PPGA Club News

 

NEW FISHROOM UPDATE 2000 Hello Club Members and interested hobbyists. My new fishroom is coming along slowly now as summer heats up and I get busy. The insulation I used this spring that worked well during the cold temperatures is also working well during the hot spells.

Luke's Fishroom

The outside temperatures have been in the triple digits lately but the room is holding a steady 88F the top tanks are doing remarkably well at no warmer than 84F! The humidity is quite high in the 80% range but this ofsets some of the diurnal swing here in the Inland Empire. The room never deviates more than 8F each day. this is acceptable as it is no different in the fishes native homeland.

I havent finished the drip system installation as yet but hope to do so after my club show. I will be adding another rack this weekend because I am overloaded with upcoming fry for next springs show season. The additional space in my new room is almost triple what it was previously. The fish are also responding quite well to my new flake foods and additives with noticeable size and fertility, as well as more intense colors. Working the new room has been a toil but the new strain improvements make it all worthwhile. I have seen improvements in my red albino body colors,

New Red Albinos

the pingus are more pink

Pink Champagne

and my Blacks are coming back around to the quality they once were, with size, color and shape.

Midnight Blacks

I also have several new strains in my fishroom that are taking off and doing quite well. The new Reds are breeding profusely and the red color is definitely there!,

Gold Reds

I have a new strain of Half Black Purples that has exellent color and Im exited about it.

Half Black Purple

The Hawaiian Moscows are breeding more greens now.

Green Hawaiian Moscows The Albino Galaxys are definitely Improved with much better tail shape from last year.

Albino Galaxys They are winning over the Albino Blue Glass nowadays as the better fish. I have some other new strains from Japan and France which I am also working on but will take some time to get going as I am in need of more tanks al the time.

My trip to Trinidad this spring was very fruitful . I managed to bring back some wild stock from there and I have two unusually colored blue wild males with them.

Wild Blues I also caught some liberty mollies ( river run) which are doing quite well in the room they have grown to almost 3 inches in length and require extra strong filtration as they were from fast flowing river water. I will add photos of these things I have mentioned in time. Please be patient with me. Locals and visitors are welcome to visit the fishroom but I would appreciate a phone call to set up an appointment. Happy Guppying Everyone!

 

 
NEW STRAIN UPDATE 1999 The New AOC Albino Class sanctioned by the IFGA has gotten off to a great show start by PPGA members Frank Chang and Myself. We swept the class placings with all our entries from some of our newest strains. The Albino Blue Glass
Albino Blueglass
took first place in both the delta and tank entries.(I predicted good happenings for this exellent strain). The sister and complimentary color variation, the albino red/multiglass
Japanese MultiGlass
took second places followed by the Albino Galaxy Snakeskins.
Albino Galaxy

The Albino galaxys are but one of the more promising strains obtained at the WGC in Milwaukee from my friend Edgar Chaisson of the New England Guppy Club. Edgar's fondness for show guppies also includes some rare and foreign strains, for which we owe him some gratitude.

Franks Pastel Blue Albinos also did quite well, in the tank entries.

Our PPGA Club has long been the forefront in new strain development, acquisition and showing on the IFGA and now the International circuit.

Moscow Update I mentioned in my older guppy strain news about the Moscows which we acquired last year at the WGC in Milwaukee and which have swept the guppy world like a storm. We at the PPGA have since aquired Moscows from several different sources. The latest Strain of Moscow to arrive is the Hawaiian Blue Moscows. These are really striking fish they are fastgrowing big-bodied fish. They have 100% cobalt blue color with lighter blue heads!
Hawaiian Blue Moscows

They will be available in 2000 at Lukes Show Guppies.

Older News
The Blue Glass Strain that was aquired by Frank Chang from Japan several years ago has finally won a first place at an IFGA sanctioned show class in the US, in Milwaukee! These fish are strikingly beautiful and I have finally learned, from German and Japanese breeders, the secret in breeding them to increase size and maintain good blue background color.

Japanese Blueglass
(So what's the secret, Luke? Tell us! --Webmaster)

The "Best Of Show" guppy in Milwaukee was a Redhead Albino born in November, in that famous "female in a breeding trap photo" that I posted on the IFGA Message board several times in the past.

Best of Show

The AOC Class is being captured for the first time by the return of the USA Pingus to its home in the USA! This fish is striking, with a metallic Pink body and solid colored finnage that will vary in the different lines from an irridescent pink, to a coppery bronze.

USA Pingus

The newest IFGA Class, the AOC Albino Class, which was unofficially represented at the PPGA Show in July, will be loaded with many exiting new varieties of non-red albinos.
I have some new and exciting lines to work with this year. Some were developed in our fishrooms using foreign strains. But these are NOT JUST "new and flashy" fish! Keep in mind that some PPGA members are long time IFGA hobbyists and judges, and we only aquire strains that have the quality and potential to stay within the IFGA quality framework for show fish. This aquisition of new strain blood will add new genetics and variety to the stable color standards and varieties we have in the USA. This is something that is ocasionally desirable, and in some cases necessary. Some will work out and some will not. We will just have to see!

Photos of the breeding strains new to our fishrooms are located on the PPGA photos page.

Anyone interested in obtaining some of our new or long-established guppy strains can feel free to contact the PPGA for more information, or you may browse the Guppy Sales pages.

Hope everyone is having a great year!  --Luke Roebuck, PPGA President

 
 
 
Brazil Trip Highlights
 
World Guppy Contest, Rio De Janiero, Brazil
September 1-6, 1999
 

Hello All WGC supporters,
Firstly, I would like to thank all of you who helped the IFGA to support the 4th Annual World Guppy Contest that was recently held in the beautiful, but crazy, city of Rio de Janiero, Brazil. Frank Chang and I personally attended the show and hand carried approximately 74+ IFGA entries to the show.

Most of the USA guppies settled down well after the gruelling 7,000 mile journey, flying at 33000 feet over the Amazon jungle, from Los Angeles. Of course we had the usual problems with airline counter assistants who didnt think we could ship fish, but after checking their manuals they properly labeled our containers and let us on our way. Of course we were fully armed with all the necessary shipping documents and information for the anticipated customs encounter in Brazil. When they saw we were carrying lots of fish they had us check in with the Brazilian IBAMA Official at the airport, who proceeded to keep us waiting for almost a full hour while he made phone calls. Eventually a senior IBAMA inspector came over and asked us to open one of our boxes, which we gladly did. They were amazed by our quality guppies and then never bothered to look through anything else. Soon we were on our way.

Rodrigo and Carlos were at the airport for several hours waiting for us, and it was a great first meeting after almost chatting for 1 year on the internet.
Our Brazilian Friends, Carlos and Rodrigo <br> with Frank and myself at the hotel
We felt quite at home with these guys who really went out of their way to make us comfortable. Frank couldn't understand a word of Portuguese, so with my help along with Rodrigo's and Carlos's fluency in English we did quite ok.

After stopping at the Hotel to check in and freshen up we were off to the show site about 15 kilometers away, on the other side of town.
Showsite
We got to get a good view of Rio upon each and every trip to and from the site. Most of our travels were by Taxi--which was an experience in itself.
Downtown Rio de Janiero
The weather felt like our summertime fishrooms (naturally its Brazil) and we immediately proceeded to change into our casual clothes.

At the show site we met Oemer Gulmez from Germany and Hide from japan as well as Alfons Jestrabek and his wife and Dr Loch and his wife from Germany. As with any IFGA show when you are present we proceeded to bench the IFGA entries. I was smart enough to bring along some Amquel in case they had some new water and this saved some entries. Most all breeders had some or most of their fish make it through the judging in good shape. Some were lost as expected but most looked as good as with any local show.

The show room was huge, with more than ample room for visitors.
Showroom
There were guppy paintings all around the room and a special set up display by both the Brazilian Aquarium Magazine and Alcon fishfood sponsors. They had two whole floors for the show, which lasted from Monday through the weekend! Frank and I participated with the point judging of each fish, which took several hours each day, for two days.

The total count was approximately 200 entries or so . There were entries from Germany, Japan, USA, and Brazil. All entries were housed in 2.5 gallon all-glass tanks, in double levels with approximately 5 long rows of tanks.
Showroom
Lighting was directly overhead fluorescent over each set of tanks. Live plants were added to each tank (I think some form of anacharis).

On Friday the show room was opened to elementary school kids who had organised tours to the show with their teachers closeby. Rodrigo believes that the young kids, who are the future guppy breeders of Brazil, need to be indoctrinated early on the facination of the show guppy so they could maintain the interest in the country in the future years. Hundreds of kids attended the show to see the guppies. As with our IFGA shows, all show entries were registered and computerized on an Excel spread sheet for points entry and computation. The CCG happily provided the Computer system.

The Brazilian Breeders have a great hunger for USA Show fish and they have the will and resources to raise great fish so this show was a great opportunity to introduce the IFGA and Japanese and European Show Guppies for the first time. Of course they were amazed by the Moscow solids and the Red Albinos, as well as some of Jim Alderson's Big Guppies.

We managed to have some time to do a little running around in between visits to the show site and we got to see the world famous Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches.
Copacabana

Brazilian BBQ is some of the best in the world! We ate like pigs. On Saturday we managed to go visit two the CCG clubs breeding farm and Fishrooms. This was a one hour trip out to the country side. Of course we had to stop at some friut stands and local shops to sample the native goods. I had Cashew fruit for the first time in 25 years since Trinidad! Everything was great!

We saw huge cobra guppies raised in cement ponds with drip systems and all the natural food you could want! There were daphnia, bloodwoorms and tubiflex worms living in the ponds and all the fish were large and healthy. We also saw an interesting Betta collection, and were amazed by the ingenious drip system setup to change water to hundreds of betta containers! Each container (2 liter soda bottle) had holes drilled in them to allow the water to flow in and out during the water changes. There must have been a few thousand bettas, as well as guppies, there.

I could only imagine what they would do with our show fish, (which they now have). Paulo Bentin's fishroom was also visited, and we got to see some home-made tanks and a loud, old compressor used as a blower. He was raising some of Steve Kwartler's strains as well as some commercial strains like Blue Diamond guppies from Singapore. Paulo was creating his own HBAOC Strain from three different strains and was quite successfull so far.

I was particularly amazed at the health and vigour of his guppies in the tropical heat. One of his fishrooms was not enclosed, just shaded from the sun with a roof and some fruit trees. He went on to tell me that he uses some Brazilian tropical herbs and jungle medicine to treat his guppies and has no disease problems! He gets the recipes from the brazilian books that promote the herbal medicine. So much for our expensive medications.

Well that evening we proceeded back to the show site (Brazilian Time of course) and were greeted by 100 attendees who were waiting for the seminars to begin. we has the slide show and video seminars in a separate conference room. Dr. Wolfgang Loch presented a slide show on the European guppies from some of his famous photos. Frank and I showed a video of PPGA Fishrooms and decided to have a Q&A Session which was moderated by Oemer and transalated by Rodrigo. All in all it was quite fullfilling, and i was quite amazed at the attentiveness of the brazilian audience (lots of folks took written notes).

At this time some awards were given to the judges in attendance by the CCG club as a show of gratitude for their help in pulling off a good show.
Luke gets an award

The final day was auction day and quite a few were in attendance. Although the auction didnt go off as well as planned (due to internal politics with the sponsors and the CCG) we decided this was the time to head out to see Rio before we had to leave. Several of the CCG members were along with Frank and I to show us some of their city.

We walked along the beach
Copacabana
and did some light vendor shopping for trinkets and souvenirs. we also had a great BBQ Buffet lunch that was incredible! Every different kind of food imaginable was served! We must have eaten over 50 different varieties of dishes in one huge sampler lunch.
Churrasco Feast
Meats were hand carved on to your plate and as fast as you can eat it you were offered more varieties! We also managed to visit the famous Rio Botanical Gardens,
Luke & Rodrigo at the Rio Botanical Gardens
and this was a plant lover's paradise. We managed to see some miniature tamarind monkeys and flocks of wild parrots all over.

I will try to load more additional photos up on this website which depicts all I described. Frank couldnt help but catch some bettas from the ponds to bring back home. They all made it back fine. Miami Customs were very coorperative.

All said, it was a great--but too short--trip. I could have easily stayed another week! I would like to personally thank Rodrigo, Carlos, Paulo, Marcelo and Juliano (yes, Eduardo, we missed you!) for all their catering and great treatment. We really felt at home, and I didnt notice any language or communication barrier whatsoever. I guess it helps to know some Portuguese and Spanish. I hope that they can organize another Guppy Show some time in the future, so we can return.

I know they were left with some good quality strains, and already have many fry from most of them! I think we will be seeing some interesting things happening in the near future from Brazil. The show results are posted on the WGA site linked below. This site will also give you access to WGC 2000 show information in Austria. Please visit it.
WGC, Brazil 1999, Show Results
Oemer has been really busy putting it all together. Until the annual, Muito Obrigado a todo e ate amanha!
--Luke Roebuck, PPGA President

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