Farmed guppies

Farmed guppies

So, let's get one thing straight here. I’m not having a pop at all farmed guppies, and I’m not even going to point my finger in the direction of the hemisphere in which these guppies originate, but there is a sizeable chunk of these fish that shouldn’t be getting out of their countries of export, let alone accepted into the UK.

The guppy has been a human triumph of disease engineering. We took a fish that used to be pretty hardy, and made it into the most disease-riddled mongrel going. Smothered in tetrahymena, drizzled with a generous dash of columnaris and bagged for export, I’m amazed that many retailers still bother to syphon their money away with these fish.

And it seems to be the case that the fancier the fish, the more likely it is to be carrying everything under the sun.

So, if you’re thinking of buying some guppies from a tank where there are dead fish on the bottom, and the remaining few are hanging in the water with eroded fins and a blank 'please kill me' look in their eyes, then maybe you’d be better off picking up a hand grenade and hurling that into your home aquarium instead. You’ll get roughly the same result.