strains that if I could recognise correctly are of Taiwan origins but of course had been bred by our local Singapore Guppy breeders. As such, most of the strains being shown are the Red laces, Blue Grass, Moscows, Half Black Whites and Full Red Guppies. I might be wrong here as some of these guppies could have been imported from other countries as well, such as the States and countries nearer to Singapore such as Thailand. I think that Singapore breeders are into the above strains at the moment. Here are some of the pictures that I took.

A beautiful Full Red Male Guppy.

It was rare but I did see however some Guppies that were clearly of local origin such as the Half Black Yellow Leopards. But that was also in the pair category. My hope is that Singapore breeders will start breeding and creating new strains of guppies that would continue to mesmerize and appeal to guppy breeders like me. In fact, in the past, Singapore Guppy breeders were well known for their ability to keep on producing new strains. Well,lets just hope that there will be a continuance in that area soon.

Personally, I love doing outcrossings and testing out the various genes by crossing unrelated guppies and also by looking hard for the weird but beautiful mutant guppy that may appear time to time.

Nevertheless, this year’s competition was a success and I enjoyed myself tremendously looking at the Guppies that were on show. I also met Helven Saw from the Malaysian Guppy club and found out that he was a judge for the competition. I would say that he is truly a guppy enthusiast to the core and I feel honoured to have met him.

Not forgetting also Shirley who was there looking after the exhibits. She is always ready to lend a helping hand when it comes to guppies and the club would definitely feel different if she is not around.

Congratulations to all the guppy breeders that got a prize for that competition. I hope to see you guys in the next competition with your new and improved strains.

Till Then,

~Ishykiel~

I tried to produce Blue Galaxies by crossing a Blue Grass strain with my Galaxy Guppies. I figured out that if the snakeskin genes of the Galaxy is a dominant gene, then the snakeskin patterns should appear in the outcome of the crossing.

I was right, the outcome of the cross did result in a few male Guppies that showed the galaxy traits and is washed out in blue. It was exhilarating!

However, these blue guppies only start to appear in the 3rd generation. When I looked at the progeny in F1 of the cross, I was quite disappointed because the fishes that appeared looked nothing like the fishes above. They looked very plain and appeared like normal snakeskin guppies, nothing like galaxies nor the beautiful spotted grass guppies.

I didn’t give up after seeing the results of the F1 generation. After many years of breeding guppies, I understand a thing or two of genetics and told myself to stick it out and do another crossing between the male and female of the F1 generation.

I crossed my fingers hoping for a miracle in the resulting F2 of that cross and with astute patience decided that I will strike the jackpot this time around.

My patience paid off and there in the tank among plain colored guppies, I saw my first Blue Galaxy. I was elated!

I kept the fish for a while and tried to cross it back to another normal colored Galaxy, hoping that some blue galaxy guppies might appear again. No luck this time around, normal colored galaxies appeared.

Due to me having to manage so many tanks and many batches of young, I lost this strain. Sometimes, you just get so bogged down with doing so many things that you lose focus. I don’t know about you but I think I can be over ambitious at times and I lose focus.

Maybe next time, I will try to create the Blue galaxies again. I have seen pictures of the blue galaxy guppies in Japan. I know that this strain can be created but I also know that it will take some time and careful systemic breeding processes to achieve something like this.

If any guppy breeder out there have created a blue galaxy, I would like to buy some fishes from you.

Do contact me at guppyblog [att] gmail [dot] com.

Happy guppy breeding!

Ishykiel

In this post, I present to you pictures of Red Metal Lace guppies that have always been one of my favorite guppy strains and have always captured my imagination. When I first saw these guppies in real life, I was simply amazed by the sheer beauty of its colourful scales and beautiful well balanced shape. The picture above shows you how large the dorsals are and it is well proportioned to its caudal.

These fishes is Taiwanese in origin. They were imported by an airline pilot of mine and he got it from a Taiwanese breeder. I would have to commend the Taiwanese for breeding these beauties to near perfection. I was told that these fishes could grow to a large size too and sometimes the caudal would be so huge that older males might not be able to carry the tail altogether. That is an exception as most of the red laces have a sizable body to carry that load.

The 2nd picture above is one of my favorites. The fish is about to make a turn and it shows vividly the nice chain-linked patterns on the specimen’s body. The metal colour is also quite pronounced and is quite proportionate to the rest of the specimen’s body. The greenish body contrasts well too with the red fins. The metal head provides that touch of mystery to the fish and which remains as one of the characteristics of the fish that attracted me to keeping it.

These fishes breed true. I have acquired a few lines from various breeders at this moment. The lines orignate from various sources and are not closely related. I intend to line breed these fishes before outcrossing between lines to maintain the fish’s vigour and improve further the overall quality. These guppies remains as one of my favorite lines as the brilliance of the red coupled with the detailed patterns of the fish is often times, mesmerizing.

Sometimes, it makes me wonder, who the original person is who bred these fishes. Kudos to the fella for even dreaming of producing such amazing fishes. I think that the ancestors would definitely be a strain of Metal Guppies and the German Red Lace.

If you have any enquiries about these guppies, drop me an email at guppyblog [@] gmail [dot] com. I will be glad to help you in any way I can.

Cheers!!!

The pictures that you gonna see are of my prized Galaxies that I originally received from an American Guppy Breeder Frank Chang about 7 over years ago.

I was enthralled when Frank told me that he still have some Galaxies to spare for me. Previously, he said that he had none to spare. U can just imagine how I felt when he agreed to sell these jewels to me.

I received the gups in a styrofoam. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the first ever shipment of guppies were in my hands. Slowly and carefully, I opened the box and saw a trio of the Galaxies in separate bags. One trio of guppies and 1 dead female. Sigh, I hope that I wouldn’t lose the other 2 and yes, from that 1 pair of Galaxies, I still have the strain in my setup, all alive and kicking…oops swimming.

I cant recall, which generation of Galaxy I now have in my tanks. But if there are 4 broods per year, that adds up to 20 plus generations in my tanks and this is the 6th year I am keeping them. Wow. Something unthinkable 5 years ago.

Well, I should also thank the other breeders for helping me maintain the strain while I was away from Gups for a while. (Many things can happen in 5 years plus guys)

The pictures that I have posted are of Galaxies in the 5th generation. The above picture shows a Blue Galaxy. This is the result of me outcrossing this line with a Blue Grass Line, also from Frank. It is indeed a challenge to get Blue Galaxies and I gave up halfway as I did not have enough tanks. Now, however, I have decided to pursue this objective again. I am currently sourcing for a nice Blue Grass Hi Fin Line that might just help me to achieve a line of Blue Galaxies with a nice Blue colour and good finnage.

This strain breeds true but somehow or rather, I had a line that threw out Japan Blues. Interesting right? I was shocked myself as I didnt expect Jap Blues to come out from Galaxies and guess what, I was even able to fix the Jap Blue line. I would talk more about the Jap Blue line in the next post. However, I have lost the line. Nevertheless, it makes a nice story to tell you guys of the Jap Blue line and my experience keeping them. Maybe….just maybe, some of these fishes are still out there in the rooms of some breeders because I remembered some breeders managed to get these from me before the line died out on me.

I will tell you guys more about these Galaxies of mine soon.

~Ishykiel~

I have visited a number of Guppy setups done up by Guppy breeders in Singapore. I would say that I enjoyed visiting my fellow Guppy breeders to view their setup and of course to have a close up view of their wonderful guppies. We have some of the most dedicated Guppy breeders here in Singapore. Their fascination with Guppies is so overwhelming that sometimes they spend hours just going on and on about Guppy topics.

Guppy Club Singapore (GCS) has also played a crucial role in the development of Guppy keeping as a leisure activity in Singapore. Do visit the GCS site at www.sgguppy.com for more information.

My own Guppy setup is a simple one that consist of 24 tanks , supported on a 4 tier rod iron stand. This setup is customised and it did cost me a lot of dough to acquire this setup. The picture you see above is my very own guppy breeding setup.

As you can see, I use two pieces of 2 feet fluorascent lamps at each level of my setup. I believe that a Guppy room should be lighted at all times. I will usually leave a few lights on at night as Guppies will usually lay on the floor of their tank if it is pitch dark. This I believe will affect their tails in a negative way. As such, I recommend to all breeders out there to at least have a night light on in your guppy room at night. This will cause the Guppy to stay semi-awake and stay at the top or the middle of the tank.

I put plants in my tanks. This is for aesthetic as well as for biological purpose. The plants take in the carbon dioxide and other harmful elements in the water when exposed to light. It also allows the fishes to be comfortable in the tank and they will often be quite stable and not too jerky even if I suddenly on the lights in my room.

In each of my tanks, I use a corner filter that is filled with filter material and some smooth river stones to weigh the filter down. Aeration is provided by a Hi-Blow 80. A device that I think is a must if you were to have more than 40 tanks. Some of my tanks contain young 6cm Plecos that help to scrub clean the sides of the tank from algae and slime. They are perky fellas but do not just shift Plecos from one tank to another. I have found that this can sometimes upset the ecological balance of a tank and cause some Guppies to fall sick.

I don’t only keep adults in my 1.5ft by 1ft tanks. Fries do well too in a tank of this size too and I usually allow them to grow out in these tanks until time comes for them to be separated or to be pre-selected for various purposes.

As you can see, there are coral chips in the tank above. I use coral chips to stabilize the PH of my tank as it hovers between 6.5 and 6.8. some breeders feel that this is unnecessary. Like most things in life, this is up to your preference and your experience using the various methods and techniques available.

In the next post, I will introduce you to another guppy breeder Derrick. His system is much more complex than mine and it is automated. His Automated Guppy system allows a Guppy enthusiast to save a lot of time from doing manual water changes and is something worth looking at.

Till then.

~Ishykiel~