my breeders and fry development

[astrochick00]

Oops, sorry. Only the first one in the above pictures is albino. The second one is not; I got the pictures out of order. And, as predicted, about 25% of them are 'browns,' like the very last photo (or turks or whatever they turn out to be).

I'm curious too, Allwin. I need to spend time going through other people's fry photos to find some early pictures of albino babies.

[astrochick00]

So I took a few more photos of my spotted pigeon fry this afternoon. From the first batch of photos, Ryan very astutely noted that there were two basic color morphs; one "clean" and the other "dark." An earlier spawn showed that the parents must both carry an albino gene and that both have only one copy of PB, since some of their offspring are albino and some show stress bars like browns/turks. It turns out that the "clean" babies are, indeed, albino. So Allwin, you can check out these photos to see the difference between albinos and non-albinos at the two week mark (they hatched two weeks ago, have only been swimming for about a week).

The last photo of these four (if I get them in order) shows the albino fry. There is no way to tell conclusively from these photos; you just have to watch them long enough to see the pink pupils.





Thanks for looking, and happy groundhog day!
Lindsay

[marinum]

Fantastic!

[astrochick00]

Fantastic!

Thanks!

[astrochick00]

Here's a fun update:

I currently have two spawns from my 'spotted' pigeon pair in grow-out. I will post updated photos of them later tonight for anyone who is interested. Their second spawn has a larger proportion of albinos than would be expected, and this is a nice/interesting surprise. The spotted pigeons have spawned again and have wrigglers that will be swimming sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning. I also have two very exciting spawns from other pairs. I have a big Stendker fire red female who took a liking to a (bigger) white leopard male, and they got it right on the first try. It's a big spawn, and they tended it like pros. There are about 300 free swimmers in their tank as I am typing this. And this was actually a bit of a shock….they are ahead of the curve a little, wasn't expecting them to leave the cone until tomorrow morning. Here's a picture of this new pair:


The female is to the right in the foreground, male is behind her. They didn't attempt to spawn in the community tank, but I could tell that they were "going steady." I moved them to a breeder less than a week ago, and they were both pecking the cone the next day. It's funny because this female was part of a 'maybe' pair from Hans, and she absolutely detests the (maybe) male….she laid eggs twice by herself, running him off between passes. She would have killed him if she could get her mouth open wide enough to do any real damage. The big white leopard male got her attention and respect immediately. Have to respect a lady when she knows what she wants

I will post some fry pictures within the next day. Thanks to anyone who's taken the time to read and look at the pictures of my fish!!!

[OC Discus]

Birmingham is not far from Tupelo. When Im in the market again I will remember you. Looks like you are set for a lot of offspring.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nc0gnet0]

Are these spotted pb's Stendkers? If so, your not going to have any albino fry.

Rick

[astrochick00]

Hi Rick,
The spotted pigeons are of unknown origin, but I am certain they are not Stendkers. I will try to shoot a couple of good photos of their albino babies. I know I'm not a discus pro, but I have done other strains of tropical fish for a long time and feel pretty comfortable telling albino from non-albino. In the three spawns I've watched so far the albinos stand out like crazy for the first week, even as wrigglers they are nearly colorless where the wild types have obvious dark eye spots. After about 10 days, it is hard as the dickens to sort them out. My older fry are between 2.5 and 3 inches now, and the two albinos are pretty easy to spot. Their eyes are obvious, but they are showing color variation from the others now as well.
If I have a photo already uploaded, I will post it in a couple of minutes. If not, tomorrow.
Thanks for your interest!
Lindsay

[astrochick00]

Here is a shot of their current wrigglers. If you look closely, you can see that most of them are 'black' and the others are nearly colorless:


I was extremely worried about this in the first spawn, and it's what brought me to this forum in earnest. I tried searching a thousand different ways for "pigeon blood fry two different colors." Finally decided that they might just be developmentally screwed up and not have eyes, and the first spawn was not super successful, ~60 fry with only 2 being albino. It took the second spawn for me to feel confident saying that the "clear" wrigglers are albino. I didn't want to make a big assumption and set myself up to look dumb

Confident enough to say it straight now, though. At least for this pair, the clear fry turn into "cleaner-looking" free swimmers (see earlier posts on this thread) and they eventually grow up to be interesting juvies with obvious pink/red pupils and lack of pigmentation compared to their siblings.

Have you noticed the same thing with your albino/non-albino spawns, Rick?

[astrochick00]

Maybe this one is easier to see, cropped and larger file size:

[astrochick00]

Birmingham is not far from Tupelo. When Im in the market again I will remember you. Looks like you are set for a lot of offspring.

Definitely OC! I'll meet ya halfway. I am planning to get rid of about half the adults I have, and I'm currently freaking out about finding more space for grow-out. I NEVER thought I would have 5 spawns at once, not to mention hundreds of angelfish fry. Crazy dam fish; they ignore each other until I have exams, and then WHAM!

Not complaining……yet

[nc0gnet0]

Have you noticed the same thing with your albino/non-albino spawns, Rick?

When working with two albino intermediates, which would produce roughly 25% albino fry, the albino fry seldom make it, so only having two that have survived does not surprise. If you value these fry more than the others, I suggest you start culling, or at least separating the non-albino offspring from the parents (leave the albino fry with them).

Bear in mind however, while what you are seeing could very well be albino offspring (hard to tell from the pics), there are other possibilities as well. Golden based fry will look nearly identical to albino fry in the early stages of development, but the golden fry are hardier and do much better than their albino cousins, and can compete and keep up with the darker fry. The same goes for snow white based fry as well (although I do not think your fry are snow white based, based on the parents).

-Rick

[astrochick00]

Hi Rick,

Thanks so much for the info; I guess I will just have to wait and see what comes out. I don't actually value any particular phenotype over another this early in the game. I like that there might be albinos because that makes raising these fry even more interesting…..more possibilities. The first spawn I had off the spotted pigeons is the first spawn I've ever raised. Those juvies are getting close to 3 inches now, they hatched on Nov. 22, so I think I'm on track pretty well with them. It's a definitely a learning curve, and I'm super grateful to people like you who post lots of pictures and info document your spawns. It helps so much to see it done the right way.

Lindsay

[astrochick00]

A bunch of photos from today, most are baby pics, a few random shots of fish who wanted food/attention, and the last photo is my newest addition. He arrived this morning from Hans, and he's just as cool as he could be. It took the big guy nearly a whole minute to settle into his current tank. I plopped him in, he cruised down to look at the amazon sword plant, twitched his fins at it, and then started trying to find something to eat. Totally unruffled by the whole shipping thing.

Thanks for looking at my photos!

[Trier20]

Hoping to see some little brown ones in the near future!