One of the reasons why the guppy hobby always never fail to get me excited and involved is the fact that there are always new strains and new discoveries in the guppy world. There is always something new that you can discover while browsing the web or while visiting your nearby local fish store. Sometimes, even those guppies that are meant for the predatory fishes or often known as feeder guppies can throw in some surprises. I remembered a particular visit to a local fish shop of mine that offered such surprises. I was looking at a tank of guppies that were selling for one Singapore dollar and these guppies looked very similar and I thought that they were of the same strain. It is apparaent that they were crossbreeds of 2 types of local Singapore guppies that you can easily find in Singapore fish farms.

However, these guppies were special in the sense that the colour separation between blue and red was distinct. It had neon blue bodies that spread all the way to hald the tail. Then the other half of the tail leading all the way to the tail’s edge is red in colour. There were no female guppies for sale and I guess you would know why. The Singapore guppy farmers are very protective of their strains and they wouldn’t want any of their strains being bred by another competing guppy farmer. Hence why I sometimes have a couple of females from so called “neutral” strains to crossbreed with exceptional males that I find by accident in the local fish store.

Anyway, back to the topic of how can we find new strains to oogle at and even try our luck at getting our hands on new guppy strains. I have basically 3 ways for you to reach that goal:

1. Join a Guppy club

One of the best ways to find new guppy strains is to join a guppy club. When you join a guppy club, you will meet fellow breeders that are as passionate as you in the breeding and upkeep of guppies. Myself, I joined the Singapore Guppy Club and had the opportunity to network with other guppy breeders from all walks of life, congregating because of the love of keeping fancy guppies. I found out that guppy breeders have their own favorite strains to work with. In Singapore, the full red guppy strain is one strain that is very popular with the breeders. It could be that red is an auspicious colour here in Asia and that the strain is fairly new to the guppy world, hence possessing that quality of being rare, highly prized and hence desired by many breeders here. The Blue Grass and Red Lace guppies are also popular here with the breeders in Singapore. I also noticed that some breeders were just happy breeding and improving on 2 to 3 strains while others have more than 10 strains in their breeding room. There are also breeders who keep on experimenting with crosses and these are the type of guppy breeders that you would find some interesting guppies that would tickle your curiosity. Nevertheless, be prepared to also come across breeders that are secretive and prefer to meet you at another place than at their breeding room so that you won’t know what they have cooking in their breeding rooms.

You could also acquire new guppy strains at auctions and fish shows run by the guppy club. Some breeders would allow the fishes that they have on show auctioned off at the end of the show. Most times, the monies would be donated to the club itself. Also, on every Singapore Guppy Club guppy show, I noticed that guppy breeders donated their fishes to be sold by the club’s committee in order to raise funds for the club. You could do some asking and find out where these fishes came from and what the strain history is. The club administrators would usually give the breeder’s contacts too so that you can liaise with them directly if you had any bugging questions that you need answered regarding the trio or pair of guppies that you bought.

During one of the shows, I also met up with one guppy breeder from Penang, Malaysia. He was a fine chap but didn’t speak much. I enquired on the strains that he had at the moment and he gave me a list of strains that he had for sale. He had some guppies entered in the show and I guess was there to also gauge how the quality of guppies are at that moment in Singapore. I managed to get from him some him some Tuxedo guppies with fairly clear white tails with strong robust bodies to go with. I paid for the fishes on the spot and the fishes from Penang came to my doorstep the next week. I was grateful to him for his fast delivery and the fact that he gave me females that were ready to drop in a week or two. From that trio, I got a whole tankful of beautiful tuxedos that I think, I could never have gotten easily in Singapore. Here is his web site: Penang Guppies

2. Look at the ads of Guppies for sale on Aquabid
I would often visit aquabid. If you haven’t known about the site, let me try to explain what the site offers. It is basically the ebay for people who wants to sell surplus fishes that they have and also the selling of aquatic equipment. The breeders that are selling the guppies on aquabif can come from the far east from countries like Thailand and Malaysia to Western guppy breeders residing in the US or even Europe. The Thai breeders seems to like this site a lot and use this site to sell their fishes which they breed in farms in the east.

I had also occasionally chanced upon some well known breeders with prize winning fishes putting their prized beauties for sale. Good specimens on aquabid will usually get bidded to a high price and usually the pictures of these fishes would also show that these are fishes of true lineage and had been cared for like royalty. Below are some pictures that I manage to get from aquabid with permission from the owners of course. Anyway, the pictures below are Blue Moscow Gold Pastel crosses and they have been bidded by quite a number of breeders already. To be exact, these fishes received 10 bids.

Golden moscow guppies

Blue Moscow Guppies

Anyway, here is the link to the bidding page: link

3. Search the Web
One of the best ways to search for new guppies is of course by googling for it. You will be surprised by the number of new strains of guppies that you can find on some of the websites managed by guppy breeders from all over the world. I suggest that you send them a friendly email. You can also ask them whether they have any surplus guppies that they have bred for sale, Most will tell you that they can ship their guppies overseas. However, you do need to go through the details of how the whole process of shipping will be like with the breeder. A good reputable guppy breeder would usually have exported their fishes worldwide or at least on several occasions.

I would also advice you to join guppy forums. These are places where guppy breeders and enthusiasts congregate. They share guppy pictures, experiences and most would help you to point to the right direction if you required some help on finding a particular guppy strain. But, you have to be patient if you are looking for some exotic strain that only seem to appear in the public every few years.

here are two guppy forums that I have been a part of. One is based in the US and the other one is based in Singapore.

1. Guppies.com (US Based)

2. Arofanatics (Singapore Based)

You will meet some serious guppy breeders on these 2 forums and I think they would help you also find the guppy strain of your dreams.

i hope the information that I have provided above would help you find your surreal guppy strain. If you can’t find any that fits your taste, why not try breeding your own unique strain of guppies? It would be very satisfying and if you had read my previous posts, it really had made my life more enriching too.

To your guppy breeding success!

~Ardy Ishykiel~

Pretty Pink Guppies

In this post, I am going to talk about some pink guppies that I manage to get hold of from a local fish shop in Singapore. They have been appearing in the fish shops on a consistent basis and I think the breeder is a Guppy farmer here in Singapore.

In my opinio, the above guppies are a cross between Japanese Blue Guppies and the the Red Grass strain. I might be wrong but if I have my reasons to actually state the above.

One is the observation that if you look closely at the Caudal fins of the pink guppy, you will see scattered black spots that are very characteristic of the Grass strains and reminiscence of the Red Grass guppy strain.

Another possible cross is a strain which I would just refer to as the Red Delta strain that is a common sight here in Singapore and is bred in big numbers here in Singapore Guppy farms.

The above is just some speculation and observation. I might be wrong, really wrong and I would really appreciate it if anyone who has had some experiences with these guppies help to enlighten us a bit on the genetic makeup of this fish and how it was developed.

-Ardy Ishykiel-

This time around, I would like to share with all of you pictures of my Metal Yellow Ocelot Guppies. These small sized fishes seems to be more popular with the Japanese guppy breeders. A few sites that I visited proved the case.

Here in Singapore, the smaller sized guppies, I feel are not as treasured as their bigger tailed delta cousins. Most of the “mini” sized guppies are kept by planted tank enthusiasts as inhabitants in their carefully crafted planted paradise. Some Singapore breeders do keep this fishes but seldom do show them in competitions.

I observe that small sized guppies seems to appear more colourful than their bigger sized cousins. That got me thinking. Are guppies like LCD telivisions?

You know, when you go to an electronics store and you approach a sales person about buying an LCD television and he says that if you get bigger televisions, the color will not be as vivid as a smaller sized television. I figured that this theory could be working true for guppies as well!

Anyway, we know that bigger does not always mean better. (Which might be true for cars nowadays, especially with the gasoline prices increasing.)

Due to their small size, these guys are hyper and pack a ton of energy. They remind me also of the cartoon Atom Ant. These guys are very active buggers and swim real fast. In relation to that, I notice that they are more able to impregnate the females. The females being bigger in size and being slower swimmers can hardy get rid of the males that try to do their best to help the species multiply.

As such, if you were to keep Ocelots, please do have a proper ratio of males to females. The ratio of 1 is to 1 would be good and the maximum ratio would be 2 males for 1 female. These guys chase the females like crazy and you would be doing your female Ocelot guppies a favor by not stressing them up with hyper male Ocelots that just don’t know when to give up.

The females give birth to about 30 fries and they breed often. You can end up with a lot of Ocelots if you allow the sexes to mix. I therefore would suggest that you separate the male Ocelot guppies and the female Ocelot guppies. Just select the male Ocelot guppy of your choice and a large stocky female to ensure that you will have the next generation of Ocelot guppies to carry on the strain.

For short tailed guppies, they show close resemblance to the wild type guppies. I figured that this has given an advantage to the short tailed strain of guppies. Being closer related to the wild type, they are more resilient and hardy. Therefore, if you are looking for a strain of guppies that is easier to care for and fit your busy schedule, you would want to try keeping these short tailed beauties.

Being easier to keep and to a particular extent easier to breed, I would recommend these guppies to a beginner and planted tank enthusiast.

Happy guppy keeping!

Ishykiel