So I have decided to try my hand at selective breeding. I have a tank full of guppies and over the past year guppies do what guppies are known for BREEDING. Well I have noticed some great color morphs in my males and females. I'm talking florescent colors. males with florescent oranges, yellows and blues. females that are hot yellow, blue with black spots. I'm thinking about selecting the best males and the best females and isolating them from the rest of the heard and having them breed.

I'm aware of consequences when it comes to imbreeding and thats why I plan on introducing fresh geans into the gean pool.

If anyone has has any tips on selective breeding please let me know.

Genes there, mr. mad scientist.

Anywho. I can fill you in on what I do with torts and perhaps some of it would be applicable. Keep in mind here I use guppies to feed baby turtles, so I've never really stopped to study their traits any.

The big thing about breeding from a limited gene pool is being organized and patient. Super duper crazy organized oh and did I mention patient?

I'd imagine for you, you might be best to start off with a plan. What exactly do you want the guppies to look like. For me, with the threatened/endangered animals, all I'm interested in is increasing their numbers and not having to ride the short bus. For you do you want to focus on color or size or pattern or something other?

For the eastern box turtles, I keep males and females separate, and I keep notes on where they all came from. (I also have the advantage of using nail polish on their shells to mark em.) For breeding I try to pick turtles that didn't come in together or weren't found in the same area to minimize any potential inbreeding.

I'd keep the females in separate housing and introduce whatever males were scheduled for the getting it on. However you separate and care for guppies would be what goes next. I know they're live bearers, but not much more than that.

If you keep everyone separate, then you have sort of a map from parents to offspring. Then just mix and match to keep it as varied as you can. I'd imagine you could pick up some other ones and introduce them later on down the line too if they start getting really hinky.

From there, pick the best/healthiest to keep going. That's the other thing, health is an important one to consider. As much as you can judge the health of a guppy. (for me that's: dead or not dead) Anything weird, any abnormalities can (and usually will) be passed down to the offspring.

Also the first male to reach sexual maturity in a group of young isn't always the best male to use. I'd wait for two or three to come around before picking the healthiest. Same for the females.

Next time I talk with the guy at the fish farm, I'll ask them what they do about genetics too. I'm know they'll have far more information than I'll know what to do with.

Thanks Saint! I'm printing this off right now so I can start planing.

I'm the worlds worst speller BTW

How should the male to female ratio work out? I was thinking 1 to 4

Mike, one thing you need to remember is that you must segregate the females as soon as you can sex them. Once a female breeds, she can retain sperm, and have numerous litters from that one breeding. For this reason, once a female is bred to a male, you might as well leave her with him for life. Because if she breeds with another male, you'll never know for sure who the father is.

A 1:4 ratio is fine, or even a 1:6 will work. Less than a 1:4 ratio may cause the male to harass the females. Also plan on buying ALLOT of tanks. Minimum needed for a 1:4 ratio would be 1 tank for the breeding group, 1 tank for the unsexed fry of each female (4 Tanks) 1 tank for the sexed males from each female (4 tanks) and 1 tank for the sexed females from each female (4 tanks). Otherwise you won't be able to determine which pairing is producing the desired results. Thus you will be looking at a minimum of 13 tanks for each 1:4 breeding group. Ain't genetics FUN.

Mark

Too much trouble for me...but that is me

That is alot of tanks! But since I'm using guppies the tanks wouldnt be that big. Could you recommend any books for me the average joe to read?