spotless australe

[TyroneGenade]

Hi all

I was just going through the Gallery and was stuck by how many pictures there are of the spotless Aphyosemion australe. For those of you keen to know the history of this fish prior to me sending eggs to Au SL et al go and have a look here: http://tgenade.freeshell.org/saks/articles/spotless.htm. I'm so happy to see the fish doing so well in Singapore. Only one person has them in South Africa now...

Are there any of the spotless chocolates still about? If not it is very easy making more: cross the spotless gold with the chocolate fish. Raise up the fry and cross them with each other. About 1/4 will be spotless. You then just have to keep breeding them. The easiest is actually to cross the spotless gold x wt back to a spotless gold fish (not the original mother or father please!).

Ciao

[CM Media]

For those of you keen to know the history of this fish prior to me sending eggs to Au SL et al go and have a look here: http://tgenade.freeshell.org/saks/articles/spotless.htm. I'm so happy to see the fish doing so well in Singapore.

Errr....

Tyrone,

When I received the eggs from you, all the fry when grown up were in the normal chocolate form. I've also ordered a few bags of eggs from Mr. Karl Walter at the same time. If I recalled correctly, I found one spotless male after the 3rd generation.

From here, I started to pay a closer attention on the females and realise there were a few female which also do not have spots on it's body.

I passed a pair to Sia Meng and he managed to get the pair going and sebsequent spawn more and more spotless were spotted. Now, the pair that I had gives almost all spotless offspring. :wink:

Are there any of the spotless chocolates still about? If not it is very easy making more: cross the spotless gold with the chocolate fish. Raise up the fry and cross them with each other. About 1/4 will be spotless. You then just have to keep breeding them. The easiest is actually to cross the spotless gold x wt back to a spotless gold fish (not the original mother or father please!).

I don't agree we should get the different colour strain australes to cross breed eventhough they're aquarium strains. What we're facing here now is that the chocolate australes are throwing out some very odd colour australes (between orange and brown) due to some accidental mix.

We're bring new chocolate and orange australes back to Singapore to re-establish the strain. When we're asked by fellow hobbyists whether the australe we had is orange or colcolate, we can't answer as the offsprings varies.

I do selective breeding for my australes but will not cross them from different colour strains. This is just my personnal preference and when asked, I can safely tells them mine is a chocolate, orange or gold australe. :wink:

[TyroneGenade]

Hello Au...

I know I sent to some-one who got lots of spotless and normal fry... (Loh? or was it Gwee?) I always maintained mixed strains because they were always so much more vigorous than the pure strains. I was getting about 20 to 30 eggs per day from my AUS...

Personally I don't like the pure "aquarium strains." I consider them to be badly inbred... riddled with infertility (or rather mate incompatiblity).

If you want to seperate the gold, intermediate and chocolate forms it is very easy as the body colour seperated by Medelian genetics. The predicted ratios will be 25% chocolate, 25% gold. 25% intermediate. For the record I never really had fish that were darker than others but in retrospect I think the chocolates we had were actually wild type. In that case the ratios will be 50/50 assuming that both parents are heterozygous.

Set up several prs. Some prs will not be compatible and you will have to mix them up to find a happy couple. Observe the off springe fo the prs and only selects the fish that give all chocolate/wt or gold fry. The fry of the "preliminary pure" breeding fish will need to crossed with each other as the gold gene may be latent---masked by the wt if one of the parents was heterozygous. It would take 3 generations to get pure fish but you MUST select for fertility and establish several lines of pure fish for out crossing to prevent inbreeding.

The spotless genetics is... well strange. It looks like simple dominat/ressesive but you do get a wide range of intermediates. It may be sex-linked...

Personally I like the mixed fish. I could have a tanl of 30 fish of the whole colour spectrum. It was very impressive and practical. If people didn't want my fish then tough. They were the losers.

I would dearly like to know what happened with all the eggs I sent to Singapore...

When I received the eggs from you, all the fry when grown up were in the normal chocolate form. I've also ordered a few bags of eggs from Mr. Karl Walter at the same time. If I recalled correctly, I found one spotless male after the 3rd generation.

This is very odd. At the time I sent you eggs I also collected eggs for myself and about 25% were spotless. Maybe as luck would have it all the spotless fish were female which as you admit you didn't pay attention to. Also, you state that all the fish were in the chocolate form... this is odd as you indicate the hybrid fish to be of variable body colour... Maybe it was Karl's fish that brought in the strange colours.:-)

Did you breed the fish you got from me with each other? I've always found that the spotless gene manifested in about 25% of the fish of heterozygous origin. Their parents were a lovely spotless gold male (wt--/--) and spotted wt female (wt++/+-). In the F1 you should of got many spotless fish especially as mom was wt+/- for that trait and dad was wt-/- giving 50% wt+/- and 50% wt-/- fry... Given random pairing you should of been able to get close on 50% spotless in the next generation (Harvey-Weinberg genetic equilibrium).

[A little genetics for beginners, I say dad was wt--/--. This means that in reference to the wild type fish he was a mutant for the body colour (1st -) and a mutant for the spots (2nd -). Mom was wt++/-- indicating she was positive for the normal phenotype but carried the mutant genes. ]

I think the problem was mixing Karl's fish into the brood. He probably wasn't breeding with hetrozygous fish.

[timebomb]

I know I sent to some-one who got lots of spotless and normal fry... (Loh? or was it Gwee?)

You probably send them to Gwee, Tyrone. I don't remember receiving any eggs from you and I'm quite sure about this as I make it a point to remember favours.

Loh K L

[TyroneGenade]

Another option is that I've gone quite mad... well madder than usual.

[gweesm1]

Hi Tyrone,

I did not receive any AUS from anyone. Infact I have no luck with non annuals eggs at all except for those I bought from Loh. (SJO aside)

regards