1 Cut off my WHAT!!?

Pretty male fancy guppy, huh? The tail edge of his tail fin is a little ragged, I would preferred a better spine, but he has excellent spotting, and color, and that's a nice iridescence on his belly. His eye is healthy. The photo is not too clear around the gill. But what about his 'little richard'?


I got out of fish breeding for many years. But, you know if like something, you like something.


I got back into fish breeding (actually, I have been in & out of breeding fish for years - but not continuously breeding).


So, after, a long absence from fish breeding, I got back into it. Now I had the money to use ten gallon tanks instead of fish bowls (for sick bays and brigs), and I had money for big tanks for my regular fish.


I decided to start each tank with a pair of guppies. But the guppies had changed while I was not breeding fish. The regular guppies simply were not in any of the aquarium fish shops.

Had it been possible, I should have kept my own line of guppies from when I was a little kid with fish in bowls, clear until now. If I had, I would still have a line of heirloom guppies.

But "should have" is just another word for "didn't".

So I had to start with pairs of Fancy guppies, and work backward. I decide to let each pair bred true (purebred litters) but then cross the offspring. Only one pair bred. When the tanks got going and were colonizing good bacteria, I moved the adult guppies into the same big tank. Still only one pair bred.

Guppies aren't picky. Neons are picky, I only had one pair of neons that bred. If guppies were people, they would do it in the parks and on the sidewalks. What county does that remind me of? Guppies are lovers.

Found out why my guppies weren't breeding. Pet store guy said one pair must of slipped by - they were all suppose to be sterile. Guppies don't live long, fish store want to sell replacements, can't do that if people buy a pair, and end up with a tank, that is jam packed with their descendants.

And the fish breeders that get mutated colors, don't want anyone else breeding those mutations, they want to monopolize the trade. Can't spay a fish, so what do they do? They snip the end of male fish's thingy off, just leaving the shaft. The male can't feel if he has it in or not, so he makes no release, hence, no baby fish.

The male fish still courts the female, he even dances more than before, but no matter how much his rocket points towards the sky, it never leaves the launch pad.

If you were a male guppy would you want to be one of the valuable fancy show types with a restricted pedigree, or a regular guy type guppy, less showy but intact?