Blue/Green Moscow Guppy

 

Here are some photos of one of my male “studs.” He doesn’t look like much, but there’s a story here. Last year, I bought a pair of guppies that I just HAD to have (which happens a lot). The male looked great, but many male guppies that have a large fully developed caudal don’t make good breeders. They just can’t move well enough by this point. So you have a beautiful fish that isn’t much use, other than admiring it. Knowing this, I bought the pair because the female was pregnant and a week or two from giving birth. I figured I could then start with a new crop from the same line I loved.

When the pair arrived by overnight delivery, the female was perfect. However, the male was so shell-shocked from the trip that most of his caudal tail was dissolved. There was only a thin strip of tail at the bottom remaining, so he looked like a solid blue-green swordtail guppy. I thought for sure this fish would be dead within a day or two. It was still able to get around. But he just kept going. As the weeks passed, I noticed his tail was starting to grow back. And he was able to really move fast because he basically now had a brand new tail that was shorter and more manageable. In a sense, the fact his tail was destroyed ended up being a blessing in disguise.

I’m sharing him between two groups of females. A couple Grigsby blues and 4 blue females I recently bought directly from Stan Shubel.

Meanwhile, his original female mate gave birth to a tank full of fry a couple months ago. And the females are getting closer to breeding age. The males from this crop are still too young to really see how their tails will look. Hopefully a couple of those are quality breeders I can use once this guy in the photos has passed his prime for the second time. He kind of looks like an AOC or bi-color in this photo, but I think that’s because of the tail regeneration. At this point I’m really focusing more on form and size than color. I figure whatever I end up with, I can just place it into the appropriate color class, whatever that may be.