Project Number 8

[Duck and Dive]

Right!

Time for a new project, I have kept guppies for a long time now and always wanted to do strain breeding to see how good they will turn out by selective breeding, so here it goes!

So I cleared out my tank of all the platies, swords, mollies etc. Couldn't bring myself to get rid of my corydoras though: so it went from this:

To this:

Almost empty

The tank above is used for the breeding of the guppies (180L) and the tank below is where the fry will be reared (60L):

And with my DIY breeding net and air powered filter:

need to rearange it so the airstone sits further down in the gravel section.

Hopefully going to Birhwood aquatics today (if there open!) to pick up some red delta tail guppies and albino females.

I will keep this updated...

 

[OldMan47]

It looks like you have a decent tank for the adults and fry there D&D. Have you considered switching the fry tank and the adult tank? You will need tons of grow out space for the fry but the adults will not need much space if you are selecting the individual breeders to breed with each other. I would think a 5 gallon, 20 litre, would be plenty big enough to house the selected male and female pair for breeding. What you will need, for line breeding to improve a line, is lots of tanks to house the individual fish that are not being bred at the time but that you may wish to select from. You cannot house all of the males or all of the females together because you will want to track the parentage of each fish. To do that, you need to separate the males and females from each drop into their own tank, so two tanks per drop are needed. Once you have selected a breeder from a particular pairing, it will live alone except while actively breeding.
I have seen estimates of a 13 tank minimum to have any real progress be made doing line breeding. It is divided up much the way that I have suggested in previous sentences to be able to keep records of what you are doing. That is one reason that I usually opt for colony breeding instead. With colony breeding, you are not working to improve a particular characteristic, but you still regularly cull the fish based on removing any defectives.

 

[Duck and Dive]

Thanks for the advice oldman, I know I idealy need more tanks to really progress this, but I have the bonus of working at my LFS so therefore any unwanted fish They said they would be more than happy to take them off my hands and may even get a couple of quid for them. My plan was going to be evry time the female drops a batch raise them to a size where I can choose the ones I want to keep and take the rest to my LFS. And then choose the breeding stock from them.

 

[OldMan47]

That should give you some minimal movement forward but even a modest breeding program needs the ability to mix different generations and different groups of fish to make much progress.

 

[Duck and Dive]

Oh dear looks like more tanks on the way then! I really do not have the room for more tanks though.

 

[Duck and Dive]

A little change of plan, my corydoras have just spawned so the 60L tank is going to be used to rear them for a while, but I'm sure the baby corys will be fine with baby guppies. I went and bought a breeding group of guppies to start my project with here are a few pictures:

 

[OldMan47]

Those are some beautiful guppies. Do you intend to just carry on the existing line breeding or do you intend to try to improve the line even further?

 

[Duck and Dive]

I am going to try and improve the line further, and really just to see how good I can get them.

 

[hughessomefish]

what about putting that guppy that is in your avatar spot that guppy every time i see it makes me want it that could be a nice strain. good luck