I've had a trio of these beautiful albino koi glass belly short body ribbon guppies (say that 3 times fast) for a month now - one ribboned female, one ribboned male, and one non-ribboned male. The non-ribboned male is essential for me as the gonopodium needs to be short in order to properly inseminate and fertilize the female. This non-ribboned male was added to the tank about 2 weeks after getting my original pair, so he's been with them for a little over 2 weeks now.
Despite all that, I cannot for the life of me get them to breed! All my other guppies breed like rabbits and I see new fry in my main tank every time that I look, but no success with these little guys. Temp, pH, water parameters are all good. They are fed well and have an entire 10 gallon tank to themselves, save for 2 snails and some red cherries. Thus there should be absolutely no stress conditions on them.
It seems like the perfect conditions for at least fertilization to occur. The female's stomach has been growing with more and more eggs but I can tell that they have still not been fertilized as they should adopt an orange/pink hue. It's quite easy to tell when the female is properly fertilized as their bellies are, obviously, clear like glass. So now I'm turning to you guys to ask if anybody might have any advice or ideas for what might be the issue here. I have a few ideas myself, which I'll list below:
1. Too large of a tank to allow the male to do the deed (I have a 2.5 gallon that I'm currently raising shrimp in, but I worry that may be TOO small for more than a couple days)
2. The non-ribboned male is "scared"(?) of the female as she is 2-3 times his size
3. The presence of the ribboned male being in the tank before introduction of the non-ribboned male may be discouraging breeding.
This could probably be solved by just getting more males but they are super expensive and I'd like to keep that as a last option. Any ideas?