In The Gene Pool With Don

Welcome to Don's Guppy Breeding Show and Tell

Do you want to breed some AZ guppies ? Well, I breed AZ guppies and the following pages are intended to illustrate the process I have used to create all of the strains you see in Don's Guppy Gallery.

Some questions you may ask:

Is Don's method the only method ? Of course not.

Is Don's method the right method ? I really don't know.

Does Don have extensive knowledge of guppy "genetics" ? No I don't. I do have a basic understanding of four key words: Heterozygous, homozygous, recessive and dominant.

Which breeding technique does Don use ? I use inbreeding, back-crosses, out-crosses and hunches (intuition) to create and stabilize my guppy strains.

The following phrases apply to everything I present in the commentary I have supplied with the breeding examples.

In my experience, so far, to date.

To the best of my knowledge at this time.

In my humble opinion.

Your mileage may vary.

I am a warp junkie ( I am too old for real time guppy breeding). The warp procedure I use to breed my guppies is TransWarp. A complete description of this process can be found on Mirra's site. Just click on the TransWarp guppy and he will take you there.

TransWarp is a warp procedure that evolved as I made mistakes using other warping processes in the earlier days of my guppy breeding attempts (I always forgot to change the tank speed from 100x back to 1x. I also had trouble remembering that minimizing the tank to the task bar and actually closing the tank were somehow different). I originally called the process FWAK, because it enabled me to send pairs of guppies forward (FW) and backward (AK) in time. Captain Janeway (a.k.a. Mirra) suggested TransWarp (a definite improvement) and TransWarp is what the procedure is now called.

Why do I enjoy using TransWarp ?

My guppies never age.

I can obtain fry from any pair of guppies younger than 300 days.

I do not have to concern myself with albino sterility, tuxedo late maturation, lethal genes, aging, health, disease or death.

I need to maintain only one tank for breeding my guppies.

I never have to change the water or clean a filter (my personal favorite).

I can create and stabilize a strain in less than an hour.

Can you create exactly the same strains shown in these examples exactly as I have done ?

Probably not. AZ seldom shuffles and deals the "gene pool probabilities" the same way twice. You can achieve similar results using the basic techniques of inbreeding, back-crossing and out-crossing to create and stabilize your own unique strains.

What I have attempted to do in the following illustrations is:

Define and describe the goal strain.

Select and set up the initial pair.

Document the steps taken in stabilizing or creating the goal strain (you have no idea what spell check and grammar check can do to a documentation of guppy breeding).

Take screen shot of the males obtained for each generation (you know, a picture is worth a thousand words).

Give some insight into my file management system.

The process of creating beautiful hybrid guppy strains must start with stabilized breeding stock. Of course many beautiful guppies can be created from any random pair you choose to throw into a tank, sorta like throwing dice. However, creating a random, one of a kind guppy is not my goal. If you will follow me into the Gene Pool I will try to show you how I play the game.

Pool 1 Stabilizing a strain of Red Tails	Pool 9 If you want to breed Cobras you gotta have patience	Pool 17 Mingling colors and tail patterns in the gene pool	Pool 25 Getting the Blues

Pool 2 Stabilizing a strain of German Tuxedos	Pool 10 Patience, Patience II	Pool 18 Going fishing for pastel pecs	Pool 26 Is the water in this pool blue or green?

Pool 3 Creating and stabilizing Tuxedo Christmas Red or out-crossing	Pool 11 All dressed up and no place to go or creating the cobra tuxedo	Pool 19 Aggressive back crossing can be fun	Pool 27 Is the water in this pool green or blue?

Pool 4 Stabilizing a strain of plain generic Mosaic Tiger Canary Guppies	Pool 12 Creating the White Albino Phenotype	Pool 20 Tail patterns ? You mean all those dots and wavy lines ?	Pool 28 Getting back to the blues

Pool 5 Creating and stabilizing a strain of Tuxedo Tiger Christmas Reds	Pool 13 How many strains could we stabilize from one out-cross	Pool 21 Sometimes good things just happen	Pool 29 If you want darker blue should you add red?

Pool 6 A dip into the Albino gene pool	Pool 14 Knowing when a trait is heterozygous and when to stop trying	Pool 22 One good thing leads to another	Pool 30 Heterozygous: Embrace the Concept

Pool 7 You never know what you will get	Pool 15 Working with Bluegrass guppies (yawn)	Pool 23 No eye-candy here, but a few good lessons	Pool 31 "What's the deal with grass?"

Pool 8 Now for my favorite gene pool, the Cobras	Pool 16 A breeding technique to create and stabilize two strains at the same time	Pool 24 Hey, what you guys hiding under those black coats ?	Pool 32 Splish Splash in the Grass