"albino" eupterus

[Albinoeupterus]

here is my "paradox albino marbled synodontis eupterus" what 2 fish would cause this mutation? and are there any true albino eupterus out there or golden? i want one so bad. and a synodontis clarias those are so beautiful with that red tail

[bekateen]

Hi Albinoeupterus,

Welcome to PlanetCatfish!

About your fish, to me it looks more piebald than albino.

Cheers, Eric

[Jools]

How long have you kept the fish?

Cheers,

Jools

[Viktor Jarikov]

It seems they have just appeared on the Predatory Fins list some months ago? And under the name cited in the OP.

[Jools]

I know the thread's gone a bit cold, but this looks a more like LLD to me than anything else.

Cheers,

Jools

[edds]

Lateral line depigmentation would run along the lateral line wouldn't it? This seems too random to be that and looks like a piebald mutation. But I'm not catfish expert.

It certainly isn't an albino with the eye pigmentation the picture shows.

[Acanthicus]

Funny that they are suddenly showing up, and in the US first it seems, I saw two specimens this weekend at the OCA Extravaganza. And even though I am normally not into this colouration and especially not in man made forms, they can look rather stunning really. I will upload photos later to compare, the two were very different to each other.

[Heck]

I got one of these this morning as an early Christmas present - I've been drooling over them since I first started seeing photos in May, but couldn't quite bring myself to pull the trigger for various reasons. Santa Claus decided for me

I don't know fish color terminology or genetics, but if these were horses they'd be pinto - patches of depigmented skin in an almost random pattern across the body (in horses, various genes can cause patches of depigmentation; each gene will have its own general phenotype but ultimately the exact distribution of white markings has some randomness and won't be identical between any 2 individuals).

Does anyone have any idea how this pattern could come to be in s. eupterus? Is it a de novo mutation, or the result of hybridization? Perhaps with gold nigrita(?)

I read the hybrid thread last night. I am *definitely* Joe Aquarist who doesn't know better than to buy a hybrid (for all I know, maybe I already have; my oldest eupterus is a little funny looking). Well - I guess I *was* Joe who doesn't know better, and now I'm more informed.

But if these "pinto" eupterus turn out to be hybrids, I'll admit that I fully have no regrets and I already want another one.

[Heck]

Some of them seem to mature to a pretty gold shade in the "white" areas. See this guy's video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAMbtnLy ... BiNWFlZA==

He says that he has 2 and the other is not gold, and when they were babies they were not different - he did not realize that one would turn gold and the other would stay white.

[edds]

It's unlikely (but not impossible) that this has arise from hybridisation. Crossing even two different albino mutations in the same species leads to all normal in the F1, never mind between species. Plus the gold nigrita are distinctly yellow even as small fish instead of the white looking areas on this form.

[Heck]

If they're all normal in the F1 generation, that just means that it's a recessive gene. So each parent is by logic homozygous for the trait they show, and each F1 offspring is heterozygous. So then of the F2 generation you could simply pick out the ones showing the trait and they'd be homozygous for the desired gene and thereafter breed true.

For a species that can produce large numbers of offspring in a fairly short generation time, this seems manageable - no? Obviously this is complicated by synos being hard to breed, and I'm not clear on the fertility of fish hybrids. From the prevalence of hybrid synos on the market I had been assuming that they were fairly fertile - but that's not to say that the heritability of their genes is completely unaffected (an example from my equine background is the mule - donkey father, horse mother [the inverse cross is a hinny; less studied because they're uncommon for a variety of reasons] - in general mules are sterile, but in the very few cases when a mule has been fertile, they pass on only horse traits. Cross the rare fertile mule with a horse and, instead of an F1b 75/25 horse/donkey, you get 100% horse).

If this is *not* the result of hybridization, do you think it's a de novo mutation? Or some other possibility I'm missing?

[edds]

You often have different mutations on different loci though so you'd be better banking on this also working with another mutation to produce the piebald effect.

Plus you'd need to backcross to eupterus to produce a hybrid that looked like eupterus.

I think this is a novel mutation.

[Heck]

Idk, the idea of a mutation like this just popping up - surprise! - still *to me* seems statistically less likely than achieving the pattern and coloring through selective breeding - but I'm definitely coming from a different world and I'm far more familiar with accomplishing something like this through outcrossing rather than hybridization, and I really don't know what extra complications that could add.

If it were a simple outcross (not hybridization) between two parents each with a unique phenotype:

EEaa x eeAA you'd get a 9:3:3:1 ratio of phenotypes in the offspring. That 1 is your eeaa F1; if you get 2 of them, they'll breed true.

I realize I don't have all the info here, knowing nothing about fish breeding, I'm just musing/trying to understand.