Endler vs Guppy

Wow @Vis and @Dirk Bellstedt

Some amazing fish here and very clear "how to" for breeding endlers and guppies. @Vez should have a look at this. Prof is there a way you can develope the trait of the endler not eating its young into the guppy?? Don't know if you have covered this subject but taking a chance.

Kind Regards
Hein

 

I would like to add an interesting observation on the hereditary of the sword factor in guppies. My brother gave me a pair of bottom sword guppies for my birthday in 1961 with my first aquarium. I liked them very much, because they were so much more active than the longtailed varieties. But when I got to high school I started breeding veiltailed guppies, by adding good males and removing any sword guppy males that appeared. About 10years later my wife banned my aquariums out of the lounge when I managed to flood her carpet and my aquariums were moved to my garage. They were there for about 2years, receiving light mainly through a window. It was so dark that of my plants only my cryptocorynes survived. The guppies were at this stage all of the veiltail type, but suddenly one day I noticed a sword guppy male. I then moved that aquarium back into the house and only used that male for breeding. So for more than 10 years the sword factor had stayed hidden and must have been transmitted through the female line. I kept them with no new blood added for the next 20years, when I found one top sword male at a friends house, which I added to my tank. For the next about 5years I kept them in one tank and the males were either bottomsword or top sword with not even a hint of a second sword. I then split them and bred them selectively by removing young males into an extra tank and adding these to either the bottom sword or top sword tank respectively and after a time they started breeding true. On moving house about 10years ago I had an accident and lost all my bottom sword guppies. This factor never reappeared since then. About a year ago I had to be away from home for 3 months and disease broke out, propably through overfeeding by my wife. Only one male and one crippled female survived. The crippled female did have some babies, but I then bought a few females of unknown origin from the pet shop and now am in the proses of breeding back my original topswords. Unfortunately I have lost a few genes in the process, because my line had an enourmous snow-white dorsal fin and a very long swordlike fin. The dorsal fin is now small and colourless and the sword also short, just slightly longer than the rest of the tailfin.
Prof. Bellstedt, what is known about the inheritance of this sword factor? It is not associated with the y-chromosome, because in my fish it was in the female line and dormant for 10 years, that is at least 20generations? Are the top sword and bottom sword mutually exclusive? Although I had both and kept inbreeding for many years, I never had a fish that had both, in other words, it seems the double sword factor differs from both the bottom sword and the top sword genetic factor?
I have a special interest in wild type fish, so maybe the time has come for me to get some Endlers and start fresh! Have you seen any of the other guppy that has been described, the Poecilia obscura, new species, described from the Oropuche system, Western Trinidad, http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2009/f/zt02266p050.pdf?
Is any information available on which genetic factors are found in guppies and how they are inherited, e.g., the sword, snakeskin, half black and the inheritance/dominance of the red in the tail? It would be very interesting to read that!
Best regards
Frank

 

Hi Frank,

It is good to hear that there are some other old-timers out there with a wealth of experience, I was beginning to feel like I was the only person from the museum on this forum.

What you explain about your guppies is very interesting.

Top Sword and bottom sword genetics are not related to one another and are mutually exclusive. Both, as you have indicated can be selected so that they breed true. As far as I have read they are recessive to veiltail so you can have the sword character in your fishes and it would be dominated for many generations but could reappear again, and this is exactly what you explain.

Double sword is a totally unrelated genetic condition and is recessive to veil tail. Double sword is also not a combination of bottom sword and top sword, which is also what you have experienced.

What I want to indicate is that these characters are apparently not carried by the females, but rather by the males on the Y chromosome.

During your last disaster, you have obviously lost some genes from your top swords. I have a nice strain of topsword snakeskins which I got from Tyrone Genade which you could perhaps consider breeding into your strain, and I have shown a pic below.

The obscura guppy is less colourful than what the Endler's are, just as a general comment and they are not available as yet in SA.

With regard to understanding the inheritance of genetic factors in guppies, I have recently purchased a book which I actually bought second hand via abebooks.com which is called "Guppies, fancy strains and how to produce them" by Noboru Iwasaki, TFH press. It does not have all the information one may want but it certainly is quite useful. The amount of high powered scientific information on guppy genetics has increased dramatically in recent years and chromosome maps, also called linkage maps, have been published and if you have the necessary scientific background you can understand them, but this is not so easy. I could send you some of the scientific articles if you sent me a private email address to which I could attach files.

I want to show you some of my experiences with crosses of normal wild type double sword guppies with Endler guppies in a separate male and I can show you some of the results that I have got with the inheritance of these traits, but that will have to wait for another evening.

Kind regards,

Dirk



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Hi Dirk
You are right about the wealth of experience! I have often helped others with advice and then they come with all these rules and regulations they read about! Sometimes I do not even know what they talk about! Or I do something which I have done for years, because it works for me and can then often not give an explanation of why it works. Generally I believe in keeping it simple and remember that we are working with living creatures, in other words often highly adaptable (within reason). I believe if an animal is happy and healthy in its environment, even if it is not the ideal situation, it will give a lot of pleasure and even breed! Especially with guppies I use one method when one gets these periodic outbreak of disease. As soon as I see that a number of fish are affected, I clear all plants out of the aquarium and replace 10% of the water with seawater. I keep doing this every day or two until they live in pure seawater. This kills off all freshwater pathogens and I often find that the colours of my guppies intensify. They keep on breeding as if nothing happened (only more fry get eaten!). A few weeks later I gradually change the water back to freshwater and replace the plants. I once kept my guppies and mollies in seawater for about 2 years, but after a time it just got too much of a schlepp to fetch seawater. With my mollies, especially with sailfins, I found I had much higher percentages with top quality fins!
I find it interesting that you say the bottomsword gene is carried on the y-chromosome. With my guppies the male that reappeared looked about identical to those I had previously linebred! What you are saying is that one of the males I bought in must have had that gene? Or one of the last bottomsword males to appear after I switched over to "show guppies" must have impregnated a female that was the daughter of my bought in males and threw a son, which had such good fins, that I kept him for further breeding? But it is these unexpected results when recessive genes make themselves known, which makes fish breeding so interesting! How boring would it not have been if we had predictable results as with mixing chemicals, where when adding A to B we always get C! Added to that all the crossovers and mutations in genes!
I would be very interested in reading those articles. My email address is kratzfa@yahoo.co.uk. Thank you very much for offering to share them with me!
I will definitely make date with you sometime in the future to have a look at your set-up and purchase some guppies from you!
Best regards
Frank

 

Pop up :smile1: Great readings here and quite interesting . I hear from time to time I have endler genes in my fish ,I post some pics, @kratzfa , found it interesting of how after 10 years a sword poped out, I lost many genes in a disaster say 2 years ago , lost all my swords and lyre tails, I had tons of different colours and shapes but no endlers. After a year or so usually an odd one out lyre tail was in the tank, then I got a nice big tailed guppys, added about 8 fry to the pond, after a few months I removed them for this winter, 75% was upper swords , but cant recall I had that type, only in the pond, very strange . Also blonde lyre tail, lost him first to the disaster , one poped out somehow just like him after all these months. In these pics , would you guys say blonde a endler or guppy , also the blue guppies and the rest, any endler genes?

 

These last pics they was all sold for less then R10 , tank was overstocked and was scared their fins might get nipped. So Any endler genes? The blonde lyre tail and the blue ones stay smaller then the rest, lyre tails I would say between 22-26mm

 

To me they all look like they have endler genes Marius.

 

I find this interesting , i never had endlers, but i heard many times how these genes can hide away, but the genes does look great

 

Hey Marius

Japanese Blue and/or Stoerzbuck guppy play some major role here. I have some magnifisant males that is decendants from Stoerzbach and Japanes Blue guppies, that croosed out to "petshop" females and Sigapore Blue females in my planted tank

The blue bodies is Y-link about 99% of the time, and autosomal dominant, meaning most sons will carry the blue body genes

 

Sweet, I was starting too wonder if the blue will be saved as these breeds very slowly, guys from the pond has flooded my tank and will soon need to get some sold and give aways. I talked to dirk he says there is defanitly some endler stuff in there, the blonde lyre tail, now another one, the don't seem to get bigger at all, he is way over 6 months old

 

Sorry guys, I misunderstood Dirk, there is no endler genes in these fish, id go with len about the blue , also red about the y linked stuff ,but im a dummy with that stuff. But I do hope the lyre does his work and soon too be a bunch of them I hope