Wild Guppys

[gabor129]

Hello all!

I have a question for all of you who know a lot more about live bearers than I do! How long does it take for feeder guppy to revert back to their wild ancestors?

Unfortunately this happened AFTER the meeting today, so I could not ask the question! I had to take my wife to pick up some raffle items my son won at the bird show a week ago. We got invited in the house to look at the breading birds, and at the end of the tour I noticed a 5 gal. tank full of fish. Naturally I become curious, and wanted a closer look. It turns out, there was about 50 fish in this little 5 gal tank what looked like feeder guppys. Now I had to ask the guy how long he had those fish, after scratching his head for a while he says, and I quote, " I was a high school science teacher! I retired ten years ago, they stopped the eco-program in high school fifteen years before that, and I ran the program for five years. So the original ones started about 30 years ago, added a few for five years, but since than it is just the descendants of them!" So this colony is at least 20 / 25 years old, according to the owner!!! He has absolutely no interest in the fish so he just clean the filter once a month, and old air-pump run corner filter, and changed a bit of water "when he remembers"! The tank was algae covered on three sides with a few plastic plants, "clown puke" gravel, and that is it!
Now would these be considered wild guppys or not? I mean 25-30 years ago most fish had to be wild caught and shipped in, even guppys! IMHO this is gold! What do you think?

[guppyguy]

Hmm very interesting. Now they would not be considered wild guppies but if the originals were wild caught then they would be considered wild caught descendants. But in that time frame they easy could have reverted back to there wild forms if they were not already there in the first place. But since the guppies have been in that tank for so long used to those water conditions for so long. One would have to very careful if they ever got removed to another tank and the shock factor of new tank and settings could easily kill them. I seen it before. But this is a extremely interesting find, and I have never seen a guppy colony so old. Pics would help to identify there wild caught location ancestory if its possible. As different populations have different colors patterns and tail shapes depending on where they were originally caught.

[gabor129]

Unfortunately, I did not have a camera with me at the time! However I did get a good look at them! I will search the net and post the closest picture I can find!
Now that is interesting about the water conditions! I did not even considered that!

[guppyguy]

See what you can find and look for tiny details to help me pinpoint the wild caught location. And yes the water conditions were something I had to consider when I got my 6 year old wild caught guppy colony earlier this year. He tried giving some to people before and they all died and I wondered why and found they have been adapted to those tank conditions for so many generations that new tank conditions put them in shock and killed them. What I had to do was take as much of the original tank water as I could and slowly acclimatize them to new water conditions little at a time. Out the 80 fish i lost only 3. I think that method was a success.

[gabor129]

I found an image that is close to the ones I found, however I think there was a bit more "color" on the top of the tail. By color I mean it was darker gray/blue, but still transparent!

Here is the link to the picture: cheezburger.com/7080534528

[guppyguy]

That looks like one the many forms that come from Venezuela just missing a bit more color. But could be nothing more than feeders breeding for a long time. It is very difficult to trace guppies origins.

[lesfromlakeshore]

Tank bred stains of guppies have been around since the 40's so these could just be common feeder type guppies. Really no way of knowing . Glen is right about being careful if you try and "rescue" these because if you don't acclimate them very slowly they will all die.

[gabor129]

Thanks Les for the link, and for bursting my bubble..... ....

Still even if they are the feeder guppys, I never seen a colony this long sustaining itself without any deformities! I mean no new blood whatsoever! Kept in a 5 gal tank, and upwards of 50 fish!!! It has to be fairly clean line of whatever they are! I was staring at them for 20 min, and did not see any with fin or body "kinks"! in any fish store you look into a guppy tank and see a few of the deformed fish!!! I will try to talk the gentlemen into getting some of his fish "relocated"  , and I will get pictures! Probably not going to happen for a while, since I got to set up a tank for them!

[gabor129]

lol I was just going to go to the link and it is gone! lol

[gabor129]

Oct 6, 2013 19:34:32 GMT -5 guppyguy said:

That looks like one the many forms that come from Venezuela just missing a bit more color. But could be nothing more than feeders breeding for a long time. It is very difficult to trace guppies origins.

That is for sure! I was just wondering if they would revert to the original coloration and the bloodline clean up after so long!