This nice little male guppy is typical of some of the feeder types.
Notice the short firm tail, and the big spots of different colors.
This type is more active, and entertaining to watch.
They come in a wide array of colors & patterns.
The original guppies, sold at the pet fish stores, when I first started into fish, were much like the little fish above. They were a healthy, hardy fish, suitable for kids, but complex enough for adults.
But then the shops came out with “Fancy Guppies”. Like in show guppies.
They (the fancy male guppies) had long tails. They tended to have lots of big splotches of color, instead of distinct spots of different colors. My mother liked them. I like a healthy, friendly pet.
The fancy guppies were still social with the other guppies, but their long tails did NOT help them swim, the long tail fin made them swim slow and waddle when they swam, the littler wild type males could literally swim circles around them.
The active semi-wild type were fascinating to watch, but the long tail finned fancy guppies made me feel sad. I’m too soft. I felt a sympathy for them. Poor fish, they could not enjoy my aquarium. They had to work just to keep their tails up.
Like a peacock with a beautiful tail, no matter how pretty the tail, if it gets too long, it is an extra burden to him. But peacocks tend to be healthy, while fancy guppies are often inbred. Sometimes their long tails would droop and they would struggle with their length, while the wild type males danced in front of the females.
The trailing edge of the fancy tails would get rot on them, and I would plead with my parents to tell me how to fix the fish. But, of course, they had no idea.
Later, a fish book told how to trim the very edge, but nobody had the nerve to do so (kind of like bulldog breeders amputating the tails of their bulldogs because it gets to be too hard to keep the kinky tails healthy). So I would net the fish and put it in sick bay – a glass bowl with special stuff in the water, again.
The very edge of a male guppies tail is continuously growing, like our hair or fingernails. I once though that I had found the answer. One night, one of the non-guppy fish that I had, nipped the edge of the fancy guppies tail. This seemed to only happen at night, so I couldn’t find out which fish was nipping mouthfuls of fancy guppy tail.
Bad as if sounds, the male fancy guppies swam better with the ‘haircut’ where they didn’t have to drag all that tail length, like a brides trail.
But then one morning one of the male fancy guppies, (I can still see him in my minds eye), was shivering back and forth near the bottom of the tank. Most all of his tail fin was gone.
I watched with the lights off, with just the light from the other room – it was a male sword-tail fish. He had matured more and gotten big and mean.
After that he lived a long life in a goldfish bowl (brig), his mate changed genders without him around, and grew a swortail, but retained the deep body of the female which she had always been. (She had had several litters before becoming a sort-of male). I decided to just have guppies, but I did like the platies too.
A “swordtail” is a long piece of fin that grows out beyond the regular tail fin. It seems to have no purpose, and only the males grow it. The word “swordtail’ usually means a type of aquarium fish that can interbreed with platties, but there are some guppies who have tail edges like a swordtail, so they are called “swordtail guppies” even though they are guppies, and are NOT related to true swordtail fish.)
I never had a true sword tail guppy, but I did have some that had a streak of color shaped like a swordtail, and in the right area, but with clear fin above it.
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