Albino bristlenose fry

[HH Morant]

My young (less than one year old) bristlenose plecos laid a few eggs. The albino male guarded the eggs and when they hatched I took the cave out and poured the contents into a 20-gallon tank that is overrun with algae and has a few otos in it. There were only 12 to 15 fry. Now they are more than a week old, but they look black or dark gray. There are two females that could have laid the eggs - one albino and one super red. I suspect it was the red female that laid the eggs, but I'm not sure.

Are week-old albino bristlenose fry supposed to look dark-colored?

[Fish Folk]

On 8/11/2021 at 2:06 PM, HH Morant said:

My young (less than one year old) bristlenose plecos laid a few eggs. The albino male guarded the eggs and when they hatched I took the cave out and poured the contents into a 20-gallon tank that is overrun with algae and has a few otos in it. There were only 12 to 15 fry. Now they are more than a week old, but they look black or dark gray. There are two females that could have laid the eggs - one albino and one super red. I suspect it was the red female that laid the eggs, but I'm not sure.

Are week-old albino bristlenose fry supposed to look dark-colored?

Unless it's just a "juvenile thing," I suspect the answer may lie in what the dominant / recessive traits of the parents are. If the  fry look different than parents, then once they mature and are crossed against each other the resulting spawn will generally be at least 1/4 like the _grandparents_. It's a hard thing to be absolutely secure with Punnett Square guessing, but that seems to hold true. There are other traits that may manifest in different proportion . . . e.g. long fins may not display with one color or another, but operate from another genetic "node."

By way of anecdotal example . . . my son bred "Tangerine Painted Lyretail Mollys" as his last BAP project. The fry came out about 50/50 black/tangerine. As they've grown, we can now observe some more details: some black mollys are lyre tail . . . others are rounded tail. Likewise, the "tangerine" is split between koi coloration like the parents, and others are more uniformly orange. Also the lyre tail is randomly mixed between these. 

[HH Morant]

On 8/11/2021 at 1:37 PM, Fish Folk said:

Unless it's just a "juvenile thing," I suspect the answer may lie in what the dominant / recessive traits of the parents are.

Thanks, Fish Folk. Maybe I have several different colors. It is hard to get a good look at the little boogers because they have so many places to hide and they are so small. 

[lefty o]

its just genetics passed down. my last pile of fry from my regular bristlenose had for the first time ever 3 or 4 albino's.

[ARMYVET]

Genetics is a tricky thing.  Everybody in my family is right handed and good looking.....Im not either of those!🤔

[lefty o]

On 8/14/2021 at 8:37 AM, ARMYVET said:

Genetics is a tricky thing.  Everybody in my family is right handed and good looking.....Im not either of those!🤔

was the mailman left handed?😜

[ARMYVET]

On 8/14/2021 at 10:05 AM, lefty o said:

was the mailman left handed?😜

COME TO THINK OF IT😡  And he was ugly as sin too!

[gardenman]

My baby super reds tend to be dark splotched (for lack of a better word) while young then turn more and more red as they mature and once they're a couple of inches long they're a solid red with no dark splotches.

[HH Morant]

Update: The fry are doing well and eating Repashy Soilent Green and zucchini. It turns out there are 35-40 fry, and not just 12-15 as I guessed initially. When I poured the contents of the cave into the quarantine tank, most of them apparently hid immediately. With lots of potted plants in the tank, there were plenty of places to hide, so my first estimate was very wrong and on the low side.

 All of them still look gray. We will see how they develop.

[ARMYVET]

On 8/17/2021 at 4:56 PM, HH Morant said:

 All of them still look gray. We will see how they develop.

Pictures....WE NEED PICTURES....dont you know we love seeing pics of baby fish?!?  LOL

[HH Morant]

On 8/17/2021 at 4:17 PM, ARMYVET said:

Pictures....WE NEED PICTURES....dont you know we love seeing pics of baby fish?!?  LOL

Thanks, Armyvet! What was I thinking? I will get some pictures this evening.

[Scott P.]

Congrats on the babies, HH.

[HH Morant]

 

[HH Morant]

OK there is the baby picture. Not an albino or a super-red in sight. But they are pretty cute anyway.

[Crabby]

Oh wow, they really all do look like commons. Bummer. Unless that’s what @gardenman saw with their super red babies. 
But I mean they’re still baby bristlenoses, can’t be mad about those!

Edited August 18, 2021 by Crabby

[HH Morant]

On 8/17/2021 at 8:28 PM, Crabby said:

Oh wow, they really all do look like commons. Bummer. But I mean they’re still baby bristlenoses, can’t be mad about those!

Now that I watch the video again, some have a light yellow color on their noses, and some do not have it.

[ARMYVET]

Awesome video…thank you for the pic.

 

[gardenman]

On 8/17/2021 at 9:28 PM, Crabby said:

Oh wow, they really all do look like commons. Bummer. Unless that’s what @gardenman saw with their super red babies. 
But I mean they’re still baby bristlenoses, can’t be mad about those!

No. Mine are still mostly red, but with dark splotches on them while young. They outgrow the splotches but are mostly red even while young. Those look more like common bristlenose plecos to me. They may change a bit as they get older, and maybe become more calico.

[ARMYVET]

The thing with albino genetics is Albinoism is a one off genetic.  From what I remember from school. Even if you tank 2 albinos and breed them together they will not all come out albino.  It is even possible none of them come out albino because it is a weak recessive gene.  All of those common looking babies all carry the albino gene and when bred with lets say another common color they could produce some albino young.   

[ARMYVET]

You can also think about it in how two, I think the correct term now is "Little People"(if not I deeply apologize) can have children that are average size.  Same principle applies to the genetics with fish.

[Crabby]

On 8/18/2021 at 9:07 PM, gardenman said:

They may change a bit as they get older, and maybe become more calico.

My calico BN fry start off looking albino, and slowly get brown covering the rest of their bodies. So I don’t think any will be calico. But I’d be interested to see if there were different ways of calico appearing in fry.

[HH Morant]

Just had to see what a video in landscape looked like.

[HH Morant]

OK I got the wrong video. This is the landscape one. Looks better I hope.

[Atitagain]

I had a batch of bristlenose fry around 40 babies with a male chocolate and a female albino about a 1/3 are albino.

 

[HH Morant]

Looks like I got no albinos, but hoping for some yellow-nosed plecos.