# Halfmoon Guppies?



## Nightmare (Feb 8, 2011)

Hi everyone. I'm new here and just got back into the hobby after not being able to for several years. I set up a 20 gallon, got some safestart and was planning to start out with a trio of mollies and add some guppies later when I was sure the safestart had worked and the tank was cycled. But a beautiful female guppy caught my eye and I had to have her so I ended up with her and just a pair of mollies. 

After much searching I found 7 fish/pet stores within half an hours drive and have to say I've been very disappointed with the guppies I've found overall. Petsmart always has the same light blue, red or yellow with small tails and no pattern aside tuxedo. In other stores (two of which are pretty good and three other non-Petsmarts range from bad to horrific) I've seen a little more variety, but lots of small or chopped up fins and just nothing that wows me. I remember ten years ago or so having a hard time walking through pet stores without finding too many pretty ones I was dying to take home. 

But this girl is different. She has a huge purple and black tail, much bigger than most of the males I've seen around here (which might not be saying much, but...) I looked around many guppy sites and finally found a picture of a very similar looking guppy called a purple halfmoon. So I searched halfmoons and only found some random references to them, often not in english, but of what I did see the females look spectacular compared to most female guppies. From what little I read it seems the biggest knock against them is that they are not recognized by the show guppy association, but it seems if a strain drastically improves the looks of 50% of the fish it should be pretty popular? But the references I found on them were scattered over a few years so I doubt they have taken off. 

So I've just been doing the rounds lately checking all the fish stores almost every week to find more like her, but the store I got her from hasn't had anything remotely similar yet. At the other "good" store I did manage to find a halfmoon male, huge tail but more of a wild type color on his body with a black tail that has a irridescent blue to it. And a couple weeks later a smaller halfmoon male with red and black tail, irridescent blue, green, and red on his body. Still no other females, but someone around here must be producing them.

It also seemed to take forever to get fry from her, but she finally had them about a week ago. They seemed a little premature at first, but all seem to be doing quite well now, still in the main tank and the exciting part to me is they all had a lot of color from the start. Well, at least black, but thier tails, fins and back half of their bodies are pretty well covered.

So I'm just looking for any info about them I can get. And if any one in the capital/Saratoga region in Ny has them for sale I'd be interested, lol. The only males in the tank are the two with the halfmoon tails so for now I'll just play around with what I've got and see how it turns out. : )


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

I only found one seller on aquabid, but they are pretty.


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## AvocadoPuffDude (Jan 20, 2011)

I believe there has been a general deterioration of the quality of guppies available over the last decade or two. As a kid, I remember some of the strains of guppies, half black with a wide red veil tail. The ones like that available now have very indistinct differentiation of color between the red and black, and the red is not as red, they're just not as pretty.
I did read an article maybe around the mid-1980 bemoaning the fact that guppies had gone down in quality so much, but I'm not sure what the reason(s) are or were. You'd think a simple injection of native stock would revive the dna but then again I'm not Gregor Mendel.
I would suggest obtaining fish from as many different sources as possible, to attempt avoiding in-breeding. Even specially ordered fish - ESPECIALLY GUPPES and even more especially female guppies because of their general lack of coloration) are OFTEN mis-identified, so you'll have to watch for - and cull - any aberrant colors that pop up in succeeding generations.
I've also read that females with more color on their tail tend to produce males with less color, therefore, when breeding for a flashy male, one should try to breed with females of the same strain (blue half-moon or whatever) with less coloration. I've not observed that directly, with a bunch of males and females interacting, it's hard to say who had what baby anyway, although if you're serious about breeding a certain strain, you may want to be far more diligent about separating the fry and keeping track of it's heredity.
Good luck to you, and I encourage your breeding efforts!


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

the 'feeder guppies' seem unhealthy now. Where they used to be almost as nice the 'fancy guppies'. But I've seen some lovely half-black and purple moscow guppies go through our club. Some endlers and guppy/endlers crosses are also nice. What the latest on whether the are the same species or not? It may be some too inbred lines or there may be some nasty guppy-killing diseases


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## Nightmare (Feb 8, 2011)

Thanks for the responses guys. Yes, I have read some things online saying that the quality of guppies has declined lately. Its really too bad. Just read the "interesting article" posted below too, and it was, well... interesting lol. Not that I'd go to those extremes, but some ideas to think about. 

I'm not in a position to go into this on a large scale anyway, but have the main 20 gal, a 10 and a 2.5. Might be able to squeeze in another tank or two down the road, but that would be about it. What little strategy I have so far is to start removing any male fry from the main tank as soon as I can spot them, as well as any weak/flawed females. So the only males in the tank will be the two halfmoons and if I find a better one they'll get replaced. I'll grow the male fry out in the 10 for a while and try to find the best of them to reintroduce later. I'm letting this batch of fry stay in the main tank for now because they have more to eat there and my fish aren't big on eating them anyway. But a little "survival of the fittest' can come into play.

I'm not even concentrating on a color yet (don't really have the luxury yet unless I find more), just hoping for the tails as a starting point. In all the photos I've seen of halfmoons the females look particularly nice so I'm hoping they can go against the theory of good looking females not producing well. I don't want to believe that one, but I know I've heard it before, lol. From what little I grasped reading about guppy genetics it seems many genes are sex linked and females usually can't express as much color as the males, but I'm hoping from what I've seen maybe there is a lot of good x linked stuff with these, or maybe the larger tails they have give them better chance of expressing it? If anyone knows more I'd love to hear. And I'll have to reread the guppy genetics stuff a few more times and see if it sinks in better : )

The only thing I'm regretting already is that I exposed her to any new males at all. The fact that her first drop is so uniformly colored I can't help but wonder if she came from a good breeder and someone dropped her off prehit to the same strain. At the store she was in a tank with only a few other fish, not the main guppy tank, and she didn't match anyone else. When I picked her out the woman seemed surprised to see her and said "Wow, she IS nice" like she was there by accident. 

I haven't even seen any feeder guppy tanks to look through around here. My favorite lfs has had an empty feeder guppy tank since i found it, always with a sign saying "check back next friday." I think once things get going I'll offer them my culls.


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