Fry Colouring???

Ok, so my longfin common male and my shortfin common female spawned at the begining of last month. As it was the the males first time and the fact he was under constant attack for another male I had at the time, there was only 12 surviving fry. Of those twelve, two are albinos and the rest are what I guess are common brown/black!

My question is this, how long does it take for fry to fully colour up?? The 10 fry that aren't albinos are seeming to take along time to look the same colouration as their parents. They seem to be on a sliding scale from fully black/brown to patchy black/brown and some have patches that from above look transparent! I still expect them to turn black/brown as they grow but they are 46 days old now, is this normal? I have seen some fry pictures on this forum and after 5 or 6 days the fry seem to have coloured up? Just wondered why mine are turning so slowly?

Cheers James

Any chance of you posting any pictures?

Normally once the yolk sac has gone they are perfect miniature versions of the parents.

I haven't got any pictures as they are in my basement which is quite dim, so they don't turn out so good. I will try and get some pics this weekend.

interesting!

do you have any albino females? I'm just trying to see where the albino could have come from. But it looks like you have two commons both with the albino gene, so when they crossed you get the odd albino offspring. If this is the case then the slidding scale you mention may be the ones with both the albino gene and the common gene where the colour is taking longer to develop and prob wont be as dark as the pure commons ever.

Doug wrote:

interesting!

do you have any albino females? I'm just trying to see where the albino could have come from. But it looks like you have two commons both with the albino gene, so when they crossed you get the odd albino offspring. If this is the case then the slidding scale you mention may be the ones with both the albino gene and the common gene where the colour is taking longer to develop and prob wont be as dark as the pure commons ever.

X 2

When I bread a calico male with different common females i thought, to start with, that I had all common's, however, about 2 weeks later the gold / orange started to develop in some of them. I know for sure that the females I had had albino genes but I didn't get any albinos in 3 batches! But then when he finally bread with the calico female I had about 50 calico's and only 5 albino's...

Gee this gene pool thing gets confusing!! Lol..!!

if you wouldnt mind, add the counts to the thread i have going in the breeding section looking at crosses. very helpful for me

Nor worries mate.

Just copy and pasted to your thread.

Pete

Doug wrote:

interesting!

do you have any albino females? I'm just trying to see where the albino could have come from. But it looks like you have two commons both with the albino gene, so when they crossed you get the odd albino offspring. If this is the case then the slidding scale you mention may be the ones with both the albino gene and the common gene where the colour is taking longer to develop and prob wont be as dark as the pure commons ever.

No I don't have any Albinos in the tank, just the one common female and I had two common males. Had to remove one however due to fighting so just the two commons now. As I stated I keep the fry in the basement and the lighting is dim so I put three into a small measuring jug this weekend and took them upstairs into the light!

Under closer inspection from above they have white spots and have some dark pigmentation, but it appears light, maybe greyish at the moment. They also have a slight pinkish colour to them. From the side view however, the pink colour is not visable and they look silverish/grey with white spots! I have never seen Calico fry before so I don't know if that could be a possabillity, I still think they will turn black though as they are slowly getting darker! 50 days old now so very slowly!

I have some pics I will try and upload if I can work it out!

Definitely not calico but the parents MAY have the gene, hence the slightly more blotchy appearence.

We could start hypothesising on the different colouration being due to geographical origin of the parents, or the grand parents etc.. but considering the high likelihood of interbreeding down the line this would be a pointless exercise

You may even just find that the lighter colouration could be from stress...?? (Just throwing ideas out there..)

Fat42b wrote:

Definitely not calico but the parents MAY have the gene, hence the slightly more blotchy appearence.

We could start hypothesising on the different colouration being due to geographical origin of the parents, or the grand parents etc.. but considering the high likelihood of interbreeding down the line this would be a pointless exercise

You may even just find that the lighter colouration could be from stress...?? (Just throwing ideas out there..)

Cheers for the reply, to be honest I didn't really think anything of it until I came on here and saw lots of pictures of fry that were much darker than mine after 4 or 5 days. As it is my first batch I wasn't sure if anything was wrong, although they seem healthy and are growing well! As I say they are getting darker but taking a long time to do so! Strange really.

its not normal as far as iam concerned...they do get stressed and change colour often but if they are constanly like this then are distressed or a different species of ancistrus...have you got any pics of the parents???

Curby wrote:

its not normal as far as iam concerned...they do get stressed and change colour often but if they are constanly like this then are distressed or a different species of ancistrus...have you got any pics of the parents???

I am pretty sure they are not distressed but they are this colour all the time and have been since they appeared out of the cave. Some are darker than others and there does seem to be a sliding scale from light to full black/brown. I don't have any pics of the female but she is a common short fin, pretty much I see on most of the photos on this website. I have a couple of the male that I will post below but there not that good so probably wont reveal much!

Do you think they could be ill Curby?


Adult male


Male Again


Juvenile Male

nah, i reckon thats normal

I get some of those mustard looking fry every now and again. Its one of the quirks im trying to figure out. so far im clueles but it is more common with common x albino but does come every now and again with common x common.

I have grown several of them out and so far they all revert to normal colouring once they get to about 4-5 months. I have no idea why.

no iagree with doug they are normal, parents are commons..noprobz here...