By Luke Roebuck

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PPGA club members Frank Chang and Luke Roebuck were invited to attend the 10th annual World Guppy Contest held in Taipei Taiwan in the Taipei National University of Technology August 26-28, 2005.

The show event was well sponsored by NTUT and Chang Gung University Aquarium Club as well as Aqua Pets, Aqua Zoo and Fish Magazines. Frank and myself arrived a few days early so we could get in some fishroom visits and Thanks to the legwork by my good friend Bruce Shive, we were well received by all the guppy breeder we visited. Before we departed for the trip I made sure that the show fish from the USA arrived safely. I had some shipping air cargo scheduling problems in USA but had a great backup plan as usual which worked nicely. The fish arrived at the Hotel the same day that we did!

The next day Bruce arrived at the hotel with some great news! He took the week off to spend with us and offered to take us on a whirlwind tour of Taiwan’s Guppy World! This was a trip of a lifetime and I prepared my camera and packed up some overnight stuff and Frank and I were off on tour.

The trip that was planned was a 600 mile round trip from our hotel in Taipei to the south of the island (Tainan) and back. We would be stopping at several breeders shops and homes. Bruce did all the planning and his cell phone was quite busy all day. We also got to see some of the countryside too.

Taiwan roads are very good quality and we had to pay a toll every 40 KM or so of $40NTD. Bruce took care of everything so things went quite smoothly.

Our first stop in Chaiyi we visited Ray Chang. Ray had a small fish setup of about 20-30 tanks or so but the fish were very large well fed and very good quality.

I particularly liked his Japanese Glass which he maintained as red, Blue and Longfin.

His red glass were very red too

We took some pictures at every stop as a remembrance of our visit.

Our next stop was Felix Chang in South Bay. This is the breeder who is famous for his worm cleaning station (see Guppy Labs previous article)

Felix owns and operates one of Taiwan's largest guppy breeding facilities. He maintains over 1,700 tanks!!

There were several ROOMS of guppy banks!!

Felix maintains several well-known strains like Moscows, Full Reds, Tuxedo HB yellow whites and Japan Glass.

Here is his famous worm cleaning station again.

All his tank racks were setup with automatic water changing systems.

Felix also maintains some Coral Shrimp. Frank became intrigued!

Here is Frank Felix and myself

We moved on to visit Lee Kuo Ming in Tainan. Lee has some high quality white guppies. Lee owns a nice shop with some well maintained tanks!

Lee is very proud of his winnings.

There was a good representation of European, Japanese as well as American strains in his shop.

After we left Lees shop he entertained us at dinner then about midnight he was feeding brine shrimp to his racks at home as well. We then overnighted at a hotel in Tainan. I felt like a traveling fisherman! Heh heh!

After breakfast we did some traveling around…

Until we arrived in KaoHsiung. There we met one of Taiwan's best red guppy breeders YS and got a tour of his shop and breeding rooms.

YS has some of the best Red Guppy Gene bank I have seen to date.

He also maintains several other strains like Blue Grass, HB White, Moscow Blacks. While browsing through his tanks of Moscows.

I came across a Moscow black that was truly jet black. To my surprise he let me have anything I wanted! There was only one exceptional specimen and I gladly bagged him up!

Here we took a picture with YS (red shirt) in his shop.

 

Kao Hsiung has several large scale guppy breeders with very high quality guppies.

Next we visited Green Guppy at his shop and basement.

Green Guppy had some nice Ivory Mosaic Guppies.

After we left Green Guppy we arrived at Cheng Zhi How Shop. Cheng has some of the cleanest tanks in Taiwan and the center rack housed Dwarf Chiclids and German Blue rams. There were some beautiful nature decorated tanks and coral shrimp setups.

We also visited Daal Maan shop in KaoHsiung he has some unusual tail shapes, Platinum Double swords etc. His Doubleswords are some of the best.

We also managed to stop by DK guppy shop in Taichung on the way back to Taipei. Here we saw some nice snakeskins and Ivory Mosaics. The tanks were all well maintained. I later found out that the DK Guppy Club shares all the work between each club member and no one individual can be given sole credit for the Clubs achievements. This club is a strong club in central Taiwan and has some aspirations to hold their own international guppy contests. Here is a photo of the club members:

As I will mention later this club went on to win the WGC Best in Show. Truly a great achievement. Here are a two pictures of their fish. You can blame the fish for the poor focus as they were quite active in the summer heat.

TAIPEI BREEDERS

We also visited several breeders shops and rooms in the greater Taipei area.
Lin Sheng Hwei who manages to enter one exceptional guppy in competition had a shop in Taipei which we visited.

Lin is very proud of his achievements and proudly displays his trophies in his shop

I managed to get a good breeding pair of these unusually colored Shimmelpfennig DS back to California!

Chinese Hobbyists love Parrot Chiclids

We visited Lin’s home as well to see his fishroom setup there. Lin used OSI Red Top eggs which give a premium hatch. Eggs in Taiwan are relatively cheap at 15-18$ a can! These eggs come from UTAH.

We also visited Tsai’s fishroom in Taipei. Tsai maintains German Red Lace gray and Albino from my line and Changs HB Reds as well as Coral Shrimps.

It is really a small world when we met up with Chiu and Foo Hong from Singapore Guppy Club at Tsai’s fishroom, who flew in the same day to visit fishrooms and the WGC!

Finally we visited one of the best Breeders in Taiwan Kuo GT Guppy Room Kuo has a long history of maintaining some very high quality ( and expensive) guppy strains. Here we are photographed with Kuo in center.

Kuo’s fishroom was well designed and clean!

I suppose my pictures got better because his tanks were very clean! Notice the undergravel filtration which is coupled with state of the art water changing systems. Kuo is famous breeder in Taiwan for his Sailfin dorsal guppies which is very prominent in the HB Yellow white ribbon strains. His females have very white triangle tails! His Half Black Yellow White Triangles are some of the cleanest white colors available today.

Kuo also has several strains of reds and red albinos, some from my strains.

When you enter his fishroom there are walls lined with guppy pictures and trophies.

SHOWTIME

Show time was quite a hectic schedule with members of the Taipei University aquarium Club assisting with the entry classification and benching.

Show entries were divided into several classes and there were 4 judges scheduled for judging. Judges consisted of the following gentlemen: Oemer Guelmez from Germany, Frank Chang and Luke Roebuck from USA and Mr Lim from Taiwan. Eddie Lee was the WGC Show Chairman and did much of the legwork to put on the show.

Entry count was quite high at between 450-500 entries many of which came from Taiwan breeders and local clubs. Racks were made of steel and show tanks were typical plastic critter keeper type similar to IFGA entry bowls. Taiwan television was also on hand to do a taping of the show to promote the hobby in Taiwan as well as future shows. This is typical of most World Guppy Contests in the countries I have visited as their local TV station does a taping. AQUA ZOO News was also on hand to do a Guppy Report.

Due to time constraints and limited help with the judging, we decided to do an IFGA Style judging with detailed pointing only to the top finalist picks based on unanimous decision by all the judging team. Overall fish quality was very high. There were entries from Taiwan, Korea, USA, Japan and Singapore. Here is a selection of entries from the various tail shapes which were represented.

Here is a Red Albino Delta (Full Red Strain) from Taiwan.	Half Black Red Delta.
This was the show winner. A very nice Blue Albino Delta bred by DK Guppy Club.	Taiwan Blue Grass entry.
Moscows were very well represented but the high temperatures that day unusually stressed some of the entries and caused poor deportment and symmetry at Judge time.	This was a nice Moscow entry.
Entries from USA were in surprising good condition after the long trip across the Pacific Ocean.	Full Red from Taiwan. Taiwan has some of the best Full Reds I have seen anywhere.
This is a HB Blue entry from USA	There was a good representation of other tail shapes both from Taiwan as well as European entries.

Prize day was also the day that the exposition was open to the public. There were several hundred visitors that day including breeder and club entrants from all over Taiwan. I remember this photographer who was visiting from a possible future Show place Hong Kong. We met him and discussed some future possibilities.

The prize trophies were very good quality crystal trophies.

This guppy logo was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Prize giving was in typical fashion with the Show Chairman Eddie Lee and WGC Head Judge Omer Guelmez distributing the prizes.

Here we see the 2nd place winner Lin happily collecting his prize. Lin breeds Half Black Pastel White Deltas as well as other strains for his Shop in Taipei

Here we see DK Guppy Club proudly displaying their winning Trophy Cup. We managed to visit their place in our trips to the south.

All in all, the trip was a very good one despite some relatively minor protesting from some disgruntled members of Taiwan’s Southern Guppy Club (SGC), who didn’t like the results of the contest. I later came to find out that this type of protesting is quite normal in Taiwan even in Government Parliament where it can sometimes get quite loud. Well we were prepared to accept the bad with the good as the overall trip was well worth it!

We also managed to squeeze in some non-fishy tourism touring in Taipei. The food was excellent!

There were scooters everywhere!!

 

We visited the worlds tallest Building TAIPEI 101 seen here at night with its spectacular border lighting.

This is Taipei at night.

I have many more pictures and could possibly do another article with a different spin but have to end at this time.

AKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Thanks to all the breeders we visited who without any hint of selfishness offered us some of their best guppies. Special Thanks to Ray of Chayi, Felix Cheng of South Bay, Sung San of Tainan, Green Guppy, YS Guppy from KaoHsiung who had those great Full Reds! Daal Maan Shop, DK Guppy , Lin’s Enchanting Aquarium, Tsai’s Guppy Room, Kuo GT Guppy Room with some nice HB Yellow Whites!

I would like to specially thank my good friend Bruce Shive ( Tseng Biao Hsueh) who made our trip fun and made it possible to visit all the breeders fish rooms and obtain some of the best quality Guppies around! Bruce will be a lifelong friend to us and the guppy world.

 

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