An article appeared recently at LiveScience.com which stated that female guppies do go through menopause just like human beings.

A new study finds that guppies experience menopause just like humans and other animals. The study is the first demonstration of menopause in fish and raises the question of why some female animals live beyond their fertile years at all.

The article suggest that guppies experience menopause and they wonder why the guppies that experience menopause should even exist after that as they have already so called fulfill their duties as guppies to propagate the species.

I think that the scientists are looking too much into evolutionary theory and darwinism. Why can’t they live longer than their reproductive life span? I mean, the female guppies could be fulfilling other roles after their reproductive age and which could impact on the guppy eco system as a whole. These infertile female guppies could be the ones steering away the predators from attacking the younger guppies as first, they are more visible and second they are bigger and faster than the younger ones to allow more chance for escape. As such, their role could have changed from reproducer to one of a defender to the rest of the guppy population.

Anyway, let me share with you my experiences with keeping female guppies that have passed their reproductive prime. I agree with the article that female guppies experience menopause as I have kept female guppies that are more than a year old and have stopped reproducing altogether. I noticed this in the older female guppies that tend to grow larger after they have stopped reproducing.

My only qualm is that these large female guppies keep on eating and eating and not reproduce at all after that (Fish food prices seems to be increasing too these days). I also notice that they grow really huge, horizontally, and their stomachs remain slim even after eating huge amounts of the food that I have given them. I can’t bear to cull these guppies as I appreciate their size and the beauty of these guppies on its own right. Some of my guppy friends are amazed by the size of these females and wonder what I had done to get these guppies to these huge size. Well I told them that these darlings of mine are fed with “Super Growth” food that is specially prepared in my kitchen. I was joking with them as I know for sure from my observation that these guppies have reached the menopausal stage and will usually grow large after reaching this stage.

That is why sometimes, I see some of these huge guppies in a bag with all the other feeder fishes. I guess, guppy farmers too have realized that it doesn’t make any sense to their bottom line by keeping large female guppies that produce no young.

I wonder why they call a strain of guppies “Old Fashion”? I mean, is it because they have been around for too long, looked out of fashion when compared to the latest of strains that has appeared in the guppy world and as such be termed as “old”?
I try to make sense of the term Old Fashion Guppies and I feel that these beauties still have a place in the guppy world and are much prized all over the world. Call them old fashion or New Age guppies, they are still guppies that pack a punch in terms of coloration and vivacity.

The picture that I have posted above is of a pair of Old Fashion Albino Mosaic guppies. The picture above was taken at the 2008 guppy competition. Don’t gag on the name as these guppies do contain within themselves a myriad of genes and to produce these guppies from scratch would clearly need an individual with patience of steel.

I really am not too sure why the Old fashion guppies are named as such but from reading various sources of guppy information, I found out that they are believed to be of Southeast Asian and Japanese origin. Most believe that these guppies are called “Old Fashion” because they have a body pattern which is more typical of the wild guppy than todays lines.

However, according to one breeder, this guppy strain have tail patterns that tend to stay within the green, red and black colors. I believe however, that the “Old Fashion” guppies is distinctive than the rest of the strains not due to their tail patterns but rather because of their body patterns. It is in their body patterns that you see close resemblance to the wild type. The wild type guppies have so called “patches” of colour and some of these patches show more sheen than the other patches. These “irregular” shaped patches is distinctive in the wild as well as the delta tailed Old Fashioned guppies.

Some guppy enthusiasts believe that the term “Old-Fashion” is a name given by Japanese breeders and they believe that the strain has direct relations to the Viennese Emerald Green Double sword and the more typical pattern is closer to the wild guppy in its polychromatic variability than most modern strains. The term Polychromatic is used to described “light that exhibits more than one color “and when we use the term in relation to guppies, I hold the view that it used to relate to the guppies body that contains more than one color. This is especially observed in the wild color types and the Old Fashion guppies. It is interesting to note also that the old-fashioned gene is strongly Y-linked. You could then in theory develop all kinds of Guppy strains with the Old Fashion gene when you take into account that the tail color can be X and Y linked.

To me, the Old Fashion guppy is an interesting strain and is a strain that has a huge potential for development. If you are someone willing to take the challenge, I am always interested to interview you on your experience keeping and breeding the Old Fashion guppy.

Happy guppy keeping!

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