Wild Guppy update...

[NickT]

how big is that guy? is he an endler? ive seen endlers labled feeder guppies before and i halso have a fue tank breed endlers whos paterns are alot like your fishes.

 

[guppler]

Hi - cool colors! It's nice to know that not all "feeders" end up eaten! I have just recently started my first aquarium. So far there are 8 feeder guppies and plants. I'm trying to establish a model ecosystem in my classroom using a 10 gal river tank insert. I'd like to get a shrimp or crawdad for the shallow side so it can eat any dead fish. However, I'm concerned that the NH3 levels will rise if the dead fish remain long enough to be eaten. Any advice?

I don't know how long it takes for those levels to get unhealthy, but my snails seem to find most of my dead fishes before i do, and I imagine most other critters would too.
Then again, depending on the ages and individual students in your class room, they might preffer not to see the fish being eaten, and they can add some good organic matter to the soil if burried when dead.
Maybe you could try it and if you know a fish has been dead over 24 hours or anything looks or smells wrong (stinky, Cloudy, etc.), then go ahead and clean up.
If it's an ecosystem you're going for, some plants with snails would be very aprpriate anyway. I even got a surprize damselfly naiad once. Those will even eat live guppies if they are the right size.

I was getting a little concerned about the idea of ghost shrimp hunting guppies at night and wondering if that's what happened to some of mine, but it seems more likely they would wait for them to die.

 

[BEEF11]

i thought endler when i saw the pic. If i'm not mistaken endlers have colorful bodies and gupps have colorful tails.

 

[sylvia]

Yeah, those are definately at least part endler.

You can feed the fry crushed flake BTW.

The 'female' could theoreticaly be an immature male who hasn't yet developed a gonopodium but I think it is a female.

The shrimp will starve waiting for a dead fish...

 

[Funki]

No, they're not endlers... that's what guppies looked like before they were bred for traits like huge, colorful tails.

 

[Sanj]

I guess you can only know if it is a real Endler if you can verify the source?

 

[sylvia]

"No, they're not endlers... that's what guppies looked like before they were bred for traits like huge, colorful tails"

Actualy wild guppies don't look like that. They are much less colorful with a rounded tail and don't look the slightest bit as interesting as the endler's hybrid guppies which resemble that photo rather accurately. The reason I am so certain this is at least part endler, is that guppies do not naturaly have swordtails and all those fancy tail shapes were actualy from hybridisation followed by intense selective breeding.

 

[Funki]

"No, they're not endlers... that's what guppies looked like before they were bred for traits like huge, colorful tails"

Actualy wild guppies don't look like that. They are much less colorful with a rounded tail and don't look the slightest bit as interesting as the endler's hybrid guppies which resemble that photo rather accurately. The reason I am so certain this is at least part endler, is that guppies do not naturaly have swordtails and all those fancy tail shapes were actualy from hybridisation followed by intense selective breeding.

Are you trying to say that every guppie with a fancy tail is part endler?

 

[3fsh]

Okay, now I'm confused... are they guppies, or endlers? Because at the LPS I got them from they had them labled as "feeder guppies" and they actually had another tank labled as "endlers" that looked very different than my fish. More orange and red.

 

[sylvia]

Firstly - yes, fancy-tailed guppies (not deltas, fantails, veils, ribbon or similar though - I mean the double swords, swords and so on) were bred from endler hybrids. However, they've been bred back to guppies for so many generations that they are now pretty much pure. You have no idea how much mixing and things have been put into the guppy strains we see today.

About the fish you have, if it was sold as a feeder I doubt it's pure endler though endlers vary greatly in color, because it doesn't make sense for the store to sell an endler as a feeder if they can get more money by selling it as an endler... It's most likely a hybrid feeder guppy x endler cross. Very pretty either way and they are very similar so it doesn't realy matter what it is anyway.

 

[wer34]

thats deffinitly part endler, my lfs sells endler or atleast endler guppy crosses as feeder guppies, i just picked up a few today to breed so i can feed the babies to my freshwater barracuda when they r bigger. but yes, that deff. has sum endler in it.

Nick

 

[tankjunkie]

beautiful male. I am getting 2 pregnant females and a beautiful male after christmas. Can anyone tell me how to properly set up for the babies in the tank? (Its a 20 gal) I have heard that they inbreed and become ugly! is this true? ive never really kept them before )

 

[Funki]

I'm pretty sure I've seen guppies imported from Trinidad and Brazil with different kinds of tails. They weren't very drab, either.

I'll admit I'm no ichthyologist, but where are you guys getting your evidence for the differences between endlers and guppies?

 

[NickT]

endlers are much smaller than guppies. other than that theres not a big difference.
also theres no fancy endlers to date only guppy endler hybrids. i guess noones go around to selectively breeding endlers for tail types and coloration.

 

[SnowyzMom]

Actually that very pretty male guppy looks like an endler crossbred. They have lovely colors on them. I too, have found that nicely fed female guppies will become quite shiny and pretty themselves, even if not as flamboyantly over the top gorgeous as the boys. If that female has a black spot(gravid spot) and is getting plump, you betcha, babies on tap.

I am curious. Feeder goldfish apparently don't live long, but feeder guppies do? I learn something new everyday. Great fish and thanks for the pics of them.