Mystery Otocinclus baby?

[Brayden]

Was walking by my tank today and I noticed something strange on the front of the glass. I believe it’s a baby otocinclus catfish but the stage thing is I haven’t owned an oto in over 2 years. It’s a new setup that has only been up for a months and the nothing new has been added since the original inhabitants and plants that I already had. If anyone can confirm an ID that would be great. It also seems to be skinny so is there any foods that I can prepare to increase its chances?

Edited June 1, 2023 by Brayden

[nabokovfan87]

That's a wonderful surprise. Congratulations!  @xXInkedPhoenixX also is known for the Oto breeding.  A really fun journal if you're interested in seeing it.

You could try powdered repashy soilent (or super) green.  Algae wafers as well would work too. (check the ingredients for ones with spirulina as your first ingredient)

Now that you know they are there you can keep an eye out.

what else is in the tank right now?

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

SO AWESOME! Looks like a suckerfish of some kind for sure!! If you've only had Otos it is very very likely!!! I have many pics of babies in several stages on my journal that should help ID!

[Brayden]

Awesome thank you! There are 3 bristlenose plecos, 1 clown pleco, 7 aeneus corydora, 3 leopard danios, and an African dwarf frog. 

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

There IS a chance it could be a pleco too. Just from the angle you posted I cannot say for sure it's an Oto. Either way it's still a VERY cool thing!

[Brayden]

At first I thought was successful with breeding plecos for the first time but I’ve been checking the caves every couple days and the male has never laid on any egg to my knowledge. The male is a blue eye Lucy and the two females are albino. I don’t know how the genetics work so I was surprised to see it dark.  

[Odd Duck]

You can actually get browns from a lucy to albino cross.  There are 2 different albino genes in bristlenoses and apparently when some albinos breed to lucys the phenotype can revert to “normals” because they have their recessive color genes at different loci which means their recessive genes are “covered” by normal genes at loci opposite to their recessives.  So crossing a lucy and an albino, you can also get either lucys or albinos again, depending on hidden recessives or even which strain of albinos you have.

One of the oddest things is that the 2 strains of albinos crossed can produce all browns because their albino genes are at different loci, unless one or both parents have both of the albino genes.  Offspring from a crossing of the brown offspring would be a mix of brown and albino (assuming there’s no lucy hidden) but they could be either of the 2 different strains of albino with no visible way to tell which is which, so further albino crossings among those albino offspring could produce only albinos or a mix of albinos and browns.

So there isn’t a single answer for what you would get from a lucy - albino cross because the color genes for BN’s are scattered across many different loci.

[Brayden]

Thank you so much. I purchased an actual flashlight instead of trying to use my phone and I have determined that my pair of plecos did breed and the baby reverted back to their normal coloration. Thank you for the information about genetics!!!

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

That's super interesting @Odd Duck! I just got 2 longfin albinos from another fish keeper and he was also surprised about his outcomes. His pair is longfin albino female and a regular albino male. He came up with his first small spawn and got several common longfins and 2 albino long fin! (below is screenshot from a video he sent before I got them):

Edited June 1, 2023 by xXInkedPhoenixX

[Odd Duck]

On 6/1/2023 at 12:04 PM, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

His pair is longfin albino female and a regular albino male.

He’s got to have the “mismatched” albinos but at least one has to have one copy of the recessive for the other’s doubled up albino recessive alleles.  If there are 25% albinos, then it’s theoretically only one heterozygous for the other’s homozygous.  Lots are calling it type 1 and type 2.  Some say there’s no visible difference between them, some think there are some differences but I think part of that is confusion on what albino is vs. lucy.

They only know it’s 2 strains because they pop out browns.  I don’t think it’s fully understood why the albino genes “cancel” each other.  I’ve seen it speculated that they express the albinism in different ways - with both types of recessive genes interfering with melanin production but in different ways.

So potentially each fish has 2 sets of paired loci that have potential to cause or carry albinism.  It’s speculation that every albino fish has a pair of A1’s plus a pair of A2’s(a1a1A2A2) for instance, and A1A1a2a2 for the “opposite” albinos.  Now here’s where it gets complicated because the inheritance, or more likely the gene expression, isn’t completely clear as far as I can figure out.  I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around how the “normal” genes cancel out the “other” albino genes in a cross but not the fishes own albino genes unless there’s some weird overlap in the gene expression.  The issue appears to potentially be secondary to there being more than one species in the hybrids we routinely call bristlenoses.

It definitely isn’t as simple as a1a1 x a2a2 since each fish theoretically has 2 copies of genes at 2 separate loci - each has a pair of a1’s and a pair of a2’s (or A2’s) or the opposite.

A1A1A2A2 = brown, A1a1A2A2 = brown, a1a1A2A2 is brown, a1a1A2a2  and A1a1a2a2 should both still be brown in theory with straightforward inheritance and expression, and a1a1a2a2 should always be albino, but I don’t think it’s that simple or there’s some weird interaction happening.

If we look only at phenotypes, enough albino crosses throw all browns that these parent fish you would expect to be a1a1A2A2 or the opposite A1A1a2a2.  If that’s true, when those offspring are crossed out they should theoretically throw 100% brown phenotype because they will be either A1a1a2a2 or a1a1A2a2 which doesn’t appear to be what happens.  They will actually fairly reliably throw around 25% albinos (assuming no other hidden recessives) which only makes sense if they are either a1a1A2a2 or A1a1a2a2 since that would throw A1a1A2a2 brown - 25%, A1a1a2a2 - brown(???) or a1a1A2a2 - brown(???) - 25% of each or 50% overall of of the “near misses” with an overall total of 75% brown phenotype, and a1a1a2a2 - albino 25% phenotype.  But it’s not unusual for these first cross offspring to throw closer to 50% albino and sometimes more from the breeder reports I’ve read.  That only makes sense if A1a1a2a2 and a1a1A2a2 are albino phenotype or if at least one or the other is an albino phenotype.  🤷🏻‍♀️ It is most certainly confusing since it doesn’t make much sense with simple Mendelian genetics.

Then you can throw all the other colors in which each seem to have their own loci!  Blue-eyed lemons (lucys = leucistic or missing melanin but not missing yellow or red pigment), super reds, green dragons, and snow whites (which I don’t think anyone has figured out yet).

Well, that’s far too much word vomit with far too much speculation!

 

[Odd Duck]

Oh, and longfin appears to be dominant and can be bred into any color.

[Torrey]

@Odd Duck, are we sure it's only 2 loci? 

🧬

Bear with me, but in A&P we learned that the human genome project identified one set of genes that control the amount of melanin in the eyes, another set controls the melanin expression, and a third set controls secretion.

Hence the various shades of blue, and how some people seem to change eye color with strong emotions (they do, due to interplay between expression and secretion), and the entire class went "but high school biology said BB = brown, bb = blue, and Bb = hazel"

And the teacher proceeded to break my brain with genetics.😅 Turns out sometimes (like blood type) their can be 3 options: O, A, B, and the resultant AO = A, AA = A, AB = AB, BB= B, BO = B, & OO= O

So, we can chalk it up to the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know?

[Odd Duck]

I don’t know that we are sure.  With it known that there are several locations for various colors since many crosses of colors give us brown on the initial crossing, there are certainly multiples alleles.  How they all interact with each other is a bit of a puzzle.  There is some speculation that there is a third loci for albino but I only found that from one source.  Some crosses with albinos give us brown, but which albino allele does that?  Unless somebody starts doing a ton of genetic testing on BN plecos of various colors from various sources (a small fortune), it’s somewhat speculative based on results of crossing various combinations, then back crossing to parents, crossing to albinos (which may not give the expected results due to multiple alleles involved unlike in other albino strains).

I kept finding references to somebody having posted a genetic database for BN plecos colors/breeding, but all the links to it were dead and copy paste on the links or typing them in did not get me anywhere.