With great anticipation I placed my first AZ guppies into a tank. I choose the tuxedos because this was a phenotype I had kept and tried to breed when I was younger and very much involved in the aquarium hobby. Gosh was I disappointed. I had visions of sultry cobalt blue tuxedos, flashy red tuxedos, bright yellow tuxedos and subtle pastel tuxedos swimming around in my mind. What did I see? Washed out blue, dull gray and insipid yellow were swimming around in the tank. I was not impressed. Next I loaded all the red tail males into the tank. These guys made a better impression I guess because a few of the males appeared very shinny and bright. However, I was not impressed. I then took a look at the Yellow Mosaics. Ugly, ugly, ugly. I was not impressed. Well, not to worry, I told myself. I'll just mate a female tuxedo with a shinny red tail and get a tank full of flashy red tuxedos. Ain't that how this guppy breeding process is supposed to work? Sure it is! Nothing to it. So I picked out some nice pretty male red tails and placed them into a tank with some of the female tuxedos and waited for my tank full of "half-black reds" to materialize. Eventually I managed to get a couple of batches of fry. (This was months before the evolution of TransWarp. I was warping the old fashion way; changing water, cleaning the filter and watching my breeders get old and feeble. Carpal tunnel syndrome had set in and I was taking Ibuprofen and smearing Myoflex all over my right arm to alleviate the pain.) Finally I managed to raise a batch of fry to the magic age of 65 days. I was eagerly anticipating the appearance of a tank full of brilliant red tuxedo guppies. Boy was I disillusioned. Not one of the males was red! None of the males looked like any of his brothers. Not one of the males was pretty or attractive to me. Every male had a caudal crescent. I had worked for days to create a tank full of virtual piscine "pound puppies". I was the humiliated creator of a bunch of feeder guppies. I was not impressed. There was nothing left to do but to look for the instructions (my wife says this is a "guy thing"). After finding the box the CD came in I finally read the small booklet that came with the game. Three pages of the booklet were titled "Techniques for Breeding".  Three, very small, pages! Is this all there is? I was not impressed. Sound familiar? Is this the road you are taking? Are you disappointed and disillusioned? Do you have a clue how to play this darn game? It is a game you know. AZ with guppies is a simulation of real life guppy breeding. The goal of all real life guppy breeders is to create and maintain strains of purebred guppies. Therefore, creating purebred (stabilized) guppy strains must be one of the levels that Mother AZ demands players reach in order to successfully play the game. After much thought I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to see what Mother AZ had buried in her programming for me to uncover I had to first, somehow, create and stabilize several strains of purebred guppies. The instruction booklet strongly suggests inbreeding as the best technique to accomplish this goal. Mother AZ has this to say about inbreeding: The purpose of inbreeding is to concentrate the characteristics that you are seeking to breed and eliminate the characteristics you do not want to breed from the gene pool. These closely related fish will eventually, after a number of generations of inbreeding, become very similar in appearance, thus indicating that they have stabilized their genetic characteristics for the result you are seeking. You can then crossbreed this stable line of guppies with another stable line of guppies to create new combinations of colors, patterns and characteristics. I read these "instructions" many times and concluded that I needed to create two strains of stabilized guppies in order to create a third strain that exhibited new combinations of colors. I wanted cobalt blue tuxedos. I had pale washed out blue tuxedos from the AZ pet shop. Well, as I always say, if you want to get the blues you had best work with the blues. Let's load some tuxedos into the tank and get started. After all, this is supposed to be a "show and tell' and so far all I've done is a whole bunch of "tell". I selected a 28 day old male and a 18 day old female from the German Tuxedo file to check out the gene pool Mother AZ had "on file" for me to work with from this specific pair of guppies. Why such young fish? `Cause it doesn't matter what the parents look like, I am interested in what the kids look like. The kids will show me what I have to work with, not the parents. I only need the parents to produce the kids. What I want to do is explore Mother AZ's gene pool possibilities for this specific pair. TransWarp lets me do this as I can mate the selected pair several times and take a look at the F1 males produced. I usually take a look at three or four F1 batches to see what might be "in there". Here are the four batches I produced using this procedure. Batch 1: No blues here. Batch 2: We get blue but it has the caudal crescent. Batch 3: Hummm, not only do we see blue but also one jade male (jade is good!). Batch 4: In this batch we also see the blue phenotype we are seeking. Decisions, decisions. Is there anything here that will lead me to a stabilized blue strain? Batches 1 and 2 have no blue males. Batch 3 has the jade which I make note of to return to later (jade is good!). Batch 4 looks to be a more direct route to blue, which is the phenotype I have decided to chase this session. Any shade of blue will do, I just want to eventually isolate and stabilize some shade of blue from this gene pool. You have to remember these F1 generations are from a pair of mutts. (Sorta like crossing a mixed terrier with a poodle/Pekinese mix.) We have a long way to go before we see what Mother AZ has hidden within this gene pool. The phenotypes we see in these F1 batches offer little clue as to what might be uncovered as we go along. I selected batch 4 to explore further.  I selected one of the blue males and mated him with several of his sisters. The first two sisters selected produced no blue sons. The third sister chosen produced this batch of F2 sons. Mother AZ produced one blue male. In all three F2 batches the grass tail pattern has shown up. Here we see silver grass. I am not chasing grass this session however I will return to these batches later and see what other phenotypes Mother AZ will let me have. I mated the blue male in this batch with several of his sisters, again looking for the sister that might be his "twin". (Look at it from this perspective: If the phenotypes of the males are also hidden in the genes of the females then it stands to reason that at least one of the females is also blue. That is what I mean when I say I am looking for the "right sister".)  Again, it took three tries before I found a sister that produced blue sons. Here are the males in this F3 batch. Here we see jade and sky blue grass in addition to the clear blue we are chasing. Selecting one of the clear blue males to use as the father, I again paired him with several of his sisters looking for a F4 generation that has the blue phenotype I have chosen to chase. Here are the males produced in the F4 generation. Well, well, well. Here we see a color of blue not yet seen. Looks like a pair of old blue jeans to me. Let's refer to this color as "washed denim" for the time being. (You probably noticed that I mated this guy with just one of his sisters. I could have produced more F4 batches to look at but since we are now only seeing blues I decided not to. No need to make this more complicated than necessary.) I mated the lighter blue male with one of his sisters to produce this batch of F5 males. Mother AZ has been hiding silver in this gene pool. We also see the washed denim color again. I selected one of the light blue males (sky? Aqua?) and mated him with one of his sisters to produce this batch of F6 males. Don't despair, have a little faith. If we keep using a light blue male as the father for many generations things will certainly improve, won't they? That is what inbreeding is supposed to accomplish isn't it? HA! Once again, I selected a light blue male and mated him with one of his sisters to produce the F7 generation. Here are the males in this F7 batch.

We are at the F7 generation and still seeing three phenotypes. Now, to me it looks like the light blue males are packing two genes for color and two genes for tail pattern where I would hope they were only packing one. If they were only packing light blue we would not see the washed denim. If they were only packing clear we would not be seeing the grass tail pattern. The official word for this condition is heterozygous. I have learned that this is not a hopeless situation. We may not get a stable strain of the clear light blue this session, but we will probably be able to get a stable strain of clear washed denim and grass sky blue out of this specific gene pool. Let continue on and see. I stayed with the plan (meanwhile making mental contingency plans to switch the goal color) and selected a light blue male to pair with one of his sisters to produce the F8 generation. Here are the males in the F8 generation. Cute Mother AZ, real cute. Here are the males produced by mating the light blue male in this batch with one of his sisters to produce this F9 generation. Yep, this strain is stabilized. It is a clear light blue strain that is heterozygous for washed denim. Let's try one more generation just to make sure we are not jumping ship one generation too early. Here are the males in the F10 generation. I've seen enough. Light blue is not to be this session. Washed denim is there for the taking. Now, I do not want a heterozygous strain this session. Remember Don's rule for working with heterozygous strains? Whatever a strain is heterozygous for can usually be stabilized in a generation or two. We are two steps away from a stabilized strain of "clear washed denim". We didn't want that pale, anemic light blue anyway, now did we? Switching to a washed denim male we produce this F11 generation. HA! Look at what Mother AZ has been hiding all along. Another shade of blue grass shows up. Mother AZ is a barrel of laughs (banging head on keyboard). Let's see where this leads. (We are at the F11 and still seeing double.) Selecting a washed denim male and one of his sisters we produce the F12 generation. Shaking my head and chuckling to myself I again select a washed denim male and one of his sisters to move on to the F13 generation. Here are the F13 males. FINALLY! Mother AZ really made me work for this strain. Just to make sure that we have indeed produced a stabilized homozygous strain of washed blue denim I took this strain out two more generations. Here are the males in the F14 and F15 generations. Success is mine! I set out to stabilize a strain of blue tuxedos and I achieved my goal. The shade of blue was up to Mother AZ. I chose not to try for any specific shade of blue but to follow Mother AZ's lead and take whatever shade of blue she was prepared to offer me in this specific gene pool. The light shade of blue Mother AZ dealt us this session was part of a package deal (heterozygous) from the very beginning. This does not mean that the next time we load a pair of tuxedos into the tank that light blue will be heterozygous for washed denim. Mother AZ seldom deals the same hand twice, sorta like being dealt a hand of cards from the deck. I chose this specific gene pool to illustrate a difficult, twisted path to a stabilized strain. Many times you will find that you can stabilize a strain in as few as five or six generations. This general gene pool also presented many phenotypes that Mother AZ allowed me to stabilize. I spent an afternoon stabilizing these strains from this one gene pool. These strains were worked from all four of the original F1 batches I produced when I started this session. I chose not to stabilize pewter and silver. I must take this opportunity to point out that I have not used a whole bunch of "genetic" words like dominant, recessive, gene or chromosome to show you how to stabilize a strain of guppies with Mother AZ. This process can be done just using your eyes. The "genetic" part takes place whether you know the words and definitions or not. So, for those of you out there who say, "But I don't know anything about genetics. How can I play this game?" please put aside this excuse and start breeding guppies using your eyes. "Tis not a major problem. Now, if you remember, I am working toward a strain of cobalt blue tuxedos. I suspect that Mother AZ has several hurdles for me to overcome before she will let me see this color (if at all). I may find something even more desirable along the way. I know better than to try to make cobalt blue, Mother AZ will not allow that approach. The best I can do is to be alert to the possibility if and when the occasion arises. Let's move on to the next pool and see if we can ever find the path leading to a cobalt blue tuxedo. IS THE WATER IN THIS POOL BLUE OR GREEN?