Breeding Mosquito fish with Guppies

[happykitsune]

I have a ton of mosquito fish (20+) and I'm getting ready to breed them with guppies for to see what comes out of it. Just a little experiment for fun along with my biosphere jar and my triops experiments. I just love experimenting.

All fry I cant keep will go to my local stream or to friends and family.

If anyone has any HELPFUL info on these mosquito fish guppy hybrids and/ or pictures, please post here. Thanx

[emc7]

All fry I cant keep will go to my local stream

No, this is wrong and illegal in most places.

[Ice Prince]

yea dont let them (or any fish) go anywhere in the wild because its illegal. dont give away any hybrids many people are against hybrids because they want to keep strains pure.

[mesapod]

Dont mosquito fish come from the US, so what if happykitsune collected them from the wild?

[Ice Prince]

he said the ones he cant keep he will let go in a stream

[emc7]

Even if you catch fish in your back yard and keep them in your house for a week, don't release them back in wild. You can introduce exotic diseases, parasites, snails, plants, etc. that have the potential to harm the ecosystem. The practice of dumping unwanted exotics give fishkeepers a bad name and encourage additional regulation. If you want to be able to import fish from all over the world without excessive taxes or quarantines, discourage anyone you know from dumping anything from an aquarium into the wild. A closed pond on your own property that, if necessary, could be sterilized may be ok, a stream is never ok.

Mosquito fish have been introduced all over, and while they do help reduce mosquito larva populations in stagnant, otherwise sterile bodies of water, such as retention ponds, they have caused harm when they have escaped into the larger watershed. See wikipedia: gambusia Affinis. Most any fish will eat mosquito larva and native fish would have been a better choice for mosquito control. Hybrids are especially bad if they can interbreed with local fish and destroy species.

[happykitsune]

It'll look into the illegal thing, but as for people not wanting hybrids. Idk who you give your fish to, but these ppl dont care what the fish is as long as they have a pet so I promise you they wont have a hissy fit if i give them one because they arent planning to breed.

Originally Posted by Ice Prince

yea dont let them (or any fish) go anywhere in the wild because its illegal. dont give away any hybrids many people are against hybrids because they want to keep strains pure.

[happykitsune]

This brings up a good point. Thank you for the insight. I know now I will only give these fish to my friends and family as pets. Thanx once again.

Originally Posted by emc7

Even if you catch fish in your back yard and keep them in your house for a week, don't release them back in wild. You can introduce exotic diseases, parasites, snails, plants, etc. that have the potential to harm the ecosystem. The practice of dumping unwanted exotics give fishkeepers a bad name and encourage additional regulation. If you want to be able to import fish from all over the world without excessive taxes or quarantines, discourage anyone you know from dumping anything from an aquarium into the wild. A closed pond on your own property that, if necessary, could be sterilized may be ok, a stream is never ok.

Mosquito fish have been introduced all over, and while they do help reduce mosquito larva populations in stagnant, otherwise sterile bodies of water, such as retention ponds, they have caused harm when they have escaped into the larger watershed. See wikipedia: gambusia Affinis. Most any fish will eat mosquito larva and native fish would have been a better choice for mosquito control. Hybrids are especially bad if they can interbreed with local fish and destroy species.

[happykitsune]

Originally Posted by mesapod

Dont mosquito fish come from the US, so what if happykitsune collected them from the wild?

Yeah I did catch them in my local stream, and im not a he I'm a she XD

[Clerk]

Originally Posted by happykitsune

Yeah I did catch them in my local stream, and im not a he I'm a she XD

Even if you had caught them from a local stream if you had hybridized them, its a different fish.

By federal law, once you take something, you legally can never return it to the wild. (exceptions are catch and release fishing (which is fairly fast)/rehabbing)

[happykitsune]

Originally Posted by Clerk

Even if you had caught them from a local stream if you had hybridized them, its a different fish.

By federal law, once you take something, you legally can never return it to the wild. (exceptions are catch and release fishing (which is fairly fast)/rehabbing)

This comment wasn't needed as we already addressed this problem and I am no longer taking this form of action. Please give me some information I can actually use. Thank you.

[jones57742]

Originally Posted by emc7

Mosquito fish have been introduced all over, and while they do help reduce mosquito larva populations in stagnant, otherwise sterile bodies of water, such as retention ponds, ...

Ditto this one

but this goes on to what would be believed to be absolutely innocuous included but not limited to:
tertiary polishing ponds at domestic wastewater treatment facilities;
very, very large holding ponds where the inflow is generated by the effluent of domestic wastewater treatment facilities as well from other reservoirs where yearly dampening is efficient;
pools upstream from dams which become stagnant, although not oxygen deprived during summer months;
etc.

There are probably many more examples in addition to emc's and mine but which I cannot currently recite.

TR

[TheOldSalt]

Okay, no release. Got that covered.
So, useful info, eh?

Guppies and Gambusias will interbreed with some difficulty. The Mosquitofish are vicious mean and nasty, and tend to rip the guppies to shreds, but sometimes there are survivors that end up pregnant.
The size of the modern guppy is actually due in part to mosquito crossing. The wild guppy is a tiny little thing, but several decades ago they were crossed with gambusias, resulting in the much lager domestic guppy we know and love.
If you should cross them again, then know up front that you won't like what you get. You'll have an ugly, mean little fish with lots of black spotting and very little color. It will take several generations of work before your lines start o look like decent guppies again, and by then you'll probably breed out most of what you got from adding the gambusia genes in the first place.

Your plan is perfectly doable, but there's really not much point in doing it except for the novelty of it, which is fine.

[happykitsune]

Originally Posted by TheOldSalt

Okay, no release. Got that covered.
So, useful info, eh?

Guppies and Gambusias will interbreed with some difficulty. The Mosquitofish are vicious mean and nasty, and tend to rip the guppies to shreds, but sometimes there are survivors that end up pregnant.
The size of the modern guppy is actually due in part to mosquito crossing. The wild guppy is a tiny little thing, but several decades ago they were crossed with gambusias, resulting in the much lager domestic guppy we know and love.
If you should cross them again, then know up front that you won't like what you get. You'll have an ugly, mean little fish with lots of black spotting and very little color. It will take several generations of work before your lines start o look like decent guppies again, and by then you'll probably breed out most of what you got from adding the gambusia genes in the first place.

Your plan is perfectly doable, but there's really not much point in doing it except for the novelty of it, which is fine.

Honestly, I like the look of the mosquito fish, so adding very little color when I cross breed them wont phase me a bit. What I'm looking to get in the fish is the endurance and hardiness in mosquito fish. Color is nice, but I'd rather breed to create a fish i can enjoy and not have to constantly make sure its not going to kill over (not saying guppies always do) but it would be nice to keep the fish in a tank without heating to make keeping them much easier.

[doggydad38]

Personally, I have never heard of Gambusias and Guppies ever having been crossed. Two different genera. If you were successful in crossing the two, I would suspect the hybrids would be sterile, donkey x horse= mule. I have to disagree with you, Old Salt, on the size increase in Guppies. Increased size came from the dilligence and hard work of early breeders like Paul Hahnel and his contemporaries. Just my opinion.
Tony

[TheOldSalt]

Not all mules are sterile, though. Did you know that? I forget the ratio, but it's true. In fact, it's a dirty little secret of horseracing that donkeys and mules can outrun a horse, and for awhile it was an underhanded practice to try to deliberately breed some donkey into a horse line to improve speed. That of course wouldn't have been possible if mules were all sterile, eh? Come to think of it, that sort of thing is what helped eventually lead to the concept of thoroughbreeding; everyone wanted a level playing field with no funny business, and selective breeding made for mighty fine horses anyway.

The crossing of guppies and gambusias is part of the work done by the early pioneers who plied their craft long before the grand old masters came onto the scene. That sort of thing was actually not uncommon in those days. Hanel, Sternke and others got ahold of some later generations of these hybrids and mixed them in with their own lines. They may not have even known what they had at the time, simply using some nice big fish they found from some other guys. At any rate, it's true, although the extent of the truth is certainly an issue of long debate. I can also tell you that I have personally crossed guppies and gambusias myself, hence my ability to describe how they look and the difficulties involved. The fish I got were significantly larger than the pure guppies, but it was apparent that the little mutants were freaks anyway, and the size increase came at a great cost. Those fish eventually bred, but their fecundity was drastically lower than normal. The only good thing that came from them was the straightening out if a guppy line which had gone bad, resulting in curved spines in all specimens. Since they were "trash" anyway, I continued the experiment with those so as to not ruin good fish. To my surprise the scoliosis vanished in the next generation, and while I eventually gave up and scrapped the whole lineset, the bent spines stayed gone for about 6 more generations. I never did otherwise get any decent-looking guppies again from them, although they were at least finally looking like guppies again by the end.