Strains and Variations of Endlers
Endlers grow fast and young fry can be bred as early as a few months after they are born. Female Endlers can drop fry every 26-30 days. Due to these factors several generations of Endlers can be raised in a relatively short period of time.
One of the interesting things about Endlers is that most of the traits that are seen in the males are carried by the males.
If you were to take a male from a pure strain of Endlers and mate it with a female of another pure strain of Endler the resulting fry will nearly always look like the male Endler. If you continued to keep the Endlers for several more generations you may see some fry from the female strain start to show up several generations later.
Often unique fry are born that differ from their parents. These unique offspring are known as variants. I believe that nature uses variants to help ensure the survival of a species. Variations that help a species to survive are often passed on to future generations. Those variations that don’t help improve the survivability of a species are usually lost and are not passed on.
Because generations of Endlers can be raised in a relatively short period of time and variations are relatively common in Endlers this creates a unique opportunity for those that wish to produce new and unique strains of Endlers.
Hybrids
This differs from those who create hybrids. Hybrids are created by crossing one species with another such as crossing Guppies with Endlers. While many hybrids result in offspring that are not fertile and cannot produce young, Endlers crossed with guppies do produce fertile young. Many beautiful new hybrid Endler strains have been created over the last few years.
There is nothing wrong with creating these wonderful new strains of Endler/Guppy hybrids so long as those creating them don’t try to pass them off as “pure” Endlers. These crosses should be classified as K class Endlers. This helps protect the pure strains of Endlers (N Class) from being contaminated by hybrid strains.
Once a hybrid has been created the future generations can never again be pure Endlers. This is why Endlers classifications were created.
How to Line Breed Endlers
Creating a unique pure N class Endler line is fairly easy if you are patient, lucky and follow some simple steps.
If you would like to produce your own line of pure N Class Endlers here is the very simple method to use.
Step 1: The first step is to find a male fish that has specific qualities that you wish to pass on to future generations. This may be unique colorations, specialized fin shapes, or other unique characteristics you wish to pass down to future generations.
Step 2: Match this male with a female that is very healthy and has the features and body shape you wish to produce. This female should be virgin. This pair we will call P1. The problem with just picking out a nice female from your community is that females can become pregnant at a very young age and one “visit” from a male Endler can result in several months of pregnancies.
To prevent diluting our work with genes from our community tank we select females from our fry that have never been introduced to an adult male at an age that it is just possible to tell if they are females.
At this age it is still possible to accidentally select a slowly developing male so we keep these females separated for a month or so until we are sure we only have virgin females.
You should have at least 2 P1 pairs if possible. Note: This process will require a quite a few tanks.
Step 3: When the young female fry grow up and produce fry themselves take the fry out of the breeding tank and place them in their own tank.
Once the fry are old enough to distinguish sex separate the males from the females.
Step 4: When the fry grow up to the point that you can see which ones are the best according to the end result you are looking for, pick the best female and best male. This will be pair F1.
Do the same with your additional line(s).
Step 5: Continue the process until you reach pair F3. The fry produced by pairs F3 will be separated like normal however this time when you create the new pairs place a female from one line with the male of another line and do the same with all of your lines.
This will become the new P1 and the whole process starts over again. This will help keep your Endlers genetically healthy as you breed them.
As you can see, the process takes a lot of tanks and a lot of patients.
It is easiest if you breed for one specific trait and when your line is consistently producing the desired trait then you can focus on a different trait.
You may wish to completely separate the males altogether in their own tank as we do. We do this because we want absolute control over the breeding of our Endlers. Every once an a while a male will be born with little coloration or poor markings. These are males you definitely do not want to be contributing to the gene pool of your Endlers.
Allowing these poor quality males to add their genetics to your community of Endlers can eventually dilute the colors and beauty of your Endler community.
What Do We Do Different?
Our goal is to gradually produce better stock over the years. We basically use the method as shown above however fish are replaced only as needed when a breeder male dies or if a male that has much better coloration or patterns is found to replace an existing male. Males can live for several years so the process could take a lifetime.
How The Snakeskin Orchid Endler Strain Was Developed
When we created our line of Snakeskin Orchid Endlers we only had one male so the process was slightly different. In that case we had to use a combination of inbreeding and line breeding.
We selected a virgin female to pair up with our single male. After the female produced fry we separated the fry into female and male tanks when they were old enough for us to tell what sex they where.
We then removed the female that was with the male and introduced one of the younger female offspring. Meanwhile we watched the males from the first drop and noticed that none of them had the marking that our original male had.
Eventually the new female (which was the daughter of the original male) dropped fry. We once again separated the fry once we could determine their sex. This time as the males matured we noted thay had the markings of the original male.
We once again used one of the new female fry to mate with the original male. When the new fry started to display colors we noted that the males all had the pattern we desired.
At this point we took the a couple of the best looking males that where produced and we paired them up with females from our original colony of Orchid Endlers that did not have the snake pattern.
The resulting male fry all had the snake pattern that we were looking for. The patterns varied and some of the patterns were what we considered better than others.
We followed the line breeding method that we described above except when a male was found to be better than our breeder male we would switch them out in order to improve the strain.
Is That It?
This is a very simplistic method of line breeding your Endler’s.
One consideration after line breeding Endlers it to make sure that the strain does not become too weak from the line breeding process. Always try to make sure the Endlers you choose are healthy and have the specific traits you are looking for.
That’s a very useful bit of info that many of the traits in the female are recessive. This is important because even now, you can not get pure strain females – too many breeders hang on to them to prevent people from doing exactly what your article is about.
We have always offered females to our buyers. We do this because we understand the importance of having high quality pure stock available to hobbyists.
Of course our female Endlers are higher priced than our males as it is difficult to keep them in stock and most of them are offered in our pairs or trios.
Much of our “competition” are hobbyists that purchased Endlers from us and are now breeding and selling their Endlers. Many of these hobbyists have become our friends over the years.
As someone who sells Endlers online there is always a risk of someone mass producing Endlers and undercutting our prices.
While we know there is a risk it is not really a fear of ours as we understand that it takes more than just breeding them to get high quality Endlers. Purchasing high quality stock is only the first step in producing high quality Endlers.
Those who buy Endlers from sources that mass produce them run the risk of getting diseased, weak, low quality fish which are likely to have been hybridized with guppies.
Low quality massed produced Endlers are a poor choice for those who are serious about breeding Endlers as it is impossible to breed high quality pure N Class Endlers from low quality, undocumented stock.
Does the line breeding process essentially shorten the time frame for observable traits to be cultivated in that line? The process shown above provides for a swap at F3. If a single allele is showing up with that line, aren’t you basically shortening the time frame you have to work with that allele by crossing the females at F3? Would it not be better to cross later on down the line?
Yes you are correct if you where attempting to modify the strain for a specific trait. The above example would be used if you had a strain that is stable and you wanted to keep it that way for a very long period of time.
Of course these crosses don’t happen all the time in our situation only when we loose one of our breeding pairs or if a male with better features is found.
Because Endlers live over 2 years the example shown could litterally take a lifetime or it could be done in a few short years depending on what you are trying to accomplish.
Crossing later on down the line would be a form of inbreeding that would give more time to work on a specific allele.
Thanks for this! I was wondering why many websites and my local fish stores only carried typed male Endler, and mixed females, vs. other guppies which are usually sold in pairs. I knew that part of it probably had to do with the females being largely indistinguishable, but this adds in the last puzzle-piece.
I trained as a geneticist, and guppies have always excited that part of my brain, especially the aspects Endler described with rapid phenotypical changes occurring within generations of low-predation and no other selection.
With the selection hobbyists do, sky’s the limit. I just was able to get back into fishkeeping, with a tiny population of Endler (class P)–2 males and 3 females…which came along with a bonus fry who was accidentally netted, and after only a few weeks two of the females have already dropped more fry, meaning my “tiny population” is overflowing my quarantine tank. I look forward to seeing the males color and finding out what my little genetic surprises are.