Posted by Mirra mage on December 12, 1999 at 04:37:52:
In Reply to: Re: New guppy in gallery posted by Clarissa on December 12, 1999 at 02:11:28:
: Very NICE!! Now, can you get them to breed true?
Well, Clarissa, it really helped to have a stable true-breeding strain of blues to start out with. Then, after 2 generations of wildly mixed phenotypes, it was just a matter of line breeding blue albino brothers to albino sisters. Fortunately, I messed up...I mis-labeled a non-albino female & she was preggers before I caught it. I figured, oh well, let her have the fry & maybe something cool will turn up. Well, something cool did. Apparently, she held the true breeding blue gene, whereas NONE of the female albinos did. All her sons came out blue tuxes, which I interbred & some of those came out albinos, all of the males blue ones! A few of the following generation have reddish bodies, but I am gradually getting that trait bred out, though I'll persue this strain seperately. Now I am getting only blue albinos, however. Since albinism & bright blue color are apparently recessive traits, it made things a lot easier.
The side-effect of the blue is a virtual lack of yellow in the bodies of the male fish. Compare the unretouched image in the gallery to other male albinos to see what I mean.
Frankly, this was the easiest strain I've ever stabilized, taking only 6 generations to get the basic color down, but I still need to work out those red bodies. Other than that, so far they are true breeders for 3 generations now.
PEACE!
Mirra