Description
The Snakeskin Blue Fantail guppy pairs a busy, patterned body with a huge, clean blue tail, and the two halves of the fish could hardly be more different. The body is gold and green, covered from shoulder to peduncle in fine black snakeskin lines, with a flash of aqua behind the gill, and behind it the tail spreads into a wide fan of bright sky blue.
That fan is the whole point of this strain. It starts as a pale aqua at the base, deepens through cobalt toward the middle and darkens to a smoky navy edge, with fine rays running the full width so the colour looks almost brushed on. There is no pattern on it at all, which lets the snakeskin body and the plain blue tail play off each other rather than compete.
Body shape stays close to a standard guppy, slim and balanced, with the snakeskin marking running cleanly down both flanks and onto the base of the dorsal. The caudal opens into a broad, even fan that is close to as wide as the body is long, while the dorsal is modest and upright, gold with a few dark snakeskin marks of its own.
Males carry the full look, the gold and green snakeskin body, the aqua gill flash and the widest blue fan. Females are plainer in the body, silver grey with neat scale netting and a warm gold and orange wash over the belly and gill, but they still show the line clearly, with bright blue rays through a round tail and blue tinted dorsal and pelvic fins.
This is a generally easy strain to keep, needing standard guppy care rather than anything unusual. The one thing worth attention is the tail, because a fan this broad shows fraying and edge damage faster than a small one, so clean, stable water and a tank free of sharp decor keep it looking even.
Good tankmates include other peaceful livebearers, small tetras, corydoras and similar calm community fish, with fin nippers best avoided as with any guppy strain. A dark background suits this strain especially well, since it makes both the gold snakeskin body and the pale blue at the base of the tail read far more brightly than a pale setup does.
As livebearers, a settled pair will produce broods of fully formed, free swimming fry roughly every four weeks, with no egg laying stage involved. The snakeskin body pattern tends to show first as the fry grow, while the blue colour and the full width of the fantail come in more slowly, so young fish are best judged at around two to three months old.
Sold as a breeding pair.
The Snakeskin Blue Fantail guppy varies between individuals in how dense the snakeskin sits on the body and how dark the navy edge of the tail runs, with some fish carrying a bright, pale fan and others a deeper, darker blue, both being normal for this strain. Stable, well maintained water supports the cleanest colour and the fullest finnage, and a routine of weekly partial water changes combined with steady filtration keeps the fan edge intact rather than ragged. A varied diet with occasional live or frozen food added to the usual flake and pellets also supports steady growth and helps the tail reach its full width as the fish matures.
The blue on a Snakeskin Blue Fantail guppy shifts from aqua to cobalt as the fish turns, so the tail rarely looks quite the same colour twice in a planted tank.
