Culled some male black laser guppies of mine

Well, yesterday I've done some culling again. This means seperating fish from the group (colony). Doesn't mean that you have to kill them. In my case, they'll be moved to a mutt tank.
I've culled about 10 of them because these were more delta and flag tailed guppies instead of more spade tailed specimens. And some didn't show any yellow nor red in their tails. So, they had to leave the group. This is my own creation that I've worked on ever since last year. This is one of those projects that takes a bit longer before they're breeding almost a 100% true.

 

Heck if these are the culls...still look neater than a lot of guplies i see in any store.

 

awesome project, i find this really interesting. how do you ensure good genetic diversity when creating your own colormorph?

 

Heck if these are the culls...still look neater than a lot of guplies i see in any store.

Well, culls of mine don't have to be ugly fish. But I will cull all specimens that don't meet up the characteristisc or traits of their own strain itself sufficiently. There are several stunning specimens that went to my mutt tanks. But in order to stay on track of the project, this culling needs to be done.

awesome project, i find this really interesting. how do you ensure good genetic diversity when creating your own colormorph?

I know the genetics of most my livebearers. But I do know for sure the genetic history of all my guppy strains. Which gives me already a head start. And be sure to use virgin females or be sure that a female is already clean (no sperm packets storage). But again, preferably using virgins.
So, I've got already youngsters available to use for my projects. I've got sufficient knowledge of guppy genetics itself as well.
If you're setting up a breeding project, it's necessary to have multiple tanks for just a specific line before you start mass breeding. Depending on what you'd like to see as an end result, linebreeding is a must. Use the ones that will do the job. Which means culling, culling and culling. And again, culling doen't mean to kill them. You just seperate them from the desired group of fish.

It's fun to do for sure (at least, I think it's fun...) but it's a time investment.

 

Btw, here's a video of how the should look like...

 

wow. thanks for the info! that does seem like the most realistic way to do it. I would like to do something like that some day