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It has occured to me that almost all the guppies in LFS around my neighbourhood have become horribly disgusting and die after a few days in the tanks!
they have:
poor colouration
jagged fins
and swim almost motionless near the bottom.

I have noticed this in atleast 6 LFS shops so far and I think they get them from the same place???
Have you noticed this before??
would selectively breeding them to much make them fragile??
Personly I thought guppies were hardy but they seem far from it.

Any replies greatly appreciated

thanks!

i too have noticed the quality seems to be worse. we bought some for our 15g and they died after a few weeks, we then bought some more and they died aswell.

Ghostfish, its probably a diseased batch if its been mainly in the last 2 weeks.

They are pretty fragile, but recently the quality of guppies in Aus has been improving. I'm seeing a lot of half blacks and decent solid colours around the places, along with lyretails and pintails.

The problem is that they are inbred to the point that they are weak, and it doesn't take much to kick them over the edge, and as LFS take no care with them (for the most part) as they are cheap cheap cheap, they often end up bruised and battered and not looking so hot.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

i have seen it to but what can we do about it nothing realy unless we state a complant but they wont listen to us and guppies are hardy fish they are very strong indeed. in walmart where i live the guppies are all smushed in with other fish like gold fish and others like platties they are all treated poorly but like i said befor what can we do? i hope this helps a little

The guppies here are of very poor quality with boring colors and bad health. They've just been inbred far too mcuh. I chose to get some off aquabid instead. Among the extremely expensive guppies and the cheap low quality guppies you can find a few in between for a good price.

I have noticed also, that when you put batches of guppies that were not raised together in the same tank, many will die. I am not sure if it is from fighting or what. I have raised guppies together for example, and they all got along fine... but after the passing of Mr. Roland we inherited his batch, I put his males in with mine and within a few days many had died... shredded fins and all. I know it was not from disease. In the LFS, I am sure disease is also an issue. In my LFS, anytime they get guppies they get the colmanaris. I don't know if it's where they get their stock or if it stays in their tanks...

Are you sure its not disease? I'm tending to find with a lot of fish, depending on the import region, they are resistant to certain things and very susceptable to others, to the point where they just drop dead within 24 hours.

I was looking at the guppies today, and the tails on the females are almost as long as the males! this has got to add to the fighting too, if the males cannot visually pick out who is what from a distance. They might well run themselves ragged trying to fight anyone and everything.

That being said, i'm dying to get a few of those longtail girls.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett