Breeding Guppies
I've been spending the last few months dreaming of what I'm going to do with my next aquarium setup. There has been a variety of different ideas, but the one I keep coming back to is breeding Guppies. This isn't an option right now because I am limited to one aquarium in the dorms and my current tank isn't Guppy friendly with both a Betta and a Cichlid.
My interest in breeding Guppies has two goals. The first one is to successfully select traits and engineer my own line of colorful Guppies. My second goal is that live Guppies would make a much better food for my Betta than pellets or flake food, so some of the fry could be skimmed off for that.
I finally got around to hitting up the library today to do some research into the thought. Probably the biggest realization I had was fancy guppies vs wild guppies. Wild, or feeder, guppies are meant to be fed to larger fish, and are sold accordingly. The local pet store sells them for 12 cents a piece.
The interesting part is that, since wild guppies haven't been extensively in-bred, they are much hardier. We have never had great success with fancy guppies, so the thought of getting something a little hardier sounds good to me. It also means I'm going to start with very mixed fish, and can theoretically pick out any trait I want. If I start with a fish with a big red fin, any improvement I make would be minimal, at best.
Here's to next year's projects...
My interest in breeding Guppies has two goals. The first one is to successfully select traits and engineer my own line of colorful Guppies. My second goal is that live Guppies would make a much better food for my Betta than pellets or flake food, so some of the fry could be skimmed off for that.
I finally got around to hitting up the library today to do some research into the thought. Probably the biggest realization I had was fancy guppies vs wild guppies. Wild, or feeder, guppies are meant to be fed to larger fish, and are sold accordingly. The local pet store sells them for 12 cents a piece.
The interesting part is that, since wild guppies haven't been extensively in-bred, they are much hardier. We have never had great success with fancy guppies, so the thought of getting something a little hardier sounds good to me. It also means I'm going to start with very mixed fish, and can theoretically pick out any trait I want. If I start with a fish with a big red fin, any improvement I make would be minimal, at best.
Here's to next year's projects...
