We were interested to find a female N Class Orchid Endlers Livebearer in one of our tanks that had black on her dorsal fin.
We thought this was odd because we had never seen or heard of there being any color on a female N class Endler’s except for when people cross the Endler’s with other livebearers such as guppies.
We knew that our Endlers had never been exposed to any other livebearers and so we set out to find out how this could be.
We contacted Adrian Hernandez (AdrianHD) one of the leading authorities on Endlers Livebearers and the source of our original Orchid Endler pairs.
Adrian was kind enough to answer quickly to our inquiry and he had these words to say:
“Some females develop spots or a bit of color on tails. Some like swords or body spots.”
According to AdrianHD it is possible for female N Class Endler’s to develop colors!
Looks like we may have to save this special female N Class Endler for a special breeding tank although we are not sure if the trait can be passed on through the female to other Endler’s in the future.
We are sure we are not the only ones that have seen female N class Endler’s with color so we would love to hear from you if you have had similar experiences.
Update 2018: A strain of Endler captured after this post was written, the El Tigre Endler, produces females that typically have black dorsal fins.
Hi. I bought 3 female Endlers from a LFS (aquarium experts only) which were put into a fancy guppy tank with one regular female and 3 regular males. These Endler females are smaller than the fancy female, but what I found interesting is that after two weeks two of the Endlers are developing color in their tails; one the whole tail, the other the top half turning blueish. I wondered if I may have been sold immature female hybrids. I asked the store clerk who wasn’t sure just that they get them from Endler breeders. The males Endlers on display are certainly not hybrid. I bought three males to breed with the Endler females but need to know if these females are pure or hybrid?
Without some kind of documentation showing that they are pure N Class Endlers it’s impossible to know if they are or not. This is one reason why the Endler Classification System was developed. At the very most they might be able to be classified as P class Endlers if they appear to be pure Endlers. They could never be classified as N Class because there is no documentation showing where they came from.
One thing for sure is that the females that you received were probably impregnated by the male guppies they were exposed to so any resulting offspring is most likely hybrid. Making matters even worse is that the females can hold the sperm of the males for months making it possible for the females to drop several drops of fry from the one visit for a male guppy.