We started our current journey in pool 25 with an infant pair from the German Tuxedo file. (Remember those four F1 generations I produced in pool 25?) Every tuxedo strain we have stabilized so far can be traced back to that specific pair's gene pool. Here are the strains we have stabilized to date from that original pair. Twelve strains have been stabilized from one original pair of CD tuxedo guppies! Remember, I passed on clear pewter and clear silver (seen that, got that, why bother!). We have also seen two very nice turquoise phenotypes (one grass and one clear) we have yet to chase as we have paddled around in this specific, unique gene pool. We have only used in-breeding, no back-crosses were used. We just took what Mother AZ would let us have. Are there more phenotypes here for us to uncover? Of course there are. We could return to any of the many F1 generations we have created, select a different male and female pair, and swim off in another direction, acting like tourists looking for something different to come into view. However, our original goal was to establish several stabilized strains of clear blue shades hoping to eventually find some combination that might lead us to clear cobalt/navy. If you want blues work with blues. Let's see what Mother AZ will produce if we out-cross the clear washed denim and the clear peacock blue. I selected a male from the "clear washed denim" file and a female from the "clear peacock blue" and produced this F1 generation. The males are not all identical. We see peacock blue and a shade of blue my handy dandy color utility insists on calling "electric blue". The possibility is that one of the strains is not yet stabilized OR one of the strains is a heterozygous strain that so far has only exhibited one phenotype. I strongly suspect that the "clear washed denim" strain is a fishy washy strain and decide not to worry my bald little head about the situation. (I don't show you every batch I look at. You would be bored to death reading the text and I would go crazy taking pictures of each batch of males!) `Tis not the end of the world. We can check out several F1 batches using a male of each phenotype and see which batch looks more promising. I chose to check out one of the peacock males first. Here are the males from the F2a batch. Seen that, got that, don't want no more of that. Here are the males produced by one of the "electric blue" males and the same sister used to produce batch F2a. Batch F2b:

Cool, electric blue and a pretty turquoise color show up. Let's choose this batch to work with and move on to the F3 generation. Since I am working toward better blues it makes sense to save the turquoise for later. Why chase a non-blue color if I want to ultimately get the color cobalt? Gotta make a plan and stick with the plan (unless something better shows up). Mating the "electric blue" male with one of his sisters produced this batch of F3 males. Nice! A stabilized strain! HA! Don't be fooled. We are only at the F3 generation. I pick one of these males and mate him with one of his sisters to produce these F4 generation males. See. Told you so. We still see a washed denim male in this batch. On to the F5 generation with one of the electric blue males and one of his sisters. Here are the males produced in this F5 generation batch. Looking good, looking good. I select one of these guys and pair him with one of his sisters to produce this batch of F6 males. See, not every strain takes umpteen generations to stabilize. This one only took six generations. I tested several pairs from this batch and decided that this strain is indeed stabilized as "tuxedo clear electric blue". I don't always trust these six generation strains. However, I am getting sick of the color blue. Here is one of the "electric blue" males all grown up. This phenotype appears much brighter and more shinny than any of the clear blue strains we have so far stabilized. What do you think? Is this guy worth all the trouble we have gone to uncovering his phenotype? How do we go from electric blue to cobalt? Will we ever get clear cobalt? Do we still want clear cobalt? What's so special about cobalt? Maybe it's time to add another color to the gene pool. IF YOU WANT DARKER BLUES SHOULD YOU ADD RED ?