How often do you get color morphs desireable traits in fry

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Since we are well on the way to having plenty of puffers up here I have decided to explore genetics by starting to focus on discovering and developing desireable morphs should any naturally occur in F1 batches of my pao cf palustris fry.

Has anyone gone down the rabbit hole in developing a parallel morph strain of a species for some desireable trait? What did you learn? What were the end results?

I did make a cool platy strain way way back as a 12 year old. This idea seems to be a fun one to work on even if it only teaches me more about the puffers and never ends up with a result it will still keep the project interesting for me.

 

[Fish Folk]

I’m dying to hear @WhitecloudDynasty speaking into this.

I’ve gently explored drawing out color morphs in German Blue Rams. But it takes so much time and attentive dedication that we left off after a few generations. But we did get a few stunning flickers of possibility along the way.

Here is a “tree” starting with a Gold Ram crossed with an Electric Blue Ram. The first Generation was not impressive, but some of the fry (and 4th gen) were interesting …

Here are 2nd Gen “Opal Rams”…

3rd Gen Gold with blue highlights…

Some anomalies in some 3rd and 4th gen — headed towards more of a remarkable Opal color pattern…

The genetic stability weakened, and these 4th gen did not live long. 

Edited June 7, 2022 by Fish Folk

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

Cool flickers there. Interesting 4th gen results Id bet id be at 9-12 months per generation for these guys. 

[Fish Folk]

On 6/7/2022 at 9:23 AM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

Cool flickers there. Interesting 4th gen results Id bet id be at 9-12 months per generation for these guys. 

They can spawn at around 4-5 months old the way we keep them. But for a good yield, it takes a lot of time.

[Torrey]

On 6/6/2022 at 10:25 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

Since we are well on the way to having plenty of puffers up here I have decided to explore genetics by starting to focus on discovering and developing desireable morphs should any naturally occur in F1 batches of my pao cf palustris fry.

Has anyone gone down the rabbit hole in developing a parallel morph strain of a species for some desireable trait? What did you learn? What were the end results?

I did make a cool platy strain way way back as a 12 year old. This idea seems to be a fun one to work on even if it only teaches me more about the puffers and never ends up with a result it will still keep the project interesting for me.

 

Color genetics!!!!

Yes, this happened with my discus (1989 through 1994), I did this with guppies and bettas (not to the level of geekdom Gianne has achieved), longfin zebra danios (rainbow, metallic light blue, and golds), and now my endlers.

If you find a color morph you like, you want a minimum of 3 populations as quickly as possible. When we were breeding ducks and helping with genetic preservation of heritage breeds that had stable phenotypes, we didn't meet criteria for recognition until there were 50 different distinct populations (much easier with fish, btw).

Let me take the dog out, and I'll be back.

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

On 6/7/2022 at 5:11 PM, Fish Folk said:

They can spawn at around 4-5 months old the way we keep them. But for a good yield, it takes a lot of time.

Yeah that first batch of palustris is 2.5-3" its going to be interesting to see when they trio up

[WhitecloudDynasty]

If you start from a normal pair and waiting to see if you get a color morph, You'll have to breed the volume in hope something pop out.

I recommend you just working on their patterns, and color to begin with and see if you get something cool along the way. For example make difference marking more consisten, make it darker/lighter, thicker/thiner, bring out more yellow from their body.

Chances are the morph will be recessive, so you'll need to breed them back to try and get more of that morph. When you get 3+ fish with that morph break them into separate family. Keep them separate for as long as you can and use each family to cross to each other. 

Color morph will come naturally if you breed enough fish to work with.  You'll also need to understand inbreeding and linebreeding.

Just remember it won't be impressive now but 5-10 years from now you'll see a huge difference.

[WhitecloudDynasty]

On 6/7/2022 at 7:11 PM, Fish Folk said:

They can spawn at around 4-5 months old the way we keep them. But for a good yield, it takes a lot of time.

Here my 2 cent if you decided to breed from younger fish just to speed up generations

You'll be breeding from fish that haven't fully mature, so you won't even know if they are breeder martial. Second if you breed generation after generation after generation from very young fish you could shorten their lifespan. 

When I started breeding rainbow shiner they would normally start to fall apart after 2 years, now breeding from very grown aged out breeder, the newer generation can got closer to 4 year 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

@WhitecloudDynastythanks kindly.  I am definitely not in a hurry on this one. I figured around 10-15 years of enjoyment working this idea through. My hairy puffer colony has yet to produce fry 4 years in but is closer every day and more so with 4 smaller ones growing out to join them in 2023.

My palustris adults are all wild caught. The male spawns ever 14 days or so and has at least 2 females in there who spawn with him once every 30 days or so. That could make it even more interesting to work it through to strengthen the line with the potential variances in genetics for all the adults. Volume wise they are pushing somewhere north of 300 eggs per month and I have been selecting any keep back individuals once they hit day 30 of growth and show some pattern and color.

If I do keep any from a batch for grow out for 12-18 months before really considering line or cross breeding any morph I happen upon. My current hypothesis on the puffers is that there could be morphs connected to over or under pigment as well as morphs that impact the ability to change colors. I am keeping an eye out for them to throw lower pigment leucistics, a higher red pigment erthristics ( That I assume are possible based off those high orange T.miurus puffers that are probably erthristic morphs), or some sort of change to the ability to change color and pattern. (pics on edit)

Group standard colors females yellowish belly male white belly with leopard type pattern 

Male and female breeding pattern

My initial plan was just to reserve a smaller percentage of F1s for grow out and keep an eye out for any odd ones thrown and keep my main colony going for however long they go. I guess, based on the growth rates of my F1 fry to this point, is the Pao cf palustris adults were probably about 2 years old on arrival up here.   

Edited June 8, 2022 by mountaintoppufferkeeper

[WhitecloudDynasty]

On 6/8/2022 at 1:10 PM, mountaintoppufferkeeper said:

@WhitecloudDynastythanks kindly.  I am definitely not in a hurry on this one. I figured around 10-15 years of enjoyment working this idea through. My hairy puffer colony has yet to produce fry 4 years in but is closer every day and more so with 4 smaller ones growing out to join them in 2023.

My palustris adults are all wild caught. The male spawns ever 14 days or so and has at least 2 females in there who spawn with him once every 30 days or so. That could make it even more interesting to work it through to strengthen the line with the potential variances in genetics for all the adults. Volume wise they are pushing somewhere north of 300 eggs per month and I have been selecting any keep back individuals once they hit day 30 of growth and show some pattern and color.

If I do keep any from a batch for grow out for 12-18 months before really considering line or cross breeding any morph I happen upon. My current hypothesis on the puffers is that there could be morphs connected to over or under pigment as well as morphs that impact the ability to change colors. I am keeping an eye out for them to throw lower pigment leucistics, a higher red pigment erthristics ( That I assume are possible based off those high orange T.miurus puffers that are probably erthristic morphs), or some sort of change to the ability to change color and pattern. (pics on edit)

My initial plan was just to reserve a smaller percentage of F1s for grow out and keep an eye out for any odd ones thrown and keep my main colony going for however long they go. I guess, based on the growth rates of my F1 fry to this point, is the Pao cf palustris adults were probably about 2 years old on arrival up here.   

Sounds like you have a plan, should be an interesting project 

[mountaintoppufferkeeper]

here's hoping. Genetics is not something I've payed with yet - the variables in the puffers should be a fun thread if it all works out