hmm
Maybe I'd better just enjoy them and maybr try breeding some younger ones, maybe even get more. Jill was my very first guppy and she actually barely made it past 2 years at my house. she was also one of the ones in my breeding tank. she was my yelowest fish and had a nice orange tail. one of her daughters , Jill jr., looks almost the same but paler. I also have 3 other yellow girls, all a little bigger, buut Alba is the biggest, and she has to be over a year now. I only have 2 yelow boys left. they are apparently part endler because they are very tiny. I onle got 2 yellow snakeskins raised to adulthood and one had a spinal problem. Neither of them made it to a year old. I'm starting to wonder if endlers or smaller guppies usually do live longer, because I only have about 3 full size male guppies left. maybe it's because the endlers and hybrids are a little younger. Tiger had a talent for sneaking onto the girl side when I had them in a divided tank and he or his kids could be responsible for most of the ones born sinse I got separate tanks.
I've thought about getting some tequila sunrise or a lellor, blue, ore green snakeskin to add to the gene pool. If i breed with what I have they would almost have to be at least cousins. I asume all the yellow ones are Jill's offspring, but Dot had lots mre kids and i don't know haw many of her kids had kids. I started with 3 boys, so ther's some diversity, but I see mostly tuxedo and endler. a lot of the boys are like almost endler sized tuxedos with neat tail shapes. One even has a long pointed bright orange pectoral fin. I wish I knew what girls would have the best cchance of helping develop that trait. He is one of the ypunger ones, but I don't know exactly how old. I've had too many to keep track very well. I also have some girls with dorsal fins that remind me of sail fin mollies. I don't know where that came from, but they are pretty big, so might be older or not have endler genes. I don't know how reliable i could reproduce tails shaped like duck feet or maple leaves or mittens, but I think I can evev guess which girls to put with the spike tailed guys if they're not too old. For a while I was going to sell some to make room, but noow i think most arew too old to sell, however i have given some to relatives and might give some to a doctor.
Maybe the line I saew in a book about the male needing to find a virgin female was just if he wanted her to pass on his genes and no others.
There was another book that pictured a nice female who was not bred until she was nearly 3 inches long and it seemed to imply she was older, but I don't think they gave an age.
Oh, I did try to breed more than one of my snake skins and I still have one left, but now I think he's my oldest guppy and he even looks old. Jill never looked old. In fact I think all her remaining daughters are bigger than she evr got. I do have at least one more the same age as Bright. I mostly recognize her because she's about the biggest guppy I've raised, but some of the others are catching up.
i probably shouldn't even mention the yougest fish I'm thinking about breeding. I doubt most people would aprove. her name is lighter, but lately I've been calling her Pony because she swims almost like a sea horse. I have had a few babies with what apears to be a minor congenital swimbladder deficiency. Mostly they just aren't as buoyant as the others. They might rest on horizontal surfaces a lot as fry and then as they grow the tail starts to sweep back or up and they seem to struggle to gain altitude, but it doesn't seenm to bother them too much. They look thinner because the swimbladder is smaller, and some might not grow as much, but mostly it's the swimming position that gives them away. Twiggy was the first. I've started calling him rocket becauase he swims nose up and his wiggly endler tail loks almost like 2 orange flames. He's got to be over a year and a half now, well close anyway. Twigget and girltwin and boytwin have the same condithion but apparently not so pronounced. Actually I was also thinking about breding darker's twin, lighter. They were just born last summer, probably because i didn't get a boy out of the girl tank quite fast enough, but lighter has the closest patern I've seen on a boy tail to match one of the first girls I wanted to breed. her name is Funnyface because if you look at her sideways she looks like she has eyes on her tail. Now that I have a boy with eyespots, She's about a year and a half or older. I don't know which fish to try breeding next, because it's hard to predict which ones will work out better or which ones will die before they have a chance. They might even prefer to wait until spring if i still have the interesting ones then.
I wasn't sure how old guppies are suposed to live , but i was guessing a year was pretty good.
Well there i go with my long stories again. i hope i don't get yelled at much.
