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I have the same coloured male and female, and they have produced both brown and mixed colour offspring, my question is will the multi coloured babies keep their colouring or will they darken the same as mum and dad?

Interesting. Where'd you get your parents from? Do you know what the parents of your parents looked like?

I got the parents from my mum when her tank split - I rescued all her fish luckily I had both room in my tank and suitable tank-mates. Mum fish is long finned and dad is just ordinary brittle nosed, both brown. The last lot of babies (before I knew they had them) are all brown like mum and dad. This batch have been kept in a separate tank I set up just for them and are about 5 weeks old now. If they'll keep their colours I might keep a couple of them but there's over 50 babies in there I can afford to be a little picky!

Kinda got photo's of mum and dad, though dad is camera shy and mum only showing her belly! Have just noticed though that dad has a little bit of orange on his tail?!? HTH

A little bit of color on the tail is normal in the common Ancistrus.

It's really odd how your fish have had a previous brood of all normal fish and this new brood has a mix of normal and mottled fish. This cannot be explained simply.

What is the mix between normal and mottled like? Is it something like 50:50? 75:25?

I have no idea whether they will lose their pattern as they grow.

I will look in the morning properly as I only just noticed something was odd this evening even though I had noticed the colours before. From memory though I would guess maybe a quarter to a third have some odd colouring. If I can get a better photo of parents tomorrow I will add them on.

Isn't mum a calico/false LDA16 bristelnose? That could explain the orange color on her tail. Better pics would be helpful.

The young fishes look like normal ones and calico ones.

Isn't it od that so little is know about genetics in one of the most commonly bred catfish?

I am not an expert on genetics but the genes that express color pattern and fin length on BN do not seem to follow simple Mendelian genetics all that well.

I have a pair of long fin BN that have been breeding continuously for the last 3-4 years.

Most of the time they throw about half brown and half albino LF fry. Sometimes they throw nothing but brown short fin fry, at least once they have produced nothing but albino short fin fry. I have never had any calico fry.

I have two spawning pairs of albino long finned BN from the original pair. Both of these pairs throw only albino fry but sometimes they are short finned and sometimes they are long finned.

It's very odd.

Andy

mum and dad have hidden behind the filter so can't catch another of them at the moment, but I did got two of their previous batch and also another of the cutie new one's. Again, will add mum and dad when they show their faces!

FINALLY got a better pic of mum, well, 2 pics I have uploaded, and the best I can get of dad, still not good though he's being shy still

and I know it's off topic, but I uncovered my most shy of all fish...my gold nugget

Hmmm, with a better look at dad, it doesn't look like he's a normal brown color. The light color going all the way down the caudal fin spines and the light area on where the caudal fin attaches to the body is not normal. The dad could be a calico.

and finally - dad!!!

So you think he's not just brown? See, I have got an orange one, he's called Rusty for obvious reasons (not managed to get him out of his hiding place yet though) but compared to him this dad definitely looks brown to me. And no, Rusty is not the dad of the other fish as they were quite obvious about what they were doing whilst I was watching TV!!

Ok, I thougt mum was dad and dad was mum. But obviously dad is a calico, just as the male who isn't dad.

So you have adult calico's and juveniles who look like calico's.

salamander wrote:So you think he's not just brown? See, I have got an orange one, he's called Rusty for obvious reasons (not managed to get him out of his hiding place yet though) but compared to him this dad definitely looks brown to me. And no, Rusty is not the dad of the other fish as they were quite obvious about what they were doing whilst I was watching TV!!

Hmmm, Rusty being a dad would explain the completely different brood compositions you've gotten between this brood and the last brood... The extent of calico in your dad is not extreme; I don't know how much it normally varies but the fry appear to have much less brown area.

The mother looks like a 1st generation cross between a brown long fin and a gold BN (long or short fin doesn't seem to matter). I have found that these are quite easy spot as they look like "normal" brown long fin BN however where a brown long fin will have crisp white marks, the cross tends to have an off white / pale yellow marking.
The father looks like more of a calico, I would suggest that perhaps he was "less calico" and sold as a brown.
I am not seeing anything unusual in your fry "populations" based on my experience with BN's that were known to be crossed to start with. (2nd generation gold cross seem to have more gold present in their fry)

Additionally the colors of your nugget seem a bit red, so I am wondering if your camera is giving a subtle colour distortion?

Cheers