Aquarama 2013 Guppy Competition

Aquarama 2013 Guppy Competition had been very competitive. I was lucky to win 4 out of my 6 entries, all of which are home bred by me. The Open class first prize Chocolate Moscow was my new strain creation that had also won in the Trio (2nd Prize) and Group (1st Prize) in Aquarama 2011. Nothing beats the thrill of seeing the fruits of my labour and winning with my self bred fishes.

I would like to thank various Guppy experts like Mr Yap Teo Tee, Mr Henri, Mr Chris Ng and Mr Lok for sharing and guiding me in the Guppy hobby.

1st Prize - Trio Open Class

2nd Prize - Trio Open Class

3rd Prize - Lace/Snakeskin

2nd Prize - Solid (Non-Moscow)

Chocolate Updates

Got some time today to record the updates of my 3-month-old Chocolates...

Moscow Chocolates

and also an experimental strain of Chocolates x Moscow Blues.

Experimental strain - unstable geno

Outcrossing to Albino Full Red (AFR)

To experiment on my Milk Chocolate Moscow, I acquired a stable strain of AFR from a local hobbyist last November. This is supposedly a stable Taiwanese strain with good solid red and big dorsal. I have done F1 inbreed with no sign of deterioration. 

Next, I have also crossed the pure AFR strain into my Milk Chocolate strain. As per best practices, the following are the combinations:

A: AFR (Taiwan line)

M: Milk Chocolate

1) A(male) x M (female)
2) M(male) x A (male)

while continuing the pure lines:

3) A (male) x A (female)

4) M (male) x M (female)

1) and 2) is expected to produce greyed-eye progeny as is usual for out-crossing of two unrelated albino strains.

Chocoholic

I love most kinds of chocolates, each flavour has its allure and I hate it when presented with a box of chocolate with many flavours to choose from. In actual fact, I would love to savour each and every one of them... it is very seldom that a box of chocolate survive a week in my fridge.

I faced the exact same dilemma for my Chocolate Moscows too. Sometimes, I am at a lost of which morph of Chocolates to focus on. There is the lighter brown to chestnut colour, the reddish tinge cherry brown to the maple tone and the very dark Oak tone like dark chocolates. There is also a morph of albino thrown out by the Moscow Chocolate which I candidly dubbed the "Milk Chocolate".

Due to the AFR ancestry, the Milk Chocolate Moscow exhibit tones of red but they are more towards orange in colour. Naturally for most Guppy hobbyists, the first thing that came to our minds is to back cross to the AFR to see if we can achieve the best of both Worlds - The scarlet red of the AFR strain and the big body and broad finnage of the Moscow strain :)

Chocolate Moscow

My Chocolate Moscow was developed from the Moscow black. I used to experiment with Moscow black and the AFR (Albino Full Red) to improve the caudal shape of the Moscow blacks. Then one day, I found a chocolate coloured male in the experimental hybrid and used it to back-cross with the long dorsal Moscow females. The winning fishes are the 6th generation of selective breeding of the Moscow Chocolate Strain.

I am proud that this new breed of Chocolate Moscow had won in the Aquarama 2011 Open category Group Champion and Open category Trio 1st Runner up. This is really encouraging as it is my first Aquarama attempt in the Guppy Competition.

Aquarama Guppy Open Class Group Champion