6 Black Guppy Pair

The female in the photo is the closest one, the male is the one in the background, with the orange tail.

Progress is only good when it is done right. Most everything can be used a harmful manner, if some fool gets it into his head to mess things up.

So, how to spay the female guppies, because they can't be sold with mandatory spay contracts?


It is said, that where there is a will, somebody will find a way. Fish breeders found that they could put hormones into the fish tank water to make the male fish more showy.


(Yes, there are fish shows, there is even a "pit bull fish" the betta, used in fish fighting in Asia. The domestic type grows long fins, and the fish tear piece of each others fins off).

Guppies never fight.

Putting hormones into the female guppies' tank caused them to grow colorful tails like the males, and the proper blend of hormones, given at the right dosage, at the right age, can sterize the female guppy without killing her. Greed. Somebody doing things to control the market, to try to get it all for themselves. Commercial people stopping pure hobbist?


But the person with just a few tanks can be drugging his females and snipping the head of the pen'5 of the male fish. And some commercial places sell intact fish - if the pet store will sell them.
I haven't bred fish in several years now, but I look hard at photos of show guppy breeds (yes people have actually made breeds of guppies). I remember the female swordtail that turned into a male. What do I call a fish that has the coloring of a male, but the body shape of a female?


In wild type guppies, the female is bigger than the male. But some of the fancy show guppy males are big like the females. The line between the genders is sometimes chemically blurred.