On recent shows not only red strains are very popular, but also red lace snakeskins. You can find them on shows around the world from Sweden till Brazil, from Taiwan till Poland. With their shiny green fine lace pattern and a contrasting red lace in the fins, they are one of the most beautiful guppies you can find. But red lace are also one of the most difficult strains to maintain and very little is known about their origin.
There is for example this mystery of the red lace females. They show a only a pale red but unlike other red females you get not blurred cobra pattern but a beautiful red lace snake skin pattern in the fins if you cross them with yellow lace snake skin males. To find out more about the history and origin of the strain, guppylabs author Robert Gall held an interview with Franz Zeipelt, the creator of the red lace snakeskin.

Guppy Labs: Franz, please introduce yourself shortly so that the readers have a small impression of you.

Franz Zeipelt: I was born 1937 in the present-day Czech Republic. I grew up in the former German Democratic Republic and studied in Erfurt. I founded my family in Erfurt and stayed there till 1981.

In 1981 I moved to Liepgarten, near Ückermünde (a small town in the north-east of Germany). In 1988 we founded the “Guppyclub Paul Hähnel” in Ückermünde. Then in 1988 I won the European Championship for the first time and I won it once again a few year later. I also won several time the 2nd place in the European Championship as well as lots of international shows.

I also organised eight European Championship shows in Ückermünde. My breeding room has a size of 5 x 2,50meters. I heat the whole room and use simple air-driven filters. I have 24 plastic tanks of various sizes, mainly to raise fries. I also have 12 glass tanks with a size of 45l, 24 tanks with a size of 80l and 6 tanks with a size of 110l. All in all I have about 3300liters to breed my guppies. I keep constantly these strains:

• Delta blond (gold) red and blond half black red
• Delta grey half black red
• Delta blue grass
• Delta blond multicoloured
• Delta red/yellow lace snakeskin
• Bottomsword Vienna Emerald
• As well as all body base colours in various strains like blue etc.

Guppy Labs: Franz, when have the red lace snakeskin originated for the first time? And which were the basic strains?

Franz Zeipelt: I started breeding the red lace snakeskin in 1976. They reached a show quality for the first time end of the 1980ies.

My basic pair was a male from a Live Fish Shop and a female from of my own strain. The male was an import from Singapore, which I bought with several over males of various colours for 14,40 GDR-Mark (for each fish, this was quit a lot of money at this time). Normally all of these males were made sterile but I had good luck with my male.

The male had a bright shiny green snakeskin pattern on the body, a very short, pale yellow dorsal fin and a very round delta caudal with a pattern of red and black.
The female came from my half black red strain. But it showed no black because the half black is y-linked in this strain and so the females have just a gene for red, no half black. It showed no colour at all on the body and had only a pale red caudal.

Guppy Labs: So that was the pair you started your new project but how did the first red lace look like?

Franz Zeipelt: The first offspring almost looked like the father. I sent these male very successful to various shows.

But only years later the caudal and dorsal improved and the pattern on the body became more fine. The first red lace were born. Sometimes black dots (or eye spots) appeared on the fore-bodies and also in the caudal. I tried to breed selectively these dots to stabilise them, but I had no success.

Mid of the 1990ies I showed these males for the first time on international shows. Before I showed them only on our own shows. Until this time there were no “red lace snakeskin” in Europe and the fine shiny green lace pattern with a orange caudal was never seen before. Some breeders bought them and bred them successfully. Nowadays you can find red lace on all shows in good quality.

I prefer actually orange coloured fins because they show a better harmony with the green lace pattern on the body in my opinion.

This is such a male with a very fine lace pattern and a more orange than red caudal and dorsal:

Guppy Labs: So the first red lace where actually not red but orange. That is pretty interesting because you used red females. Can you tell us more about the difficulties while breeding them? How can a breeder, for example, improve the red if it is too bright or too dark?

Franz Zeipelt: Actually it is quit easy nowadays to breed show-like red lace. Red lace is dominant and you need only such a male to improve them. BTW, there are also other lace snakeskin strains where the lace snakeskin comes from the females.

I recommend to keep not only a lace snakeskin strain but also a stable red strain which you can use for crosses. This strain you can keep in different body base colours like grey, albino etc..

I prefer my half black red females without any coloration on the body and I watch out for a clean red. These females are actually the original red lace females because in this strain the half black as well as the red is y-linked and the red females have only a weak influence on the red of the males. So I keep a second line without the snakeskin trait but with genetically the same red females.

Guppy Labs: Franz, are there any peculiarities? On what should a breeder keep an eye on?

Franz Zeipelt: There are no big peculiarities. Sometimes males show a clear, colourless areas in the middle of the rear caudal-edge. When the male get older, these “windows” replenish with colour.

But if parts of the caudal are missing or these “windows” don’t replenish, much has already been overslept. A cross with another line or an out-cross with another red line (with the same specific red like my h/b red line) would have avoided it. It makes no sense to continue breeding with such males. So it makes sense to keep at least 2 red lace lines or another line with the same x-linked red to make periodically crosses.

Crosses with grey blue females (e.g. IFGA blue delta) resulted in male with an ideal caudal shape. But I could not breed them for a longer period of time.

After some generations of selective breeding of these snakeskin x blue, they look like this:

They show a fine lace pattern on the body and a snake skin pattern in the caudal and dorsal. But the coloration in the caudal is not stable and solid blue areas next to areas with a snake skin pattern appear very often in the caudal. This is such a male:

Crosses with other red females show similar results. There is no fine lace pattern any longer. This male is the F2 of a cross of a red lace male with a normal albino red female:

Guppy Labs: Franz, thank you very much for this great interview.