I have a confession to make. I had access to one Japanese bluegrass male guppy and some fry months before the Bluegrass became officially available. I was not impressed with the group and made the comment at the time "I'm glad I didn't pay for these" and filed the group away. I was content to wait and purchase the official version expecting a new and wonderful gene pool with which to work. Maybe I expected too much. I am still not impressed. Is this all there is ?
The bluegrass guppies offer us the colors already available in the tuxedo file. The grass tail pattern can be found in all of the other strains (AZ refers to this phenotype as "a patterned tail" on page 10 of the small booklet that comes with the game). The leopard tail pattern (complete with the white rectangle in the dorsal) is quite easily found in both the cobra and mosaic strains. I have also found tiger and possibly snakeskin in some of the F3 generations I have explored. So what's new? I believe that the bluegrass genotypes are far more difficult to stabilize than the same phenotypes worked from within other gene pools. I suggest that every individual guppy found in the Bluegrass20 file is heterozygous for two colors and two tail patterns. Searching for the "right female" often involves trying every sister within the brood with every male for many generations. If all this work led to something new and wonderful then I would be happy to go through the process. However, I have not yet found any "new and wonderful"
phenotypes. Perhaps out-crossing a stabilized Bluegrass strain with a non-bluegrass strain will lead us to something new. To explore this possibility we must first see if we can stabilize a bluegrass phenotype.
I selected the oldest pair from the Bluegrass20 file to produce our F1 generation. Here is a pic of the male used.
My handy dandy color utility says this guy is electric blue and turquoise. To me he looks like a pair of well-worn blue jeans. I refer to this color as washed denim.
He and the oldest female produced these males in their F1 generation.
One grass and two leopards are produced.
Well if we are going to work with Bluegrass we should go for the grass tail pattern (why work leopard out of the bluegrass?). We will select the denim grass male and mate him with his three sisters from this batch and see what the gene pool offers to us.
Batch F2a:
Here we see two colors of blue and two tail patterns.
Batch F2b:
Well, well, well, all just like dad. Looks promising, but experience tells me this chase will not be easy.
Batch F2c:
I see four phenotypes here. How many do you see?
Since batch F2b has only one tail pattern, let's select this batch to work with and produce a few F3 generations. We select a male from this group and mate him with three of his sisters. Here are the F3 generations produced.
Batch F3a:
I don't think this group will do. We again see leopard.
Batch F3b:
Cute AZ, real cute. Only two males produced but at least both looks like dad and granddad.
Batch F3c:
Three colors are exhibited. Maybe.
Batch F3b had four females in it. I chose F3b to lead us on to the F4 generations. One male was paired with each sister. Here are two of the batches they produced.
Batch F4a:
Four leopards and one grass. I don't think this is "the one".
Batch F4d:
Well at least we see no leopards.
Batches b and c both produced leopards like batch a. We select batch F4d to produce the F5 generation. One male will let us continue to inbreed using the same phenotype to produce each succeeding generation. Selecting the denim male we mate him with three of his sisters. One female produced four phenotypes and another produced three. Batch F05b produced two phenotypes.
Batch F5b.
One denim and seven sky blue males. Maybe we can get sky blue out of this. Normally, to start chasing a different phenotype this late in the chase is not a sensible move. Remember that a denim male has fathered each generation up to this one. Going for sky blue at this point is not sane, let's do it. I select a sky blue male and mate him with three of his sisters (I have arbitrarily set three as my limit for this session. I'm the one taking the pics.) The first two females produced more than three phenotypes in the males. The third female produced these guys.
Batch F6c:
Well, there are only two colors here. Maybe we should go back to denim. I selected a sky male and mated him with one of his sisters.
Batch F7a:
Again, we see two colors in this generation. Will AZ let us have a single color. Again a sky male is mated to one of his sisters.
Batch F8a:
Chuckle, giggle, hysterical scream. Three colors are now produced. Have we seen the navy denim before? Maybe we should go for the navy denim. Just kidding. A sky male is once again paired with a sister to produce the F9 generation. (I told you this wouldn't be easy.)
The F9 generation:
All sky blue and we started out going for washed denim. Go figure.
The F10 generation:
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