Lyre swordtail male is beautiful, but because I am inexperienced in artificial insemination, having a very high ratio of male lyretail made me feel the project giving too much waste. Fortunately, I read about Kings lyre swordtail from Mr. Rainer's website and was very fascinated with it. So, I spent a lot of time to hunted for a few species of kings lyre to restart my lyre swordtail project from a new direction. Having done many try-and-error with all kings lyre swordtail males I collected from many sellers, but it seemed hopeless until a couple months ago, I got my first batch. The fact that all females used in my experiment are virginly paired to the kings lyre male, plus those females are all albino Kohaku swordtail (a good test model because females are fully recessive to all traits). Below is the video showing the Kings lyre father in my experiment: .My very first batch of swordtail frys born to the kings lyre father has 50% black eyed, bricked red body and 50% red eyed, albino yellowish gold color. A couple month passed, I was frustrated to find out that more than 70% of the wild type juveniles in the batch developed high fin, when only about 20% of albino has the high trait. This much difference between the two numbers kept me confused until present without any reasonable explanation (the ratio of high fin trait in both wild type and albino should be roughly the same at about 50%). Some events had shadowed my project that the laboring mother jumped out of her tank during a night, and the father with some of the best high fin boys were killed in an accident (bleach leaked to the tank). When those juveniles started to sex out, I was pretty much disappointed to say there was not any little clue of lyretail sighted, especially when I lost the parents. F1 inbreeding is the only way to keep the project go on, I thought. Should kings lyre trait is recessive, I doubted. Within an action of culling process, I isolated 04 early mature low fin males, "exiled" them to the outdoor pond testing the strain's resistance to temperature. Beautiful sunshine and cool rain water does positively contribute to the outgrowth of those guys; and guess what? I visited the pond today and was delighted that they are not only survived the low 60F, but also bore double swords; which meant they are carried on kings lyre trait from the father. Another detail is I found 2 female siblings (or at least their conformation convinced me their sex) with a bottom sword, an interesting fact was shared in Mr. Rainer's webiste. I will see how those females develop and keep you all updated later. So, kings lyre is not recessive at all if it appeared in F1. The fact that only male showed up lyretail trait does confirmed my hypothesis that kings lyre indeed lyretail gene resides on or links to Y (male) chromosome. Would a female with sword mean any thing to this inheritance model? Maybe some point of time, swordtail crossing to platy creating hybrid form that, for example, the pair of sex chromosome [WY] sexed out a female, yet has ability to protrude a sword. Also read related post about kings lyre swordtail and sex determination in platy fish. The video below is F1 kings lyre born in my project:
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Talking about Red-White swordtail, Mr. Rainer Rekord suggested a classification of 5 types based on the region of red pigment allocation along the body of the swordtail as the following:
The combination of III, IV and V can have the same effect as II (white belly). Variants I, II and the two combinations can expand and combine different. Until the red covers the whole body. Therefore, this breed animals may have little red. (Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/swordredwhite/) The gallery below is just an example of color region that red pigment may consistently express on the swordtail body (no matter which strain of swordtail that you could identify.) Thanks to Mr. Rainer Rekord for his observation. I myself found that the classification system is very helpful to understand Red and White patterns in swordtail strains. Yes, there're a couple strains (in fact, different genes) that express various patterns. Personally, I would explain the system as following: 1. Pinto, Peppermint or Pieball strain: Type I: Usually see red pigment express on the lower body, extending along lateral line, forward as far as to the gill, yet narrower, and backward to the caudal portion. As describing by Mr. Karl Trochu, he had another strain that he had obtained from Mr. Darrell Mefford in 2006. It produces 'all white', 'bleeding heart' (mentioned by Mr. Rainer Rekord above), as well as as red-spotted offspring. The juveniles fish change color several times before they reach maturity, making this strain a very interesting one to work with. Type II: Pieball irregular patches between red and white. This is rare, but I tried to find a picture to depict this type as in the gallery above. Variant I & II: See picture above 2. Kohaku Koi or Santa claus swordtail: When it says Koi swordtail, please don't mistake it with the Red eye Kohaku. Koi is a separate trait of color expression, representing Red and White pigmentations, while albino is about the loss of black pigment in the eyes thus resulting Red eyes (the body also suffers this loss, making the white band of Albino Koi swordtail look milky white color). In other words, you would find Kohaku Koi with Black eyes also. Type III: Red cap. The gene seems to priorly express on the head cap, then extend its red pigment further to the back, wrapping around the gill, chest, but not the belly. Red cap only is a rare phenotype produced by Kohaku Koi. As the matter of fact, the cross between two red cap would yield a higher chance of red cap in offspring. 3. Red Saddleback or Pineapple swordtail: Type IV: usually see in Pineapple strain with Red pigment cover the dorsal fin, high back (saddleback) down to the tail. 4. Red and White swordtail: Type V: commonly called red and white swordtail (may be an ambiguous name), but easy to specify by finding the red pigmentation to express in the lower body part upto caudal portion. The upper body part and head is often offset white or light blue (under light). A small Story: I started keeping swordtails from the age of 6. At that time, I was introduced to a couple of Red swordtails, a widely popular specie in the hobbyist; even up-to-now, people could find them easily in most local fish store (LFS). If you ever know about Swordtail, they are hardy and easy to keep. Not as colorful as guppy, but Swordtail makes it own way to stand long in the hobbyist favor. I remembered clearly how excited I was when I first spotted a Tuxedo in a tank full of hundreds of red fishes. I was like almost jumping into the tank to catch him with a tiny fish net in hand, not an easy job as it took over an hour; I believed I had brought up such a huge dissatisfaction to the owner of that LFS that I would never want to see me again. :D Later I learned about Wag, then I felt more interest in gold body Painted sword. Not until 2009, the first time I saw Koi swordtail and fabulously brought them home. They looked amazing. Unfortunately, they didn't give any birth but all died after about 4 months. Then they became a very scarce stock even though I had spent lots of time to 'hunt for' them in many many LFS around the city. In 2013, when having a chance to come back to hobby, I equipped myself a fish tank in bed room and Koi swordtail is the fish that I was craving for first. Commercial Koi swordtail is often come with low quality, especially when you learned about the standards of how a Swordtail breeder should be. It takes more than a year to build up a breeder from commercial strains as we should focus on selective breeding, cross breeding to improve size, shape and form, fins and tail, and color. I am still learning and keep improving my skill to build up the breeder of my own strain. It will take a long time, but it's worthy for a hobby! Breeding scheme: I started by a cross breeding a fragile albino Koi male to a hardy, fruitful lyretail Ruby red female, call Parent (P) stage. The Ruby red female in this breeding model is from Mr. Robert Ellermann. She's the offspring Red Alpha strain, so I hope that a cross breed with her would carry all good traits from this female over to stabilize my strain. When I received the Ruby red females, one of them showed pregnancy. So, I suspected that the lyretail female had already been hit. A month after her arrival, she didn't develop any sign of pregnancy, yet it doesn't enough to conclude she's virgin. But I still kept her with my top breeder (pretty old age) and crossed my finger that I will have his offspring delivered by the Ruby red female. What I noticed from her offspring in comparing with other pre-hit female siblings is majority of F1 has a brighter red than other frys from other females. So, my hope was still there :D In the limited condition of out-grow tank, I hardly could keep good track of which frys came from the Lyretail female in the project (that's my big mistake), so I had to cull-out all, but preserved only Lyretail offspring (a control to tell the babies were exactly offspring of the female breeder). Then the best F1 lyretail female was chosen to test cross to albino Koi swordtail males. This assorted F1 female was pretty aggressive when she had knocked out all 3 males from the breeding tank (these males didn't survive because 3/4 smaller size comparing to the female). But in return, she dropped amazing number from her first delivery. The F2 batch was born on JUL 18, 2015. As I presented, The parents (P) are Lyretail Ruby red female x Albino Koi male (F1). So, the female parent is suspected to be heterozygous of the Pair: Lyretail Ruby red female x Albino Koi male (P). This offspring count (F2) is about 138, with roughly 62 Koi pattern (under sunlight observation), 2 Wag pattern (I would like say ratio 50/50 between Red/Koi, totally fit with a test cross model). All Koi patterned babies were preserved representing F2 Ruby Koi generation. The fact that all offspring are Black eyes even in F2 with no albino made me hard to confirm the heterozygous female parent except her genotype is [L_ RK ++]; whilst the male genotype is NN KK aa L: Lyretail; _: wild card; N: Normal fin and tail (wild type); R: Red pattern; K: Koi pattern; + Black eye (wild type); a: Red eye (albino) More detailed video about development stages of this batch could be viewed at my Youtube channel
At two half months old, this batch underwent another culling process that top 6 lyretail females would remain as core breeders for the next generation. With some improvements in diet, water condition, and space, these fishes seemed to achieve a better growth rate than their mother before. And I am hoping from my pure albino Koi project, some brilliant albino male would come out. F3 breeding scheme: ... (to be continued) I used to have a post telling about Peppermint (Red Pigment Suppressor - RPS gene) is a recessive trait to Red pattern (the most popular pattern of domesticated Swordtail since its first introduction to hobbyists in 1922.) The oldest offspring batch from last test reached 3 months old, yet still not showing any RPL (Red pigment loss)
The next test that I am coming up with is to test Peppermint on Albino Koi pattern. So far, I am still using the full-white peppermint ♂ in last test to cross with an Albino Koi female. Why Albino female? As being proved before, Albino red eye is recessive to Normal (or Wild type) Black eye, so it would be easier to expect the F1 should yield 100% black eyes, thus playing as a control for the test. Also when the frys come out, I would like to see if the trait is dominant (suffering RPL at some point of their development) or recessive (koi pattern shows on some or all individuals at birth). B - Peppermint male x Albino Koi female: F1? (Picture or clip of the Peppermint male is posted here ... |
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