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 :)
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
At one stage, good quality Moscow Blacks are readily available in our LFS. They have very black body and very little iridescent.
Picture shows my earlier Moscow strains where I selective breed to make the dorsal of the female longer, bigger and broader. I don't keep the Moscow Blacks anymore, but their genes are very much incorporated into my new Moscow Chocolates.
The signatory traits of Moscow strains is big dorsal, big body and tails. The caudal span is also generally broader and extend more than do other strains. However the tradeoff I found in Moscow strains is it is difficult to stabilise the caudal to a good degree of delta (triangular).
Metal is one of my favourite strains. I learned from a very experience local Guppy hobbyists that people who love the half metal strains usually welcome some element of mystic and suspense in their lives. The picture in this blog post shows one of the Metal King Cobra that I attempted to cross with the Red Lace to make the Metal Red Lace.
The "metallic" portion on the first half of the body of a half metal is very interesting: it can vary in accordance with lighting and the fish's mood. In individuals with darker colour of black and bluish tone, it really complement the colour of the fish very well and brings about an air of mystic in the fish.
