Mystery Metallic Guppy
Metallic Blue Anomaly
Some argue that the decline of the fish hobby is due to competition from electronic media and computer games which dominate the leisure time activities of the young and even the not-so-young. Who wants to spend hours doing tank maintenance when a much more entertaining medium can be enjoyed in a chair or on a couch with only an on-off switch between you and hours of entertainment?
Cultural critics lament the decreased attention span of moderns who cannot watch a TV without a remote and cannot play a game without a computer powering the action in milliseconds.
I don't know if any of this is actually true, but I do share something with modern victims of our high speed, short fuse, trigger happy, couch and chair disabled culture. I have a short attention span and I am extremely impatient. I don't like to get my hands wet.
It takes newborn guppies about seven months to show their final form and color. The minimum number of generations to evaluate the outcome of a cross is about two years (or two generations). How does somebody who is practically ADD stick with a hobby that is so slow and involves getting your hands wet?
Part of the answer is to become much more thoroughly engaged with your guppies, to become more deeply involved in their details. This is actually true of the leading practitioners of many hobbies. The people who stick with a hobby the longest are those who really get deep into the details of the hobby and become thoroughly knowledgeable. Guppy genetics happens to be the "detail" of the guppy hobby. It is knowledge-based pure and simple. And you can do it without getting your hands wet.
For the past few years I have been systematically investigating the interactions of well known and some lesser well known guppy genes. I have recreated Metal Head Snakeskins using Midnight Black Moscows. I have reverse engineered the Galaxy by crossing the snakeskin and Schimelpfennig Platinum strains and then outcrossing to Japanese Grass. I have been attempting to verify the genetics of the Micariff by crossing the purported founding strains and got Dragon guppies so far. There are 44 crosses documented in my breeding journal (which I call the Design Lab), while I still have other crosses underway and not yet documented.
I extended my fish room to 60 tanks and put a grid on the wall showing all the genes I have collected over the past six years. The grid shows all the gene combinations possible with tick marks for those I have already studied. The grid is full of tick marks. I have collected almost all the major genes, including obscure genes like the glass belly and genes that are rare in North America, like the European Blau gene. I have several thousand pictures and over four hundred pages of notes on those crosses.
Now that the grid has filled, my three year project to document the interactions of the major guppy color genes is largely done. So I have spent the last two months reducing my tank count to a more manageable 38 tanks with plans to further reduce it to 30. Suddenly I have no major project underway in the fish room.
In fact keeping the number of tanks down to thirty or less is key to enjoying the hobby for people who don't enjoy getting their hands wet. It is not just the drudgery of cleaning and feeding that many tanks of guppies. The more strains you have the more time you spend moving the guppies around, culling them and setting up drop tanks or breeders. I have little interest in the mechanics of the hobby. Reducing the tank count to thirty means I will spend two to three hours in fish room maintenance, including the dreadfully boring water changes. And I will spend a lot less time moving, sorting and documenting strains. I have other things to do, like eat and sleep! When you get to the point where you find yourself standing in the fishroom with wet feet and wet hands and muttering "I need a hobby" you know you have too many tanks under management.
Although my interest in deciphering guppy color genetics continues unabated, I have had the feeling that I was running out of crosses to try and began wondering if I should retire my tanks and just spend my time mining my huge library of data, including microscope studies of color cells, a mountain of scientific papers, thousands of pictures and hundreds of pages of documented crosses. I could do that. The ultimate dry hand approach to the hobby.
In my last blog I wrote about the Santa guppy, which I discovered is basically a closely related phenotype to my Silverados. I suppose I would have figured that out by studying my data. It occurs to me that my Guppy Color Strains book, which documents about 150 different guppy color variants is a gold mine of information that I should comb through. I bet there are some amazing insights to be gained just by giving it a very careful and critical read. Connections to be made. Sudden moments when something that has been there all along suddenly comes into view like a light going on in a dark room. That happened when I discovered the half-black yellow and Asian Full Platinum have a hidden commonality...hidden until I made the connection.
It would be great to be free of the drudgery of the hobby, to be unshackled from feeding times, Tuesday morning and Friday afternoon water changes. And that thought was just taking shape when something totally unexpected came along.
You are looking at the picture of it at the top of this blog. A metallic blue anomaly. Appearing as a sole phenotype among sixty siblings and cousins. The father was a pet store Santa (metallic magenta full red) and the mother was a Chiasson Full Red. Given that the base strain for the Santa is Full Red and the mother was a highly inbred Full Red, it is astonishing that they produced a metallic blue body and metallic yellow fin son. Not a spot of red on him so far.
For comparison, here is a sibling.
When I told Bill Gill about the anomaly, his immediate and knowledgeable observation was that it might be due to the Asian blau gene which suppresses red color. But the blue metallic guppy is the only one like him in two different drops from two different mothers and multiple different fathers. He is one in 60 or 100. I doubt that it would be a European Blau gene (which is recessive) or an Asian Blau gene (which is co-dominant or partially dominant). That would have produced more than one guppy like him.
In my journals I have speculated that there is a genetic switch that turns red color on or off. In crosses I have conducted with the Chiasson Full Reds, I have found evidence there is indeed a "full body red" gene but that it needs helper genes to express itself in all areas of the body. This metallic blue anomaly (MBA) may just prove that red is turned off entirely by a genetic switch.
I mean a genetic switch besides the Asian and European Blau and Pink mutations which turn red off in the guppy. A different red on / off switch...
If you have read my guppy breeding book you will know what I mean by a genetic switch. Color cells are the result of pigment pathways. Sometimes it takes only one gene to turn off a color along that pathway. This is what is driving most of my current guppy color research...this modern theory of guppy color formation. It is scientific theory that deeply enriches the observations you can make when you analyze crosses. Most people think they are looking for genes that are master switches, black, red, yellow, white or blue. But there are switches that regulate other switches. They have a combinatorial logic that defies simple one-to-one relationships between genes and their expression. That is why knowledge of guppy genetics in the hobby has been so hard to come by. Most people in the hobby are looking in the wrong places. Modern theory shows you where to look and how to make sense of when you do see something unusual. An example is the magenta gene,which is devilishly difficult to figure out without a good basis in contemporary biological science.
Wait a minute. I am veering off course here. It suddenly occurs to me that I have seen this guppy before. It was the Pied Blue Guppy that I discovered and wrote about in an earlier blog. (See "New Pied Blue Guppy Strain")
Pied Blue Guppy
The Pied Blue Guppy shows a metallic blue body with yellow fins. It is also partially expressing the snakeskin gene, which it inherited from one of its snakeskin founding strain. (The guppy is a combination of the Stoerzbach Metal Sword and Lace Snakeskin strains.) There is no full red in this strain's background. And I culled the strain from my fish room last fall so there is no way the new metallic blue / yellow fin strain could have come from the earlier strain.
The similarity of the phenotypes raises some interesting questions. How is it possible two guppies from such different genetic backgrounds look so similar? Is the blue iridescence the key? Why did the fins turn yellow? Yellow and red color cells are very closely related. Is there a mutation in the pathway for red or yellow that flips the color cell to one at the expense of the other? So many questions, so little time in life to seek and find the answers. Will I have the answer before nature culls me?
I have set up the MBA male with four of his sisters. I want to see if he produces sons like him, or if his phenotype reappears among his grand sons. What ratio will they appear in? The ratios appearing in the F1 and F2 generations will tell me a lot about the gene. What if the sons appear to be a mixture of phenotypes? That will probably rule out the single genetic switch theory...
If this is a guppy with a red switch in the off position, how is it different from European or Asian Blaus or Pinks, all which cannot express red color when homozygous? Interesting questions that I find myself thinking about just before I go to sleep or when I find myself awake in the middle of the night...my hands dry.
Oh, oh. There I go. Tangled again in the lines of inquiry I have dangling in my fish room.
That's how I have managed to keep my interest in guppies ahead of my flagging desire to do the drudgery and time expense of the hobby. I keep building on previous work and keep focused on real problems well within the tools, time and mental energy I have to devote to those problems. I think I would have left the hobby a long time ago if I was a collector or a guppy show competitor. If you are like me and have a short attention span, are impatient and consider mental engagement a form of relaxation, then consider joining me in the hunt for solutions of the many unfolding mysteries of guppy color genetics. It keeps guppy boredom from settling in and makes the grunt work in the hobby easier to bear. Once you build up a library of documented crosses, you can practice guppy genetics without getting your hands wet.
Comments
I am the same! Makes it difficult when a person tries to have conversation with me,since it can be such a distraction from my own thoughts.If someone talks slowly they've lost me.Reminds me of some extreme collectors of orchids or bromeliads I have met.You've got about 60 seconds to get their attention before being dismissed as 'boring'.
Anyway,what gives you the right to cut back to a useless 30 tanks? Don't you know there are people who depend on you?Where is your sense of responsibility?
I have more than 40 tanks now and tomorrow another 14 arrive.When your tank count goes down to 30,I swear my tanks will revert to receptacles for ordinary fish like Albino Discus and Motoro Stingrays.
Please reconsider mate.
2 Cents:
First: There are alway things to think about while waiting for the next generation. Time to delve into nutrional science, fish lore , genetics ,optimizing the tanks, "cleaning" the show tanks - and there are adults to care for . Definitely no time of boredom.
Second: reducing tanks ? Well, i am trying also - but they always tend to pop up somewhere "for a short time". I doubt any guppyist can really reduce tanks - for a longer time
Greets
I did not mention the time and drudgery of taking the photos and documenting the crosses in my Design Lab journal... Actually my genetic research and care practices mean that many of my strains are only occupying a single tank per strain, with the rest occupying only two tanks. So I have only reduced my strain count by about 25%. I am just going to do a better job at juggling. I am working with 37 tanks right now...I will see how it goes. Maybe 34 is a better target. In any event my interest in guppy genetics is not limited by my tank count because I have so much unexplored research to work with in the Design Lab journal. And yes, it is odd to have the patience for guppy genetics when I am so impatient that I am still running up stairs at age 62! Thank god for genetics or I would never have lasted as a fish hobbyist!
I used to have 76 tanks and I figure the time I spent maintaining them and the strains eventually got to me...But as you point out, the tank count crept back up to 60 again. But I think this time around I am getting deeper and deeper into the biological studies and genetics, so I am getting more and more from less and less...or at least that is the theory that will be put to the test!
Philip
Must agree with you Phillip.At 58 and two ruptured disks,I am still a chronic re-arranger and am too impatient to wait for friends to help.If I'm in the mood,I just do it.And my interest in genetics started before school.Over the years I have created many hybrids with Anthuriums,Brom eliads and succulents.Friends started worrying when I admitted to joining the Epiphytic Cactaceae Asclepiadaceae Society.And I was a little surprised that anyone could get through life without these plants glowing like beacons for attention.
You are a very interesting man Phillip.
OMG!
I can see my loungeroom through the courtyard from my bed.
Let's see...40 plus 10 from Mike and the 14 plumbed breeder set-up of 60x50x50.I think that makes 64 but don't have enough toes to be certain.
Just going to lie here with my snuggly blanket of denial.
Phillip,did you say drudgery?
OMG......
Phillip,your words of encouragement have worked wonders in only a few hours.Words like creep,exponenti al,slave and cull just washed over my mind...now I see clearly.
Can you please change the OMG to M.A.D. please.Writing and reading has revealed my true phenotype.
Thankyou.
MAD.....
Mikes 10 will go back when he has moved house.The breeding set-up will replace some odd sized tanks.It has a sump with individual taps on each tank for isolation if needed
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