u/BeginningCharacter36

Finally got some decent shots of this lil guy. No idea what he's supposed to be, but he has a distinctly violet sheen, as opposed to the green/blue of his brother (along with a few other differences that make me pick this fish overall). Have to get pictures of the sister I'm keeping, because she's also a stunner. I knew who was a keeper at 2 weeks old, and at 3 months, yes, definitely. No change of opinion.

Yes, they're plump :-p They have no girls to chase because they live with shrimp, plus this was right after supper. They wouldn't settle down for photos until after I fed them.

Mother is a blue neon wag, and father is some sort of Xiphophorus hybrid. I don't know what happened here, but I'm all for it! The fry are about two weeks old and some of them are now showing black markings, either spots or stripes. These are going to be very interesting to watch grow up. Sadly, the one with blue eyes is kind of runty and might not make it :-(

(I don't know why the pictures look like everyone's gills are inflamed, but IRL, they're normal pink.)

Just wanted to share my 25g tall stocked with platies and guppies, along with the requisite bladder snails and a single Malaysian trumpet snail (the platies keep eating the snail eggs, so no population explosion). It's settled in quite nicely at almost four months old, and while not strictly necessary, I trimmed a few things right after this photo to put in my plant grow-out chamber for later. This is my second tank, after a 5g shrimp tank (it's nothing much to look at, just a bunch of crap tossed in to keep my accidentally Sapphic community of skrimpies happy).

For the nerds who want details:

The tank was $50 off FB (a steal in northern Ontario) along with a bunch of random equipment. I resealed it with clear 100% silicone, which was an extraordinary pain in the butt, but at least I know how to do it now (and did it again with a $10 10g from a yard sale which has a southeast Asian biotope in it, but no livestock beyond snails yet). The filter is an absolutely oversized Fluval Aquaclear AC 50 with added zeolite and limestone chunks to counteract the massive amount of tannins bringing the pH down (aquarium salt wasn't cutting the mustard to keep the pH up, but it's now seemingly stable at 7.2). The older Uniclife 200w heater that came with the tank really should be replaced but it's set to 22°C just to make sure the temperature remains stable. The fewer cycles, the better. The light is a Noma 3200 lumen 5000k 200w equivalent LED bulb in a $5 yard sale clamp housing on the upper piece of wood. Despite blazing with the light of the summer sun, algae is pretty low because it's quite high above the tank (and consequently, I've moved some houseplants to the vicinity). I absolutely love the shimmer a point source gives, 10/10 recommend using a spotlight for the extra visual effect.

Substrate is potting soil and gravel in lingerie bags, capped with glacial esker sand (it took 20+ washes to get rid of the finest particles, but that's $20 I didn't spend on pool filter sand) and top-dressed with coarser beach sand from a spring fed lake. Locally sourced birch wood, assorted glacial erratic cobbles, assorted local pebbles, and an absolute mishmash of plants from my local PetValu and Aquaflora Canada round out the scape. I really, really love the Anubias kirin "micro," and the Cryptocoryne wendtii "tropica" is pleasingly small and compact. What I suspect is C. wendtii "brown" is growing absolutely massive despite being only half the pot (the other half is separated into pieces in the grow out bin and the biotope). The spiky thing at front-left is a complete mystery, but it's cute and growing. The plants were definitely the most expensive part, well over $200.

So somewhere north of $400 CAD including fish and chemicals. Absolutely absurd that this is a "cheap" setup. But I'm hooked. I love my fish (guppies). My kid loves his fish (platies). Heck, I love his fish, too, and I didn't think I would; they've got a lot of personality and might genuinely be more interesting to watch than the guppies. I'm looking forward to moving to a new house so I can set up the 25g long I got off FB for $40 in his room, specifically for his platies. After I reseal it, of course.

My son wanted platies, I wanted guppies, so we have both! This isn't the permanent situation; this is a 25g tall, and the platies will eventually be moved to a 25g long with a lid in my son's bedroom (it needs to be resealed first). The scape has seen some changes since this photo, but it's overall accurate.

Allow me to present Fabio (Japan blue lyre tail), Velvet (half-black with metalhead), LAZR (half-black neon blue tail), and two five week old juveniles: another half-black with metalhead, and a grey bodied mosaic tail who may have the platinum gene (its hard to tell). I may or may not be keeping a male sibling of the mosaic (he's with his brothers in the shrimp tank). There have unfortunately been losses up to this point, but access to fish meds is very restrictive in Canada. Between salt and those non-prescription tablets, I do what I can. There are other guppies undescribed, because they've grown up to lower quality and will be passed on to others through my LFS.

I hope you'll forgive me, but I used that blasted Gemini AI in an attempt to create an image of my goal, and I'm shocked and disgusted by how easy it was to get acceptable results. I was going to paint it, still might, but that was TOO easy. I can wait the three years for the real deal, though. So far as my reading of the guppy genetics guides goes, all the traits I'm interested in should conceivably layer in the way I want, with the only really huge variables being tail shape and tail pattern.

Aaaaaand, I'm struggling with putting the photos in the correct order :-( i think they've defaulted to chronological instead of selected.

So, any experienced guppy geneticists see glaring flaws in my plan? This is waaaaay more interesting than my tomato breeding program that I ran for five years. I had to abandon it thanks to my ex husband not making good on false promises, but he's gone now, and I can have guppies if I want to!