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

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~