Retaining the colour of outsprings in Apistogramma

[yorky]

Guys, do you think this enhanced redness will breed through to the offspring?

[illumnae]

only if the offspring are fed with red enhancers too

[yorky]

only if the offspring are fed with red enhancers too

So you can confirm that the colour wouldn't breed through?
I am just wondering how the german breeders are able to breed such red fish like A. hongsloi II and A. hongsloi III.

[Milk]

Guys, do you think this enhanced redness will breed through to the offspring?

Hey yorky;

From what i have observed from my Super Red Apistogramma Elizabethe,the redness on the parent pair is there but without redness colour enhancing,the redness will start to fade towards orange..I have managed to breed and have a comfirmed male with the same level of redness as his parent, now currently this male have being fed with some colour enhancing food..But till now,the redness have not got intense as what i hope to acheive..So to answer your question, I seriously think that the redness will be passed onto the off-spring..But the intensity of the redness will only be further enhanced if the fries are to be fed with colour enhancing as well..

Regards
Milk

[leeruisheng]

I'm not sure but it's quite difficult to tell. Because when they are in fries stage, can hardly see any colours. And also red enhancer will be fed to fries since young. Unless the fries are brought up to adulthood without any colour enhancement but yet still display strong colours, then can conclude they are in their genes.

At the rate my hongsloi is showing red, I think I need many many generations to achieve what the Germans have.

[Milk]

For German Breeder to get the intense redness that they desired, I seriously think that they stick strictly to a pure line breeding. And to further enhance the redness,they feed the young fries with their own special colour enhancing feed...that will only explain why we will always get quite a big adults when we buy a Real Super RED Elizabethe or any other Apistogramma species from Germany..And did anyone wonder why german breeder only got a few selected species of Apistogramma that they are breeding??

Regards
Milk

[illumnae]

i don't know much about apisto breeding and genetics, but i'm commenting based on what i know from discus keeping.

whatever colours that are enhanced and brought out via enhancers like astaxathin are not "breed true" characteristics unless the fry are fed with the same enhancers...this is as enhancers don't change the genetic structure of the fish - what it does is bring out what is latent within the fish. thus if the parent doesn't show that redness without astaxathin, it's unlikely most of the fry will show it.

however, the red characteristics of a fish can be bred through selective breeding, as within a batch of fries you'll have some more colourful than the others. if you select the best of every batch, of course being careful not to inbreed, and breed those repeating through multiple generations (you'll need a number of starting pairs to make sure no inbreeding occurs) you will find you get better and better colouring, perhaps one day even reaching german standards

but of course if you feed enhancers to both parent and fry, good colours will show and as long as the enhancers are kept as a constant in all the resulting fish, you'll be able to breed them as if the enhanced colours are breeding true =)

[leeruisheng]

For German Breeder to get the intense redness that they desired, I seriously think that they stick strictly to a pure line breeding. And to further enhance the redness,they feed the young fries with their own special colour enhancing feed...that will only explain why we will always get quite a big adults when we buy a Real Super RED Elizabethe or any other Apistogramma species from Germany..And did anyone wonder why german breeder only got a few selected species of Apistogramma that they are breeding??

Regards
Milk

What do you mean by pure line breeding? Meaning from the same locality(river)?

[illumnae]

if the german fish keep their colouration after being sold here, i doubt it is caused by colour enhancing feed. fish that have their colour enhanced through natural enhancers or even hormones will lose the colour after awhile of not being fed it, as the colour enhancement is a result of metabolizing the enhancers. once the enhancers are gone there's nothing more to metabolize and they revert to their original colouration.

what is likely is that they do pure line breeding as Milk mentioned, selecting the best coloured juvs of every batch to breed down to the next generation and after many generations the best colours are obtained. this sits well with Milk's observations that only a few selected species are being bred. it takes years and years to improve a strain to a noticeable extent.

just for an example that i'm familiar with, look at all the non pigeon based red colour discus you see around that breed true (e.g. San Merah, Red Cover or Rose Red). they are created from the original wild brown discus that's nowhere near red, yet you have such red fish being produced and breeding true. that kind of drastic change doesn't come easily or quickly and it is probably using the same selective breeding methods used by these discus keepers that the german breeders are producing such wonderfully coloured apistos

[Milk]

From What i understand of Line-Breeding...Correct me if i'm wrong.

Line Breeding:
1: Required 2 or more wild species of parent.Breed parent is fine as long not from same parent.
2: Enhance the parent colouration with colour enhancer while trying to breed them.
3:If managed to breed the fishes,continue colour enhancing through the fries.
I believe a certain level of redness will be passed onto the fries.
4:Once the fries are bigger,chose the Best/Alpha from each brood and pair up.
Remember!!! No in-breeding which means the paired fishes must not be from the same parent!!!
5:Carry on breeding the fishes with the above mentioned method.

So to conclude Line Breeding:

Line Breeding = Different parent fishes + NO In-breeding

Regards
Milk

[PLee]

nicely explained Milk!!

[illumnae]

colour that was enhanced will not be passed to the fries, but the enhancer will bring out the same latent colours that were enhanced in the parents. basically the latent colours do pass on to the fry, but they will not be shown to the full extent unless the fry are constantly fed with enhancers too. enhancers only affect the particular fish itself and does not modify the genetics in any way at all

also, the original parents do not necessarily have to be wild. they can be a pair of germans with nice colours that you want to improve on in the strain. just that if you trace the roots of all fish eventually you'll find they originated in the wild la =)

but other than that line breeding is what milk explained very nicely =)

[Milk]

nicely explained Milk!!

Thanks.I'm just trying to share and explain what i have read up to other Apistogramma breeder or any other breeder.

Regards
Milk

[ranmasatome]

Guys, do you think this enhanced redness will breed through to the offspring?

To answer the question directly...
IF the redness is enhanced, then No...
Like mentioned already.. its not genetically passed down.

[celticfish]

first important point.
you cannot change the genes.
the colour enhancer still has to start from the genetic base.

from there selective/line breeding to enhance the desired trait (genes).
the best fry with the desired trait (colour or physique) are selected.
from what i recall jack wattley used 7 pairs of separate parents when he started his selective breeding for the turquoise discus.
in-breeding is common in selective breeding.
if you have a very red parent fish bred with its own offspring the resulting fry are "double-dosed" with the red genes.
you then "improve" the desired trait.
however, if this is overdone (for discus, 5 to 7 successive in-breeding) the robustness suffers.
things like deformaties, lowered resistance to illness, reduced clutch size, sterility, etcetera set in.

jack's great success comes from the fact that he maintained seven pairs (of the same line) from the start to maintain genetic diversity.
so whenever he encountered stuff like reduced clutch size, deformaty rate increase, sterility, etcetera
he could cross in/out of the seven lines he had to inject/maintain genetic diversity.
"normal" outcrossing (back to royal blue? - his base selection) would set him back generations.
the eventual result was a robust strain that breeds true.
this is why i do not bestow as much respect on our local "breeders".
imho the local discus have been crossed to a pariah status.
yes, you may have some fantastic individuals but they usually don't breed true and have unacceptably high level of genetic defects.
so i reverted to mean by going "wild"...

[illumnae]

i concur mostly with what celticfish said, especially the bit about Jack Wattley and his experiences with creating the Turquoise strain =)

just one nitpick - crossing a colourful offspring with a parent doesn't so much give a "double dose" of genes as it does strengthen the trait that the particular gene creates. there's no like "red gene count" in a fish which can double in number when 2 very red fish are crossed as the number of genes in any organism is fixed.

What it probably does, in layman terms, is to "hardcode" in one particular gene that red is the predominant colour to be, and "overwrite" information about orange or yellow colours that might appear in other individual fish of the same strain. over several generations, what would happen is that the information stored in the gene would purely be to make the fish red, with all information about yellow or orange "erased" from its memory.

at that point in time, the particular trait you're cultivating will breed true and all future offspring will display that characteristic of "redness". In the intermediary generations before this, you will probably have "throwbacks" of yellows and oranges while the gene that controls this colour still retains "information" about these 2 colours. Example would be how sometimes 14 bar discus will produce 9 bar "throwback" offspring in a batch

[ranmasatome]

To answer the question directly...
IF the redness is enhanced, then No...
Like mentioned already.. its not genetically passed down.

first important point.
you cannot change the genes.
the colour enhancer still has to start from the genetic base.

Actually i should rephrase myself.. since i found how it can be misleading..
I'm not actually talking about changing the genes...in fact i agree with alot of what both celticfish and illuminae has mentioned...so in re-phrase..

IF the redness is enhanced, then No...
Like mentioned already.. this "fake" redness not genetically passed down.
even though the fish may retain this "red" gene..it won't be the same kind of red that you see naturally without any enhancement.