I just wanted to give a little context and additional information on some of the videos that are on our youtube channel. There is also some great info on guppies here.
Guppies during water change
It is always interesting to see how fish react to water change. I have found that guppies react very differently than most fish. I have found that guppies generally have very little interest in what is going on or are super excited.
If the guppies are excited generally that means that they think you are feeding them. It is important to not feed your fish before or during a water change because then they will be excited for water changes and will just keep getting in the way. Making water changes more difficult.
If they show no interest in what is going on it usually means that they have been so domesticated that they no longer have a flight or fight response left. In the wild would be bad but in captivity, it is a benefit because then they aren’t stressed out.
The excitement or lack of interest is an interesting response because most fish are terrified or minimally keep their distance from the tools people use to do water changes. It shows how different guppies are that are bred in captivity and those in the wild.
One last thing that is interesting about these guppies is that they are the offspring of American green guppies and most of them came out as half black metal head green guppies. It just shows that even when you think you know the genetics of your fish, weird stuff can still pop out.
Guppies break into breeder box
This is a fun video. As you can see I have a breeder box full of baby longfin green dragon bristlenose plecos. They are about 20-30 days old at this point. I like keeping them in breeder boxes when bristlenose pleco babies are this size because I can make sure they are eating and if they are healthy or not.
I have tried raising the babies free roam in the tank with the parents but I have noticed that I had a lot fewer babies make it to a sellable age or adulthood.
But back to how the guppies got in the breeder box. At first, I thought that they had maybe jumped into the breeder box and then gotten stuck but upon investigating further into the situation I notice that the breeder box in its old age had broken (6 years). The support beams had broke and as result, the edge of the box dipped below the water line making it easy for the guppies to just stroll on in.
Unfortunately, the guppies are not bright enough to figure out how to get out of the breeder box. Which I thought was funny at first and let them chill in there for a few days entail I noticed they were picking on the baby bristlenose pleco babies.
Once I saw that they were immediately fished out and I got a new breeder box so it couldn’t happen again.
Ivory King Guppies (Golden lace delta tail guppies)
This is the first video of my ivory king guppies that were imported from Thailand. Shout out to the Guppy Guru Peter for helping me bring them in. I believe the common name for these guppies is Golden lace delta tail.
These are a really interesting fish for me for several reasons.
One of them is that I’ve never had fish imported from another country that wasn’t wild caught for me. It was fun and it’s crazy the things that Thailand fish breeders can do to make fish look a certain way.
They came in beautiful and healthy as you can see in the video. I love how big the male’s tail is and how the patterns on all the fins match.
This is quite hard to accomplish without very selective breeding.
This is important because I plan on improving this line of guppies and using them in guppy shows. Having big tails and matching patterns are some of the biggest things judged on a fish.
The quality of these fish has made it so I don’t have to start from scratch and saved having to breed many generations of fish and probably years of effort.
I am super excited to have these fish in my collection.
Shubul guppy male pursuing female
The guppy mating dance is less of a dance and more of a constant pursuit until the male wears down the female or catches her.
It is much more likely with domesticated guppies it is generally the female is worn down because their tails are so big they don’t have the energy or speed to catch them. The size of the tails of the male actually in many cases stops the male from being able to catch the female.
This is why many guppy breeders use younger males to breed with their female guppies because their tails aren’t fully grown yet so they are smaller and faster. This makes it possible for the guppies to breed.
What also is nice is that females are able to have several batches of babies from being bred one time.
One this that is very special about this line of guppies is that they are from the shubul line. Shubul was one of the best guppy breeders and won many shows for decades. He has passed on but there are people who keep his legacy alive by continuing to breed his fish.
Black Panda guppies
This video is of one of my dad’s (Bryan Sr. first generation of Bryans) first tanks. It took me forever to convince him to get a fish tank. At this point, I have had fish for roughly 10 years, and much of it trying to get him to get fish.
But this guppy is pretty rare. They are a dwarf endler guppy. They stay fairly small and are great for nano tanks.
The panda guppy is also interesting because it has a completely different body and fin than most endlers. They have a domesticated look to them. Like larger guppy verities that have been line-bred and bred for certain looks. Most endlers look very similar to wilder verities.
This line of panda guppies also had the glass belly gene bred into them. This is also a very interesting gene because what it does is make the female’s belly clear so that you can see the eggs and babies forming in its belly.
This gene is great to have when teaching kids in biology because everything is visible without needing to hurt or kill the fish as you do with frogs and other biology experiments.
Definitely, a great fish that I hope to have again.
I hope that these videos have been fun to watch and that the extra information provided has provided context that makes this video more informational and fun to watch.
