Fish Photo Post

I mentioned in my last post that I'd get up some new pictures of my fish that you've probably read so much about on this blog. I'm still trying to get the hang of my new camera so hopefully my photos start getting better overtime but, I can definitely say these pics are a major improvement over older ones you may have seen on here prior to this post. Let me know what you think or anything else you'd like to see a photo of in the future.

Male tuxedo guppy "Peppermint" and some of his fry

Closeup of Peppermint

Female tuxedo guppies: Freckles and Rudder

Male Betta: Ebo

P.S. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Guppy & Betta Updates

About a month ago Freckles gave birth to her first line of fry with Peppermint, and she's expecting again, very soon from the looks of it! This will be Freckles last drop though *fingers crossed* and then I'm retiring her from breeding (it's only good to let a guppy give birth twice really, it's a lot of work for a guppy and they're usually 'pre-hit' for a 3rd pregnancy anyway). Rudder gave birth for the first time a few days ago so, I'm on fry overload in my tanks currently, and Peppermint is on a breeding frenzy with these two gals (this being the case I am actually just going to retire all 3 from breeding). I also plan to update the decor a bit in there aquarium setup soon so, maybe I'll post up some before and after photos of that. I don't know why I have my tanks looking the way they do currently because they aren't overly appealing so, hopefully I get that worked on before I start college again this month.

Now that Mr. Moto has passed on I will be cleaning out his 2.5gal Minibow setup for my other betta Ebo to live in since Ebo has been living in a small plastic container, poor fella'. I still don't think I have yet to put any photo's of Ebo up on here but now that I have a new camera I'll definitely try to get some new fish photos up soon.

Fish Updates

Here is a photo of one of the first batch of fry that my original female guppy (who recently passed away) and one of her sons reproduced, these fry are now 6 weeks old this week and in my opinion have been growing rapidly (they all basically look like this thus far) as they are about an inch in length now.

Here are the original female guppy's first offspring (to which the father is unknown and the mother is now deceased as mentioned before). These two males were the ones that reproduced this current batch of 6 week old fry and are the only 2 fully matured males I currently have. I don't plan on breeding these two again until the 6 week old female fry are mature. These two have also reproduced with there sisters in my other tank and those fry are around 3-4 weeks old now and seem a bit slow growing.

Male guppies at 7.5 months old

Some people have asked me how Mr.Moto my blue veil-tail betta is doing and he's doing just fine although I think he has been wanting to breed for some time now, but I do not plan to breed betta's due to there general temperment and the amount of space it will ultimately consume for me. Today I placed him back into his smaller Cubus tank while I clean out his Mini-Bow. As you can see his coloring has changed yet again. Mr. Moto's head area has turned mostly black in color and he has odd white lines that run vertically between the mouth to gill area, which I think may be a breeding identifer as well as the white area running under his belly. The horizontal stripes along his sides though are what I call his "stress stripes" which didn't start to appear until I moved him back into his Cubus (the tank change and move can cause that to happen obviously but they will go away when he feels more at ease). I also have never noticed the tiny black line of dots on his lower under-belly fin, perhaps that's also a breeding sign.

Click to Enlarge

Guppy Updates

Today my first guppy (the original store bought pregnant guppy that started this strain) gave birth to her sons fry (yes, that sounds weird but true). I now have at least 20+ new fry and I believe her daughters are also pregnant from there brothers so, I'm sure I'll end up with more fry at some point in the near future. I am hoping that with my new fry I will be able to perfect the strain a bit however, there are many other factors to consider but I'd rather not make things too complicated. In the mean time, I have 3 months before the new fry has mature males to breed (from my past experience it usually takes the females twice as long to fully mature for breeding) and I have put the mature males into a separate tank from the females and new fry as I don't want them to breed together again. Keep in mind that a female guppy can continue giving birth months after she has dropped one batch of fry without having mated again (this additional batch has always been a low number of new fry for me though as it's generally just one fry born but I'm sure it could vary).

Guppy Updates - Updated

My male guppy fry just reached 5 months of age (getting close to full adult hood). They have gained a lot of color in their tails over the last month and have been chasing the females constantly. The males tails are still growing longer at this stage where the females tail growth has basically stopped since last month. The color pattern on the males has definitely been changing and enhancing a lot more in color over the past month. The females appear to look just like their mother. The males have developed an interesting spotted color scheme on their body, similar to that of an endler guppy.

Click to Enlarge (around 5 months of age)

Around 2 months or so ago the Mother guppy gave birth to another female fry. It is common for guppies to give birth without having mated again.

Male Color Description

Half tuxedo body, inherited from the mother I'd assume since she has this characteristic. Possible endler guppy body type with orange spot on the top of head and upper sides of body. A solid pale blue/white stripe which runs all the way down the top of the back. The dorsal fin is pale blue/white and orange at the base. The pectoral fins are also pale blue/white.The caudal fin appears to be an orange color shade and has become more orange this past month where it had looked half yellow before. At this stage the caudal is still in the growing process so I am not sure the outcome of the tail shape yet although it looks like it could become a possible delta or flag shape thus far.

Fish Vs. Filter Intake

For whatever reason Mr. Moto (my blue veil-tail Betta) likes curling his tail around the filter intake and having his tail sucked up into the tube. He always does this intentionally, it's not like he doesn't realize it isn't happening, he even falls asleep and is perfectly content. However, in him doing this odd ritual his fins seem to be looking a bit rugged to say the least. Here's my quick fix to keep this from happening...

Cut the toe off a nylon pantyhose (you can usually get these for free at lady shoe stores), make sure it's clean of course. You'll want the piece to be long enough just to cover the intake on the filter tube. Once covered, keep in place with a rubber-band and problem solved.

Click to Enlarge

This method is also good if you have small fry that you don't want to get sucked up into your filtration. The downside is that this doesn't allow big pieces of debris to get filtered out.

Maturing Guppy Fry

As it's nearing the beginning of May, my guppy fry will then be reaching three months of age, they're currently around half the size of their mother (nearly one inch in length) and I am sure they're going to start growing more rapidly at this stage as they're taking on more food now. I have decided to finally clean out my other 10 gallon aquarium this coming weekend in order to have it setup before the males mature and begin chasing my females around (as I don't want to go overboard on the breeding ordeal right now). It appears about half my fry are male/female this time around. They all look very similar to their mother (showing a tuxedo body) which is slightly disappointing because I was hoping they would show different characteristics in order to better identify what their father looked like (perhaps he was similar to the mother in this case) but this could change in the males as they begin to mature more.

New Guppies

Pregnant Guppy

The female guppy I bought appears to be a variation of White Tuxedo (correct me if I am perhaps wrong), however when under stress her black tux turns yellow with a black trim. The black appears at the very base of her fins and caudal as well, and her fins also have a bright blue line down the front (which you may not be able to see in the photo). She was pregnant when I bought her (which you can see from her photo above) so it will be interesting to see what her mystery fry will look like (since I don't know her mate) and she has recently given birth in my tank to over a dozen fry that I have found thus far. I had purchased a Blue Tuxedo male guppy at the same time (shown in the background behind the female)I bought the female but he turned out to have a case of fin rot and unfortunately didn't survive the week.

Moto & Marimo Ball

Moto my betta is still doing great and he loves to watch me while I'm laying in bed typing away on Guppy-Guide!

Guppy Fry

When I cleaned out one of my guppy tanks a few weeks ago I syphoned this tiny fry right into my dirty water bucket, apparently it's the only one from this new mommy guppy I have. Perhaps just a lucky fry, between the other fish that could've gobbled it up, the two filters that could've sucked it up...it managed to beat the odds. I'd make a guess that this will perhaps grow to be a female, anyone else want to take a guess?