"One of Charles Pratt's Blue Delta Guppies"
By Charles A. Pratt
At the San Fernando Valley Guppy Club show in June 2000 I bought at the auction, among other fish, a pair of Blue Deltas and some Japanese Double Swordtails. I was actually looking for a start with some blue deltas as I had not worked with any for many years, but intended to find a large solid color strain. However as we are so likely to do at a fish auction, I immediately liked the young pair of blues. The male’s caudal was just starting to grow but was quite wide and rather than being a solid color appeared to be two shades of blue. His dorsal was blue and he carried it well. The male was only of medium size but a very nice conformation. Both fish appeared to be very vigorous.
I bought the Japanese Double Swords on a whim. As I recall there were actually a couple of pairs. I liked the thickness of the swords as compared with the swordtails being shown in our shows in the U.S. The swordtails on our show circuit seem to me to have swords that are too thin to be very attractive. Interestingly though, the domestic narrow swords better meet the show standards of the International Fancy Guppy Association (IFGA). However I was not looking for swordtails, and I think I bought them mostly because they were cheap and our auctioneer, held them right in front of me and insisted on a bid. I believe in supporting our clubs, and raised the bid a dollar. Oh well, I had an empty tank for them anyway.
The male from the blue delta stain turned out to be a beauty. He never became very large but he became more and more a solid blue and over the next few months developed a really large well shaped caudal that he carried well. His dorsal was equally nice. The female dropped a good size batch of fry that I moved to a growing tank, and then over the next few months she continued to drop fry in the tank they were in. Since I had already saved the first batch and because of lack of space I did not move any more of them. As they grew I moved the males from that first batch into a separate tank so the females would remain virgin. As that batch reached about three months old I became aware that the males were developing a problem with short gill. Short gill is characterized by the gill plate covering the fish’s gill not growing out fully, so it leaves the gill, or part of it showing, which is not very attractive and probably not healthy for the fish. Short gill had never been much of a problem for me with guppies. I think I had some two or three decades ago, but I probably dumped the fish and forgot about them. In breeding angels I had found short gill to be a persistent problem, particularly with the strain of gold angels I worked with for many years. But it was always due to overcrowding and was controllable simply by giving the fish enough tank space.
I thought the short gill in these male blue deltas must also be environmentally related, though I did not think they had been overcrowded. But they also did not quite come up to the standard of their father, particularly in color. I watched them for a couple more months and then destroyed them and the females.
Out of curiosity I retained the original breeding tank with the fish that were growing up there. I wondered if any short gill would show up among those fish, which would indicate to me that it was genetic rather than environmental. But as these fish grew, there was no short gill. And to top it off, several of these young fish became very attractive. Their blue color was much lighter than the father’s but they had large well shaped caudals and dorsals. I continued to breed this strain for another year and then found that it seemed to be getting weaker. The dorsals on the males failed to grow and the males grew up to be veils rather than deltas. Inbreeding seemed to be exacting a toll. An outcross seemed to be desirable, but with what?
Back to the Japanese Double Swords
Meanwhile, I had continued to breed the Japanese Double Swords and had become enthralled with the strain due to its diversity. I got bottom and double swords, a lot of those with uneven swords which I discarded, a tail shape that has been described as scissor tail or swallow tail, and both veil and delta tails. The color range was amazing. Bodies were either gold or gray, and the foreground color ranging from yellow through green to blue and grey. There were bicolors, multicolors and solid colors. A few of the deltas had unusually wide tails, a characteristic I have always liked. The first couple of generations produced some very pretty patterns in the tails, but these were mostly in the veils, so I did not use those for breeders. In these first few generations I tended to choose the wide tailed deltas as breeders and the strain tended more and more to produce widetailed bluegreen fish.
So I choose a few females from that strain and picked out one of the best remaining males from the blue delta strain above to cross with them. The rest of the adult blue deltas died off soon, but left a tank full of babies. The females from the cross dropped lots of young and I gave them my attention. They grew up looking a lot like their father and I picked the best looking fish from that F1 generation to breed. However the F2 generation was somewhat disappointing. A lot of blue, but in patterns that were not too attractive, and with tails there were only average in size. The couple of fish with really nice tails were mostly a nondescript gray. I continued to work with the fish from that cross for some time, but never found any show champions among them.
Now to the Blue Delta Babies
But as the remaining blue delta young from the original strain grew, I began to realize they were better looking fish than the last couple of generations had been. I chose the best and bred from them. By the next generation all the young seemed to grow up looking much like the better fish three or four generations back. And there was no longer much variation in the fish. Most of the males looked a great deal alike. Anticipating showing the fish I spent a lot of time looking at the strain and had trouble deciding whether it was more blue or more green. At the 2002 San Fernando Show I entered one of those males in the blue delta class. It was disqualified for color. I took a look at the fish in the blue-green class and decided that was where I would show any others of that color. My choice was confirmed a few minutes later when a well known breeder, Frank Chang came by and looked at that fish. He observed that if it had been in the blue-green class it would have won.
The next year I showed a young male from that strain in San Fernando in the blue-green class. He had not yet reached full size, but took a second place in blue-green.
Why did this strain recover without an outcross? Perhaps when I let it die out to just a few young I was fortunate enough to have only fry left with a genetic makeup similar to the better fish in earlier generations. I cannot answer this question with certainty, which is true of many of our questions with our fascinating fish and their genetics.
If you found this article interesting, you may be interested in seeing the IFGA web site at www.ifga.org.
Some Guppy Breeding Experiences
By Charles A. Pratt
At the San Fernando Valley Guppy Club show in June 2000 I bought at the auction, among other fish, a pair of Blue Deltas and some Japanese Double Swordtails. I was actually looking for a start with some blue deltas as I had not worked with any for many years, but intended to find a large solid color strain. However as we are so likely to do at a fish auction, I immediately liked the young pair of blues. The male’s caudal was just starting to grow but was quite wide and rather than being a solid color appeared to be two shades of blue. His dorsal was blue and he carried it well. The male was only of medium size but a very nice conformation. Both fish appeared to be very vigorous.
I bought the Japanese Double Swords on a whim. As I recall there were actually a couple of pairs. I liked the thickness of the swords as compared with the swordtails being shown in our shows in the U.S. The swordtails on our show circuit seem to me to have swords that are too thin to be very attractive. Interestingly though, the domestic narrow swords better meet the show standards of the International Fancy Guppy Association (IFGA). However I was not looking for swordtails, and I think I bought them mostly because they were cheap and our auctioneer, held them right in front of me and insisted on a bid. I believe in supporting our clubs, and raised the bid a dollar. Oh well, I had an empty tank for them anyway.
The male from the blue delta stain turned out to be a beauty. He never became very large but he became more and more a solid blue and over the next few months developed a really large well shaped caudal that he carried well. His dorsal was equally nice. The female dropped a good size batch of fry that I moved to a growing tank, and then over the next few months she continued to drop fry in the tank they were in. Since I had already saved the first batch and because of lack of space I did not move any more of them. As they grew I moved the males from that first batch into a separate tank so the females would remain virgin. As that batch reached about three months old I became aware that the males were developing a problem with short gill. Short gill is characterized by the gill plate covering the fish’s gill not growing out fully, so it leaves the gill, or part of it showing, which is not very attractive and probably not healthy for the fish. Short gill had never been much of a problem for me with guppies. I think I had some two or three decades ago, but I probably dumped the fish and forgot about them. In breeding angels I had found short gill to be a persistent problem, particularly with the strain of gold angels I worked with for many years. But it was always due to overcrowding and was controllable simply by giving the fish enough tank space.
I thought the short gill in these male blue deltas must also be environmentally related, though I did not think they had been overcrowded. But they also did not quite come up to the standard of their father, particularly in color. I watched them for a couple more months and then destroyed them and the females.
Out of curiosity I retained the original breeding tank with the fish that were growing up there. I wondered if any short gill would show up among those fish, which would indicate to me that it was genetic rather than environmental. But as these fish grew, there was no short gill. And to top it off, several of these young fish became very attractive. Their blue color was much lighter than the father’s but they had large well shaped caudals and dorsals. I continued to breed this strain for another year and then found that it seemed to be getting weaker. The dorsals on the males failed to grow and the males grew up to be veils rather than deltas. Inbreeding seemed to be exacting a toll. An outcross seemed to be desirable, but with what?
Back to the Japanese Double Swords
Meanwhile, I had continued to breed the Japanese Double Swords and had become enthralled with the strain due to its diversity. I got bottom and double swords, a lot of those with uneven swords which I discarded, a tail shape that has been described as scissor tail or swallow tail, and both veil and delta tails. The color range was amazing. Bodies were either gold or gray, and the foreground color ranging from yellow through green to blue and grey. There were bicolors, multicolors and solid colors. A few of the deltas had unusually wide tails, a characteristic I have always liked. The first couple of generations produced some very pretty patterns in the tails, but these were mostly in the veils, so I did not use those for breeders. In these first few generations I tended to choose the wide tailed deltas as breeders and the strain tended more and more to produce widetailed bluegreen fish.
So I choose a few females from that strain and picked out one of the best remaining males from the blue delta strain above to cross with them. The rest of the adult blue deltas died off soon, but left a tank full of babies. The females from the cross dropped lots of young and I gave them my attention. They grew up looking a lot like their father and I picked the best looking fish from that F1 generation to breed. However the F2 generation was somewhat disappointing. A lot of blue, but in patterns that were not too attractive, and with tails there were only average in size. The couple of fish with really nice tails were mostly a nondescript gray. I continued to work with the fish from that cross for some time, but never found any show champions among them.
Now to the Blue Delta Babies
But as the remaining blue delta young from the original strain grew, I began to realize they were better looking fish than the last couple of generations had been. I chose the best and bred from them. By the next generation all the young seemed to grow up looking much like the better fish three or four generations back. And there was no longer much variation in the fish. Most of the males looked a great deal alike. Anticipating showing the fish I spent a lot of time looking at the strain and had trouble deciding whether it was more blue or more green. At the 2002 San Fernando Show I entered one of those males in the blue delta class. It was disqualified for color. I took a look at the fish in the blue-green class and decided that was where I would show any others of that color. My choice was confirmed a few minutes later when a well known breeder, Frank Chang came by and looked at that fish. He observed that if it had been in the blue-green class it would have won.
The next year I showed a young male from that strain in San Fernando in the blue-green class. He had not yet reached full size, but took a second place in blue-green.
Why did this strain recover without an outcross? Perhaps when I let it die out to just a few young I was fortunate enough to have only fry left with a genetic makeup similar to the better fish in earlier generations. I cannot answer this question with certainty, which is true of many of our questions with our fascinating fish and their genetics.
If you found this article interesting, you may be interested in seeing the IFGA web site at www.ifga.org.
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