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Understanding the value of females in any breeding program is of great importance. Most female guppies look fairly similar. If you look closer you will see slight variations among a tank of sister females. You may notice a difference in peduncle size, or dorsal or caudal shape. Generally all female guppies exhibit some color. Besides showing color in the dorsal or caudal there are other areas to look for color. Examine the area from the gills to the eyes. I have noticed in my females a small amount of color in this area. Among five sisters I have seen a difference of coloration in this area. For example; in my purple strain, not all purple females show purple in this area, some show green or blue. In my half black females this is quite common. Another characteristic to look for is normal or clear eyes. Some females seem to have dark rings around their eyes. I relate this to the wild type guppy trait. I try not to use these goofy eyed females. I never use hormones or other altering substances to test my guppies for color. I never feed chemical additives to induce unnatural growth. By using visual selection, and proper feeding and maintenance, I have enjoyed many years breeding and showing fancy guppies. To me this makes good guppy sense.

So what about neutral females? Depending on what strain you are working with you may be looking for a type of female that will always pass along the characteristics of the males you use. This is important since most of us breed our guppies to improve our males for exhibition. An example would be as follows: Select two gray bodied females (sisters) and breed one to a blue male the other to a half black . If all the offspring produced by the blue male resemble the father so what. But if the other female sister, bred to the half black male produce all half black males like the father, plus gray bodied females, then this would be pretty good right. These same females when crossed with a green male could produce mostly green males.

Establishing a line that produces neutral females is done by logical calculations plus trial and error. Mike Lastella was the first to bring neutral females to my attention. He used females from one strain only. The females from that line were always used to make his crosses and his hybrids. He never would try to set the resulting hybrids into pure strains. Whenever he needed to produce large hybrids for showing he would simply make the cross that was necessary to produce his show fish. Unfortunately anyone desiring this line was out of luck. Mike never passed off hybrids as true breeders.

I have tried to take the neutral females one step further. I am lucky to have over two hundred tanks to devote to my guppies. By keeping very accurate records, I have developed several lines of half blacks and gray bodied guppies. In most of my half black strains, the half black is dominate only on the females. My half black males when crossed with these neutral gray body females do not produce half black males. This is because the half black is not a dominant gene on the male side. Crossing gray males to the half black females will produce half black hybrids. The exception is with my half black purples. I have developed two similar lines. I call them parallel strains. There is only one significant difference between them. In one line all the females are half black, whereas the other line produces only gray bodied females. Males from both lines are identical half black purples, and a few are half black greens. Now comes the interesting part. Take those male offspring breed them back to the original line of females and you are on your way to setting your new strain. Using neutral females is but another way of developing your crosses into new strains. After several generations of line breeding or inbreeding can we say these new fish are a pure strain. Using gray body neutral females to make different color varieties of snakeskin's is common practice because only the males carry the dominant snakeskin pattern.