# What is the difference in my guppies?Pics>



## thenewguy (Nov 19, 2005)

:hi: :help: Why do my guppies look so different or are they even guppies see my pics and please tell me. And is this a good male to breed or what should i be looking for. I'm going to let the fry grow untill they're about 1 inch long and then sell them to LFS. My LFS doesn't really care for perfect shape/line breed
guppies. What is a reasonable price to sell them to the store for also. the owner can't give me much for them because she is really greedy :evil: ! She sells them for $3.29 a piece and i asked her if i could get 0.25 a pice for them should i tell her 1.00 or is this too much? PLEASE HELP? 
I have posted pics of the female (what i think) are guppies and my 1 male. i have the 1 male and 4 females is this a good ratio for breeding?  
I f you have any extra help or advice please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] :!: 
























http://www.myfishtank.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4785&d=1133404933


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

Your guppies look different because they have different genetic makeups. Your first pic looks like a wild or possibly an albino strain. Most pet stores won't buy guppies due to the ease of acquiring them.


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## DUSTIN323 (Sep 21, 2005)

Well their is many different strains of guppies. If you really want to get into breeding them you should buy a trio off the internet from a gooood breeder now they'll cost you anywhere's from $20-$50 for a trio. The 1m/4f ratio you have is great most people keep breed them in trios 1m/2f but as long as there is at least that then you're fine. I think you would make more money from getting a trio of the same strain from a reputablen breeder and then you can sell them on aquabid.com to other hobbyist because like simpte said lfs can get them for so little they aren't going to give you alot and I honestly think you could make a few dollars if you go the way I'm saying because say you buy a trio for $30 sell your fry (once sexable) on aquabid.com and ebay.com for like $10-$15 a trio people will buy them why because they look like guppies from a show breeder like you got them in the first place and they're half the price and you couldn't sell a trio for the same price you paid because you aren't a reputable breeder that has a webpage and show quality guppies on your page but you could still make somethin. Go to www.guppyalternative.com they have good quality guppies reasonably priced and shipping isn't overblown. I will soon be buying a trio of the blue bi colors from them and I will sell the fry on ebay and aquabid. If you breed those guppies in the pics you'll just have a bunch of mutts almost worthless gonna be mad when you have trouble getting rid of them. Hope this helps you out if you got another question just ask.


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## thenewguy (Nov 19, 2005)

Thanks for the help and what do you think i can get for the ones i have if i sell them on aquabid.com


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Well, based on those pictures... not much. Aquabid guppies are the ones like in your avatar pic, not the ugly mutts you find in a typical petshop.

What most people do is buy some really good breeder fish, and from them develop their own lines of superguppies. The rejects from each batch are then traded in to local petshops or sold cheap while the best fish are used to keep the line going until all the fry start coming out really good, at which point the petshops will be glad to buy them for around a dollar each, and the aquabidders will pay many times that.

Sometimes you get some truly spectacular fish from crossing various unrelated fish together, but until those fish are bred, and then bred again to their own daughters & then granddaughters to fix the strain, they are just lucky mutts which look great but still aren't worth much. The great-grandchildren of that fish might turn out to be worth a bundle, though.

Guppy breeding is an art as well as a science. It's like breeding racehorses. Different bloodlines are mixed together in the hope of creating something wonderful, and then a lot of inbreeding happens in order to refine the line until the resulting fish are thoroughbreds. Mixing too many bloodlines too often, however, ruins the purity and buries everything you've worked for beneath a heaping pile of junk genes.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

Interesting info. I bred an grey orange tail male to a grey red and black fancy female. What i got was weird! neither of the parent colors.
I then mated the orange tail male to a gold female. she had yellow on her tail.
The resulting fry were gold with black and a brighter yellow tail.
the grey blue tail female and orange male made female fry like the mom and the males are a hodge podge. 
Also the first litter of guppy fry were all female except one, the 2nd batch were mixed gender and the 3rd batch were all male except 2 female.
it will take a while to figure this out!!


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## stealth (Dec 11, 2005)

Not to go off topic but I've searched around and can't figure this out. What exactly defines a trio, a fancy, and whatever other type of guppies there are?


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

A trio is a breeder group of guppies consisting of 3 fish, one male and two females. The fish in a trio are supposed to all be from the same line. ( An inverse trio is two males and one female. Nicer to look at, but not as useful )

Since you need two separate lines to breed show guppies, you start them with the fry produced by two related females, each sired by the same related male. ( well usually all related ) This is why good guppies come in trios; it's what you need to launch a new family.

Feeder guppies are the small, ugly fish which result from bad crosses and are useless for much of anything besides food for bigger fish.

Fancy guppies are the big guppies typically seen in petshops. These are usually second-rate fish resulting from bad crosses which still turned out okay but are a far cry from show grade guppies. Fancy guppies are often the rejects culled out from a show guppy breeding program, but more often than not they are just mutts which happen to still look nice. A few generations down the line they may look like crap, or with a lot of care they might be improved or at least maintained.

Show Guppies are of course the thoroughbred uber-fancy fish which can win big trophies. You don't generally find show guppies anywhere except at shows. The fish you find on Aquabid are often the very fancy rejects of showguppy lines, but the breeders who have finally attained show grade fish tend to keep those babies for themselves. No matter; the also-rans on aquabid can often be whipped into shape in a few generations. Occasionally you can buy show fish from a guy at a show, and I highly recommend it despite the high price. They're still guppies after all, and in no time you'll get your money back and then some by selling the fry they produce to petshops and aquabidders.

Growing good guppies is not easy. There's a reason most of the fish in petshops are junk.


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## stealth (Dec 11, 2005)

So basically the you wouldn't recommend breeding Fancy Guppies due to the fact there most likely mutts. I guess since I have guppies in my 6 gallon I'm just gonna try it to see what comes out of it. Some of the guppies look half way decent and exotic. I'm mean I'm not goin for show quality just an experiment. Thanks for the info Old Salt.


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## DUSTIN323 (Sep 21, 2005)

WEll all fancy guppies aren't but petshop ones most likely are


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