how does this work?

i got a breeding pair for 60$ and they are both albino. they laid eggs and they hatched. i see all the babys all over my tank..... they are all brown..... they are only about 2 weeks old.


will they change color into albino in a few days or do i have a set of brown producing BN ?

Hi,unfortunately they will not turn into albinos,they will remain brown.This does sometimes happen although i personaly still do not understand how 2 albinos can produce coloured fry as the albino gene is recessive.sorry i can't help more but i am sure someone else will be able to explain why.

Do both yours have red/pink eyes?

this kind of pisses me off actually. but i ordered a trio so i might be ok.

It might not happen every time,are they red eyed?

you know what i dont know. let me look.

im not gettin rid of the pair i have. ill keep them i do want brown babies also. just didnt think id have a albino pair to get them.

but if i have 2 pairs both albino i should be able to produce enough browns and albino babies like i wnt.

nope... all babies are brown with brown eyes

Sorry i didn't mean the babies i meant the parents.Have both the parents got red eyes?

yes they do

O.K well I am sure someone will be able to help you and give you some information on this.I am sorry that i can't tell you anymore than i have.

Wait so you only have the two albino in the tank, right? No others?

What this sounds like is that you got a homozygous common mating with an albino (which will produce all commons), but if you only have the two albinos... well we'll have to revisit the recessive gene theory... again. >_>

yes i only have 2 adults so there is no way of getting them crossed. i was there when the female laid her eggs.

i talked to the guy i got these fish from and i also read a post about it. he says every once in a while they will lay brown pleco. even though they are both albino. now i have a 100% brown pleco batch. this is ever more rare to have happen. normally its a 50/50 type thing.... this is all based off what i read so i could be wrong.

kind of still makes me mad. so i ordered another breading pair of albinos. so worst comes to worst i will have a lot of brown plecos and albino plecos. im ok with that. now i dont have to worry about raising some brown plecos to bread.

i might try to trade some of them for some long fin pleco. i want a pair ofthose next.

Hm... well albinism isn't so straight forward as 'it's a recessive gene'. Coloration is through melanin production, and the interruption of the production of melanin can be from many different paths.

Albinism is essentially caused when one (or multiple) of the genes associated with/participating in said paths has a mutation that renders it useless. For the most part these are recessive, however there are rare instances where the mutation is in a dominant gene, in which case you have a dominant form of albinism.

It is *possible* that your albinos suffer from said condition (especially if they were from the same batch), and happened to be both heterozygous, which would allow for the production of fully 'common'-looking offspring.

Which explains why 50/50s can occur from fully albino parents.

However, the fact that you have 100% common fries is rather abnormal... since chances are that at least some must be albino, following the above theory.

They (the parents) do have red eyes, so that's a sure sign of albinism though.

Hrm...

Do you mind telling me how many eggs were laid and how many eggs did not develop (if at all)?

100% of them hatched. i dont see any babies that died either. they are all healthy from the looks of it. been swimming all over the tank. i also puit out some string beans for them tonight and i hope to see alot of them eating tomorrow if not tonight.

Coolk. How many eggs total?

my guestimation would be about 30-40 eggs. probly closer to 30....

Hm... I give then. It's probable that you were just unlucky with dominant albinism genes.

welcome to the world of genetics. It does your head in. I have spent the last 3 years looking at population genetics and i swear it took years off my life!

I think this is just one of those odd cases that we can explain based on the current data at hand. It would be amazing to do some work on these, and believe me i do plan to (if only to allow me to get some wild caught BN into australia )

Just need to get rich first, and im working hard at that now

Lol same. Genetics grad here, though I guess that just makes it worse on my mind. ><

Aussielands really need to loosen up a bit in regards to animals tho. >_> It's not like our environment is pristine anymore or anything... <_<

yeah, PhD here Seriously nearly went insane inside the glass bubble labs, I seriously thought i was going to start to see the world in a series of As Ts Cs and Gs like the matrix

And you do have a point about the environment but by the same token, not all people are as aware of the damage that can be done. we want these fish for our tanks and that is where they would stay...but then again you get nutters who intentionally released foxes into tassie. I can understand the hard line, it annoys the c#&p out of me but i understand it

Down2earth,if you use a male or female from the new pair and put it with the oposite sex from the old pair that might give you a better chance of albinos (if they are not related).The only thing you can do is mix and match them and see the outcome,it would be a great experiment that I myself would certainly do.Would be nice also to know the outcome of your future breedings for reference in the future.

Do you know if the pair you have bred are siblings?
Are the new pair related to each other or related to the pair you have bred?

well the new pair is about 9-10 months old.

the old pair is 5 years old.

i have no idea what the blood lines look like for these fish. but the new young pair produce 100% albinos. so im not going to break them up. but i did order an additional female with them. so i can take the old pair female and put with the young male and female, and take the non paired female and put with the old male. maybe ill get more albinos out of him this way.

but i want brown and albino babies. so would it be bad to keep the old pair together to get brown babies and keep the new pair to put out albino babies ?

i think i can sell the browns faster if they have the "albino gene"

No it wouldn't be bad to carry on as you are,it would be fine.

As for selling them as carrying the albino gene,well unfortunately you don't know if they do,some might,all might or none might.It depends what gene they got from each parent.

I think i am correct in saying this,maybe someone with a bit more knowledge can confirm this or say if it is incorrect.

well im on batch 2 of all browns from this pair. i added another female albino. was wondering what effect would it have if i had another male in this tank ?

i have a fully grown male brown in one of my other tanks and since he is in this tank with a gold nugget. im not sure if they will get along. so i figured id move the brown to one of my other tanks. since this tank produces browns anyways. what harm would it be to add a brown male

Hi how big is the tank again? Having two males in one tank,unless it is really big and they live at each end of the tank,usualy causes problems.

well the brown male is in a 40 gal breeder right now. but i was thinkin about moving them to my 60 gal tank.