Spawning Report: Poecilia Reticulata (Guppies)

by Dave McGrew

I decided to work on a "Mutt-guppy" project, gently selectively culling to get a range of colors influenced by particular favored genetics. Our LFS cannot seem to keep guppies in good health. However, ones we've bred and brought in perform very well for them. So, I'm setting out to be a help...

On July 30, 2021, I bought a bunch of random females from our LFS.

I unceremoniously stuck them in a 10 gal. quarantine tank in the closet...

Not a pretty tank, but I fed them well.

Meanwhile, I bought 4x male guppies and put them in a 20 gal. long with crushed coral (our water is pretty soft)...

Sadly, by August 12th, only 2x of the males guppies had survived. Not long after adding the females, I lost one of these two...

On August 14, 2021 I added 8x females with the two males...

Before they were moved out of the QT tank, a few fry had been dropped (ca. 12x) from prior fertilization. These are NOT part of this BAP project, of course. Just what happens with guppies. As it turned out, the genetics were entirely wild-type / quasi-endler...

Now, from here, I'll share a few videos . . . but basically, it's a matter of letting Guppies do their thing. Here's my little boy finding fry in the 20 gal long on August 16, 2021 (shared on Aquarium Co-Op forum)...

Again, timing-wise, these would not be fertilized by the dark-blue males. We had to cull a lot of endler / wild-type as fry continued to drop.

Here is a video from September 4th documenting some more fry...

Here's a video from September 28, 2021...

Skip ahead . . . and here's the same tank loaded with fry on December 22, 2021...

There's hundreds of fry in here. I cannot begin to count them.

To wrap it up, here are 10x young males filmed on December 22, 2021 that are beginning to color up nicely from this breeding project...

Lots of variety in feeding. Frozen daphnia, live BBS, and quality flake foods form their diet. I'm glad to answer any questions. In the end, one male guppy is most heavily influencing the genetics in this line. Of course the females are from all different stock. My process is tp cull all wild-type male forms, and steer the project forward deliberately with favored genetics as they display in the males once they color up.