BN questions?

chopper831 · Post by **chopper831** » 19 Dec 2007, 06:33

I just came home to find out my BN plecos had bred. The young are already coming out of the cave and their yolks are used up already. I have a few questions:

1. They are in a 35 gallon tank, I'm worried that they might be eaten by the other tankmates. The tankmates are as follows: 3 zebra danios, 2 guppies, 6 bronze cories, and the male BN along with 3 females. I'm mainly worried about the cories.

2. All my BN plecos are albinos. This whole batch appears to be brown. I understand that the albino is a recessive gene, but by mating two albinos together shouldn't I at least get some albinos? I haven't seen a single albino fry?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Bas Pels · Post by **Bas Pels** » 19 Dec 2007, 08:27

Regarding Q#2, two possibilities can exist:

1 your line of albinism only shows later. It could be that your fry becomes albinos when reachg, say, 3 or 4 cm

2 your albinos are of differnet lines. Albinism is the lack of the ability to produce pigment, and thus no pigment is around. however producging pigment involves more than 1 enzym, and it could be 1 line of albinos misses 1 enzyme, while another misses an other line.

Offspring of these 2 lines has each and every protein arount to produce pigment, and thus they are not albinos.

However, your offsprings fry will be supposed to show albinism. If the Mendel rules of heritage apply, half of them will be albinos

tzwms · Post by **tzwms** » 19 Dec 2007, 14:46

The question of albinism isn't quite as simple Mendal's Law of dominate vs recessive because there is more than one gene involved and it becomes even more complicate when you have different lines of fish involved. This isn't technically correct, but for one line of fish the gene for albinism is located at point A and for a second line it can be located at point B. When you cross these fish, you do not get 2 recessives at either point and you will end up with all 'normal' colored fish. The two lines may have been line bred from different original BN species, and therefore the albino gene is located at two close but different locations.
I have the same situation of 2 albinos producing normal offspring. I had been waiting patiently for them to spawn and of course when they did, they didn't use the nice caves I had supplied but instead used a hollow in a piece of wood and I never knew they had spawned until I saw the 1/2 inch babies in the tank and they are all normal in color.

HTH

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 19 Dec 2007, 20:38

I have only heard of this happening from Barbie, moderator of this section. Case in point, Albino normal fin X Albino Long Fin produced normally pigmented fry.

The genotypes of the OP's fish must have a mixture of parentage derived from similar fish. Otherwise in the normal Albino BN strain the Mendelian predictions hold true.
I have crossed Normal X Albino BN then bred the F1's and the result was 25% Albino and 75% Normal Phenotypes. When I breed my Albinos together I get 100% Albino.

tzwms · Post by **tzwms** » 19 Dec 2007, 22:01

First, Nice batch of wigglers!!
I think that it is a matter of how closely the parents are related - strain-wise. In my case I bought the parents from 2 different people. When you look at the fish, they are both obviously albino, but there are physical differences. Although they are the same age, the male is much larger than the female. He is also much more orange in his coloration and is generally a more robust fish. These fish probably came from different breeding programs that used different species of BN to fix or invigorate the longfin feature. That outcrossing resulted in the albino gene being at a different location on the chromosome. Thus when mine spawned, there is a mismatch and all of the fry are normal color.
Again, it is not just color or no color; there is also what color and those are not necessarily located on only one gene.
There was another thread I think on this forum on this same subject a couple of weeks ago and one of the responses came from a gentleman with a degree in genetics - he did a much better job of explaining the details than I can do.

HTH

andywoolloo · Post by **andywoolloo** » 19 Dec 2007, 22:46

WOW!! What a heck alot of babies! Congratulations!!

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » 20 Dec 2007, 16:16

I had thousands of reg and albino BN's last year but stopped breeding them. I called them "Guppyostomus". Breeders are large adult trios and each female would spawn within a day.

I ended up feeding many wigglers to my Discus. They are still tender while they still have yolk sacks.

tzwms · Post by **tzwms** » 20 Dec 2007, 18:41

You're killing us Larry!!!!

thefishdaddy · Post by **thefishdaddy** » 23 Dec 2007, 07:30

I have a similar situation I bred a long fin male with a short fin female both albinos and got brown fry, not sure if i got long fin and short fin babies because all the fry are mixed in the baby tank, when breeding the short fin female with its siblings they produced all albino, the same with the long fin male when bred with its siblings produced all albino long fin fry.

In another group siblings of both long fin brown female and albino male produced all brown LF fry, the parents of these fish where unrelated LF brown female and albino SF male and they produced all 4 types of fish LF and SF both brown and albino to bad i didn't keep the grand parents of these fish to back cross them and see what would come out, I am sure someone has sort this out already because Mendel's theory does not apply to this type of fish. if you add the calico in this mix it will just add more confusion.