Ribbontail guppy breeding

[rastamon34]

So I’ve bred thousands of guppies and acquired these ribbon tail Japanese pingu guppies, they are gorgeous, albeit a little fat. I originally bought 6 of them and one was pregnant and had three or so fry survive. Anyways, I know on some the ribbon tails can interfere with breeding, but I have a mix of a male with no ribbon and 2 females with no ribbon. So out of the 9 or so fish some combo should bang? I have no interest in punnet squaring the traits of ribbon, but I cannot get these to go for the life of me. I’ve had them in a heated ten gallon alone, now have them in a room temp about 70 degree  planted 55 with some precox and Cory cats. I’ve had these guppies for almost 9 months with no breeding. I’ve got koi guppies in the tank below with more babies than I know what to do with, I’ll toss in a pic of the prolific male, but can’t seem to get a single female holding here!

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by rastamon34

[Fish Folk]

Best wishes… I’ve no clue how to pick that lock. Your set up looks amazing! Wow those males are stunning…

[Chris]

Sounds like you've certainly bred more guppies than me, but aren't there certain strains of guppies/livebearers that have modified gonopodiums that makes it difficult/impossible for a male of that strain to mate? I can tell if the gonopodiums on your males are abnormal, but I know I've read about that particular issue somewhere.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

In this case I do believe you’re correct - since you received ribbon and ribbonless males the ones without ribbon will pass on the ribbon gene and breed. The ribboned males typically have an elongated gonopodium making it impossible for them to breed unless you clip or circumcise them which is super risky. Glad the breeder did the right thing and gave you some ribbonless males. 

[rastamon34]

Right I figured with a combo of non ribboned males and females someone was bound to get pregnant. I guess not though. I’ll Give it a bit more time but I don’t know how I feel about a non breeding group of 8 9 fish taking up my whole 55. I’ve had other guppy colonies turn into hundreds in there, I think these guppies may get demoted to a smaller tank

[PineSong]

On 12/27/2021 at 3:49 PM, rastamon34 said:

 I’ve had other guppy colonies turn into hundreds in there, I think these guppies may get demoted to a smaller tank

I know I heard a guppy breeder on YouTube talk about using smaller tanks for harder to breed guppies because the males cannot keep up with the females enough to catch them and breed with them. If I recall correctly it was D. Grey and he was talking about using 5g instead of his usual 10g, but I can't swear to that and I can't dream of remembering which video, I've watched too many.

[rastamon34]

I think I will move them back to a 10 gallon. I want to display them, but also they are wasting the space I could be breeding dozens in the 55.

[Levi_Aquatics]

Ribbon fin males can’t reproduce but since you have a regular fin male you should be good unless he is sterile. 

[rastamon34]

I’m starting to think  the regular male is sterile as well, moved them all down to a 10 gal with some Indian rice fish and yellow shrimp. Took a scoop of 50 or so koi guppys and moved them on up to the 55 gallon. Seemed like wasted space to have a non breeding set of 7 or so guppies in a 55.
 

I think I’ll give it another month or so , before I throw either a koi guppy male or dumbo metal head male that’s proven his skills in there to shake things up and just see what happens. Don’t quite have the extra tanks at the moment to selectively breed, but at this point I’m curious what would come out!