Guppies Colors

[danep267]

how do i breed to get new colors of guppies because the ones in my local pet store are all orange or yellow

 

[KittyKat]

With a lot of patience and picking out of the best stock. Try another LFS or ask yours if they can get any other colours in.

If you are really determined, pick out the fish which have the characteristics you want, then breed them. Separate out the fry as soon as it is possible to tell them apart (before they breed) and raise them in separate tanks, once they are mature and showing their full adult colours, pick out the fish with the characteristics you want and breed those. Repeat until you have the colour you want. This process takes years and usually requires at least 9 tanks. If you do not cross the strain out with unrelated fish, your strain may end up having health problems because of the inbreeding.

 

[OldMan47]

The essence of selective breeding is to select a fish that shows what you want to see in a future generation and breed one of that fish's fry back to the parent. In many cases that will reinforce the gene that you seek to retain and you can then select from the next generation. Keeping the males and females separated except for the particular pair you wish to breed will require at least 10 tanks to do with good success. Each generation must be kept separately so that you will know that a particular fry came from a particular breeding, at least until the next breeding pair is chosen. There are good books available on guppy genetics since breeding guppies is so popular in some circles. If you truly want to develop a new color strain, start with enough information to choose the right first generation parents.
I have never had the patience to breed a new strain but instead concentrate on maintaining good breeding colonies of wild fish. In my case the selection is simple. If I see a fish that does not have the same vigor as the rest of the colony, it is removed and not allowed to breed with them. That is much easier to do than a typical selective breeding program. I wish you all the luck in the world. Much of the colorful variety that we see in our tanks comes from people who did not like what they found in the LFS and decided to do something about it.