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Sexing Guppy Fry Question


PineSong
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I bet everyone is ready to be done hearing about my fry-sorting issues with this sadly colorless group of fry. Sorry, and thanks in advance.

I am attempting to sort these colorless, gonopodium-less 4 and 6 month old guppy fry. (pic below) I really want to be done with this process. I know how to spot developing gonopodiums and not one of these crew have that--the ones who did have already been moved. At the same time, there has not been a single week where somebody has not developed one--I did remove one today.

I recalled this video by D. Grey, in which he says the gravid spot can be fry eyes, developing eggs, or 'just poop'.

My question is this: if I can see ANYTHING black back there, does that mean the guppy is female? As in, if it was a male guppy, the poop would not be visible because that part of the body would not be transparent?

I have some of these guys who just have a little fleck and I'm wondering if the fact that I can see the fleck at all is because of the gravid spot or if even male fry might have that fleck?

 

 

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I wish I was better at tech. I now have 12 blurry screenshots of your video I was trying to mark things. No go 🤣. In my group and I know I sound nutty but I’m seldom wrong with mine…sometimes I mess up though. Boys move different.  It’s ever so slightly fluttery tail and sort of an S to the swim. They also tend to stay closer to midwater and not bottom forage as much. Girls swim smoother and tend to forage at the bottom more. I suspect there is 2-3 or maybe same guy that came in and out of frame. If you can’t see the gravid spot look where it should be. The curve from that spot through the tail is almost imperceptibly thinner and higher arc. 
 

even the slightest hint of tail color even black before gravid fleck spot appears for mine usually mean boy. Im not certain in ones that light. Good luck. I know how tedious it is. 

Oh in mine if I see anything there at all it’s girl. 

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On 4/20/2022 at 8:50 PM, Guppysnail said:

I wish I was better at tech. I now have 12 blurry screenshots of your video I was trying to mark things. No go 🤣. In my group and I know I sound nutty but I’m seldom wrong with mine…sometimes I mess up though. 

even the slightest hint of tail color even black before gravid fleck spot appears for mine usually mean boy. Im not certain in ones that light. Good luck. I know how tedious it is. 

Oh in mine if I see anything there at all it’s girl. 

My fish aren't in a video--those are D. Grey's fish 🙂 My fish are just a photo and the reason they are so blurry is that I FOOLISHLY scrubbed my ACO specimen container with baking soda and salt to get the duckweed out of it. Worked great to remove duckweed. Also removed clarity! It's not your lack of tech that's the problem. 

 

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On 4/21/2022 at 8:20 AM, PineSong said:

My question is this: if I can see ANYTHING black back there, does that mean the guppy is female? As in, if it was a male guppy, the poop would not be visible because that part of the body would not be transparent?

So your guppies are 4 or 6 month old, I'd say that's adults, not fry. Went to have a close look at my yellow guppies, in adults this seems to be true - no black of any kind on males. They are quite pearly though, so can't say it's valid for any strain. Like @Guppysnail, I rely on body shape, movement pattern, and early signs of anal fin shape change for sexing - boys behave and swim differently. 

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I'm sure you mean 4 week old fry. That's where it's hard to tell.

Boys might have a dot of poop back there. A gravid spot will be larger and farther up on the abdomen. I use a large magnifying glass to get a better look. (weird hobby 🙄)

At 4 weeks some of the females won't be showing. I'll check them again in another week or two.

My strategy is to assume they're all males unless I clearly see a gravid spot. If it is female, I'll move it to another tank.

The original male tank, I'll check a few times as they grow. Once you get to six-seven weeks, they should be clearly developed and separated.

If you have one straggler female in with the males, it's no big deal. If you have one miss-identified male in your female tank, that could be a problem.

Gonopodiums are obvious, but many fish will develop them late. You'll be able to tell it's male just by the coloring/body shape. Keep in mind, some of your best males might not show them until they're a few months old.

I've actually purchased adult guppies from a fish store that didn't have gonopodiums just to see what would happen - eventually they did grow in.

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On 4/22/2022 at 5:44 PM, sumplkrum said:

I'm sure you mean 4 week old fry. That's where it's hard to tell....

At 4 weeks some of the females won't be showing. I'll check them again in another week or two.

My strategy is to assume they're all males unless I clearly see a gravid spot. If it is female, I'll move it to another tank.

The original male tank, I'll check a few times as they grow. Once you get to six-seven weeks, they should be clearly developed and separated....

Gonopodiums are obvious, but many fish will develop them late. You'll be able to tell it's male just by the coloring/body shape. Keep in mind, some of your best males might not show them until they're a few months old.

 

If my fry were only four weeks old, I wouldn't be so tired of sexing them, lol. I do in fact mean 4-6 months (they are from multiple drops from two strains, combined when I removed a grow out tank). At least once a week but more like 2-3 times per week I remove any that I can identify as either male or female. I keep waiting for a week when I do not see any new gonopodium even beginning so that I can declare the rest "officially female" but every week there have been one or two more who start to show a gonopodium developing and/or finally start to have dorsal fin shading. 

Large dark gravid spots are not present for these strains, their gravid spot is more clear/peach colored. I chose poorly as a guppy newbie not realizing some strains develop so much later than others and would be so much harder to sex out.

 

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On 4/22/2022 at 6:38 PM, PineSong said:

Large dark gravid spots are not present for these strains, their gravid spot is more clear/peach colored. I chose poorly as a guppy newbie not realizing some strains develop so much later than others and would be so much harder to sex out.

I guess that means albinos. What strains are you working with?

4 months is a long time. You should be able to tell by body shape and coloring?

I'm also thinking albinos tend to be more clear-bodied. Even if the gravid spot isn't dark, maybe you could put a light on them. Have them in a specimen container with a desk light angled behind them. Use a big magnifying glass and get a better picture of the anatomy.

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On 4/23/2022 at 2:18 PM, sumplkrum said:

I guess that means albinos. What strains are you working with?

4 months is a long time. You should be able to tell by body shape and coloring?

I'm also thinking albinos tend to be more clear-bodied. Even if the gravid spot isn't dark, maybe you could put a light on them. Have them in a specimen container with a desk light angled behind them. Use a big magnifying glass and get a better picture of the anatomy.

One batch were French Blue Star Endlers. The others were supposed to be a blue bodied double sword guppy strain, but they did not breed even remotely, remotely true so my guess is that one or both of the females in the trio I bought were either from another strain or were bred by a different male before I bought them. Their three drops of fry also had a ton of bent spines and huge variations in fry size. At one month, some fry still look a week old, size-wise. At four months, some of them look a month old. This is not true for either of my other strains and my very hard water + crushed coral ==> straight spines for everyone but them. So I consider it a genetic problem and I've discontinued raising them. 

They all have have normal eyes so I don't think they are albinos, but none of the parent fish were clear or white at these ages. 

I do net them into a specimen container and look at them under bright lights, their tank has too much tannin in it for tank viewing to be relied upon.

I am sure that a more experienced guppy breeder could divide them up with no trouble. I am just too new for subtle indicators. I need them to really show it!

Edited by PineSong
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On 4/24/2022 at 4:41 AM, PineSong said:

The others were supposed to be a blue bodied double sword guppy strain, but they did not breed even remotely, remotely true so my guess is that one or both of the females in the trio I bought were either from another strain or were bred by a different male before I bought them. Their three drops of fry also had a ton of bent spines and huge variations in fry size.

Interesting. I had a double-sword (blue tail) guppy/endler cross with other strains and nearly all of the offspring had bent spines. 

Frankly, if I had such trouble with some slow-developing colorless guppies, they would have to go live with my turtle at this point, but best of luck with sorting them! 

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On 4/23/2022 at 10:47 PM, Fonske said:

Interesting. I had a double-sword (blue tail) guppy/endler cross with other strains and nearly all of the offspring had bent spines. 

Frankly, if I had such trouble with some slow-developing colorless guppies, they would have to go live with my turtle at this point, but best of luck with sorting them! 

That is interesting. I believe from the body spots on the males and the offspring there is Endler blood in these guys as well. In addition to the bent spine issue, the male offspring are THE most sexually harassing guppies and I had to remove all of them from my main tank because they were terrorizing my male mollies literally to the point of death. I put them in a new tank and the mollies have returned to normal with guppy males from less thuggish strains all around them. 

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On 4/24/2022 at 10:56 AM, PineSong said:

I believe from the body spots on the males and the offspring there is Endler blood in these guys as well. In addition to the bent spine issue, the male offspring are THE most sexually harassing guppies

Mine were these guys below. Sold in a male-only endler mix, but I'm not sure pure endlers could have had such tails. And similar to yours, both these and their hybrid sons were much, much more sexually active compared to other guppy strains. 

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Those guys are beautiful. Mine are the guys with lots of orange in their tails in this vid: the father fish had no orange in his tail, it was black and white. Sorry for the music in the video; I had to cover up the podcast in the background. One day I’ll learn to turn off whatever is on in the background when I record…

 

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Edited by PineSong
Apologizing for music.
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