Micropoecilia picta ‘Red’

I just made a deadline for Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine for an article on Micropoecilia picta ‘Red.’ This is a great little guppy-like fish. The hardest part wasn’t writing the article; it was taking the photos. The autofocus on my camera can’t get a fix on a fast moving little fish. Hundreds of photos later I finally got a set my editor thought would work.

I got this fish from Bobby Ellermann back in 2008 and almost lost it twice, once due to employee error and once to red cherry shrimp. I discovered at great expense that red cherry shrimp at high population densities are fry predators. We lost a lot of livebearer production due to them. Anyway, our population of this fish is now secure. We have two breeding colonies going at all times.