Which tail do you like best?

[gwand]

I paired a male yellow tiger endler with a green cobra female guppy. I couldn’t locate female yellow tiger endlers. The progeny have various shape and colored tails. I am going to selectively breed based on fish with a bell or spade shaped tail. Which tail do you prefer?

Father. Mother died.

Male offspring

Female offspring

 

[gwand]

 

[Innesfan]

I love all the 'vintage' tail types but have a special fondness for topswords.

 

[GaryE]

Top swords, all the way. It makes the tail look like some of the nice African lampeye killies.

 

[gwand]

I’m very suggestible. Top sword it is.

 

[gwand]

Looking over the first generation progeny I see a top sword, a lyre tail, bottom sword and spear tail. Quite a variety.

 

[Innesfan]

Why limit yourself? Tease out several tail types. You already have the basis. I was working with Vienna Emerald swords, double and bottom, for years and always held hope of transferring the vintage VE body pattern to several different tail types. I envisioned a display tank of just males with all the various old tail types. I liked the Vienna Emerald body pattern because if was basically a wild-type multi-color but with more color and the trademark emerald green splotch at the caudal peduncle. That combined with the tail types and smaller size made them look, to me, like guppies of old.

 

[gwand]

Beautiful!

 

[Innesfan]

Alan Bias, whom we recently eulogized here, had the best swordtail guppy stock I have ever seen and I got my stock mostly from him, and also another late great guppy breeder, Luke Roebuck. I managed to develop bottom sword, double sword, lyretail and speartail lines all with Vienna Emerald patterned bodies. Alan explained to me why topsword Viennas weren't possible, but i forget the explanation. I did get multi-color topswords but not Viennas.

I recently found a filed article by Alan tracing the personal history of his Vienna Emerald line which he teased out of snakeskin double swords. Vienna Emerald goes WAY back in guppies and he had a hunch that the snakeskins were carrying it. He was right. I had never noticed the opening sentence and post it here for the benefit of @Back in the fold. When I dealt with Alan, he had moved from Florence, Montana to Lewisburg, West Virginia.

 

[Back in the fold]

Roundtail is my personal preference but they’re all nice . The top sword reminds me of an old Cadillac or the submarine Seaview .

 

[Innesfan]

The top sword reminds me of an old Cadillac...

Aha! Yes!

 

[Back in the fold]

I was wrong about the Seaview , it’s a double sword .

 

[gwand]

More tail

 

[Innesfan]

Wow. The Endler influence allows for the swords to be held at angles not seen in swordtail guppies. Are you crossing back to guppy or Endler, or are you doing sib-matings?

 

[gwand]

All these tail variants came from placing 3 male yellow tiger endlers with 3 female green cobra guppies. The males all had a spade tail as shown in this picture below. All three mothers died. Cause unknown. I was going to do sib matings.