Welcome to GuppyLog.com
New to Guppylog?
Immediate Help


Conversions and Calculator
Conversions and Tank volume calculator


Add yourself to our guppylog map
Guppylog Members


* Change as much water as often as you can! *
Inkmaker
Front Page · Everything · News · Ask Guppylog · Diaries
mosquito fish

All Topics
By josh117
from the wonderers department, Section Diaries
Posted on Wed Aug 29, 2007 at 12:38:16 PM PST
Tags: (all tags)
i want to know if any body has crossbred mosquito fish with guppies.



i want to know if anybody else besides me has crossbred mosquito fish with a livebearer, so far ive crossed mosquito fish with swordtails and endlers but i want to know if anybody has with guppies please respond.
< Why female guppies prefer males with yellow and orange. | Wierd Fish Tank >
Menu

· create account

· F.A.Q. For Newbies!

· Immediate Help For Newbies!

· search


Web www.guppylog.com

· Scoop Info

· Our Tanks

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:

Related Links
· josh117's Diary

Display: Sort:
mosquito fish | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Did you have only one male Gambusia in a tank (none / 0) (#1)
by unclescott on Sat Jul 28, 2007 at 02:10:58 PM PST

with only one virgin swordtail? Or did you have a male Gambusia isolated with one virgin Gambusia, which had been raised separately since it showed its gravid spot? Did you repeat the experiment and get the same results? In this digital age are there photographs of the fry? Did they grow to maturity? If so, what do they look like? How do they behave?

What other controls did you have on your experiments? It is probably not fair to ask if you could do the following, but these things would further prove your case. Could you send them to a lab or perhaps Dr. Felix Breden (write first) for DNA testing or chromosome counts and analysis? Could those results be compared with what is knows of the parents? Guppies and presumably Endler's (P. wingei) have 23 pairs of chromosomes; common Gambusia have 24 pairs of chromosomes. (Can species with different chromosome counts even cross?) What was the count for the crosses? Could any one compare specific chromosomes to see how their pattern and sizes match up with the parent species? (These tests involve snipping a bit of the tail, the fish is not killed.) I guess students at the U of Illinois even compare proteins in such experiments.

I'm afraid that someone is going to Google Gambusia crosses and believe you. Putting a couple of pregnant from a couple of livebearers species in a tank (whose females can have 4, 6 or even more batches of fry without another insemination) and then pulling fry from the tank and declaring them crosses is not a very reliable way of proving anything other than that you have a very inquisitive mind. You ask neat and intriguing questions.

We all want the answers we hope for. (I want a certain professional baseball team to win every one of their games, but guess what? They have won way less than half the time.)

Horse hair worms have been known to appear in watering troughs. In the middle ages and until surprisingly recently, people thought that those worms spontaneously were generated from horse hairs.

Others, not understanding that annual killifish eggs can survive a pond drying up, have assumed that fish fell out of the rain and filled those ponds.

Others have thought that mud spontaneously generates frogs. What may superficially seem to be an explanation often isn't. And yes, sometimes the truth is even more amazing than our first hypothesis.

If you make a hypothesis - I've crossed Gambusia and swordtails - you need to provide solid evidence that that really happened.

All the best!



Re: Did you have only one male Gambusia in a tank (none / 0) (#2)
by josh117 on Sat Jul 28, 2007 at 07:31:31 PM PST

i let the female drop 6 batches of fry, then put her in with the male sword tail. the babies were really big when born but there was only 22 of them and within a 3 week period the all died of birth defects . im going to keep trying until i get it to happen like my platy/balloon molly, i took a virgin female painted platy and a male grey balloon molly and bred them and 1 baby was successful for a year but then she dissapeared one day(gambusia ate her).

[ Parent ]


That first sounds a little more like it, but do (none / 0) (#3)
by unclescott on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 12:00:23 AM PST

you know if the female who dropped six batches of fry (I'm guessing from your context that this was a Gambusia) had not been with any other male and was completely out of sperm from other matings? Were there no other males of any sort with her for that six months? Were there other livebearers in that aquarium with the female Gambusia and male swordtail? What color/colors was the male swordtail? What color/colors were the fry?

When you wrote of crossing a guppy and a Gambusia in that previous thread, you claimed that you got both guppies and Gambusia offspring. Then you noted that you felt that your Gambusia female had a first drop of 300 fry.

I responded, "This may be where the confusion came in. They would be the first to agree that their record figures for most fish will be increased, but the ALA (American Livebearer Association) keeps records of record spawns for over 175 different species and commercial strains. The record recorded for Gambusia affinis is listed as 68. Their record for Gambusia holbrooki was posted as 113. (Both were registered by Canada's Jim Robinson.) None of the other 21 Gambusia listed come close to that. The only livebearer in the list with more than 300 fry in a drop was a domestic swordtail.

Here's what I think happened. You saw a pretty good sized female Gambusia dropping her fry. Probably a couple other fish, most likely guppies also dropped batches of fry. Actually there would likely have to be several batches of fry to get 300 o(n) the head. You probably have mixed guppy and Gambusia fry together.

No wonder some resemble Gambusia and some resemble guppies. That is because some are Gambusia and some are guppies. :) "

Having enough space is very difficult for all of us. That combining of pregnant females and then fry was very likely what caused you to think that the Gambusia and guppies had crossed.

Here you note that you took a virgin female painted platy and a male grey balloon molly and bred them and 1 baby was successful for a year but then she dissapeared one day(gambusia ate her)."
I don't understand what you mean by "for a year". Had you been trying to mate them for a year? Was the fry a year old when it was eaten by a Gambusia? Was the fry the "she" mentioned there?

Also, what was that Gambusia doing in there with them? Were you raising other fish in that tank during what is supposed to be an experiment?

It certainly is difficult for us having the room to do these things and I applaud your curiosity, the use of more than one tank and interest in these things. But if you are trying crosses you need them separate and the tanks covered.

This wasn't addressed but you need to make sure that plants and water aren't moved back and forth - so that the possibility of fry hitchhiking from one tank to another is eliminated. You didn't move plants back and forth over those six + months? The tanks were well covered to prevent jumping and nothing could leap between tanks?

Thanks! :)

[ Parent ]



Re: That first sounds a little more like it, but d (none / 0) (#4)
by josh117 on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 07:41:11 AM PST

ok with the gambusia yes there was more fish in the tank with her like male guppies but i watched the swordtail breed with her right when  i took her out of the 5 gallon and the male was black, the babies they didnt look so black the look like they had take the green swordtail gene like the black swordtails first son. i thought it over and yes i did mix the fry and i know that 1 of the gambusia had crossbred with something because the only blue guppy i had was a dark blue guppy and the females were yellow and the male was blue i knew something went wrong in breeding but i didnt know what

the female platy got killed by the baby gambusia when they grew up, but yes the tanks were covered, my blonde tux was suposed to give birth 2 days ago and shes getting so pregnant that i think when she eats tonight she might eat enough to give birth like my cream cicle molly did  a few days ago.

[ Parent ]



Good luck tonight!. Do you have a little live food (none / 0) (#5)
by unclescott on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 07:54:16 AM PST

or some frozen stuff you can defrost in Luke-warm (why not Matthew-Warm? Mark-warm?) water and rinse through a fine meshed net. That would fill her and her tank mates, offer a little extra protein and maybe fill their tummies so that they don't hunt many fry. :)

[ Parent ]


Re: Good luck tonight!. Do you have a little live (none / 0) (#6)
by josh117 on Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 09:16:59 AM PST

shes in the fry tank, she didnt want to eat much this morning but its going to happen i know it. usually ill feed them peas.

[ Parent ]


mosquito fish | 6 comments (6 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
Display: Sort:

SourceForge Logo Powered by Scoop
Subscribe to our news feed
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 2002 and beyond The Management

create account | faq | search