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)
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDay by day, night by night, my hobby keeps surviving in limited time and space, but never stop! Categories
All
Archives
September 2019
|