No fish species is as changeable as the Guppy. There are no two males in nature that are exactly alike in color. This is true for all four Guppy species (Poecilia reticilata, P. wingei, P. obscura and P. kempkesi), which therefore cannot really be distinguished from each other externally (genetically, however, they can).
In the case of the Endler Guppy (Poecilia wingei), there are now so many breeding forms in which the males look identical that the impression can arise that this guppy species is also uniformly colored in nature. This is not the case at all. The animals we offer as “Endler Guppy” originate from non-directional swarm breeding, i.e. a larger number of males and females swim together in the breeding aquarium and have the free choice of mate. The resulting colorful society represents the natural color variability quite well, however, even with this breeding method appearances of domestication develop, because all natural predators are missing. Thus also these “pure”, on wild-catches based breeding-strains have meanwhile often clearly larger fins and become also altogether larger than their wild-living cousins. The females prefer bigmouths – excuse me, I mean of course big fins. Nothing can be done about that…
For our customers: the animals have code 419063 on our stocklist. Please note that we only supply wholesale.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
