Crossbreeding Heirachy

[GreenDiscus]

I am at a bit of a quandry wot to do next........

Last year I bred my nice yellow "clean" pair of discus only to find 95% of the babies were badly peppered or lacking in colour and shape, so I have only kept 6 fish from the 3 spawings which are a nice electric yellow.

Then I split up the yellow parents and paired them with two nice blue diamonds from which I have also had 3 spawnings with the new genetic mixed bloodline.

Looking forward I would love to know......

1) Would the "clean" 100% yellow babies second generation have "quality" issues as well if bred together ??
2) Would you breed the best of the "mixed blood" babies with each other when old enough ??
3) OR would you breed the best of the 100% yellow babies with the best of the mixed blood babies ??
4) OR indeed I have heard you should go back to crossing the grandparent line yellow parents with the mixed blood babies ??

Clearly Discus Genetics is not a strong point of mine can anybody PLEASE help !!!!

[ILLUSN]

just cause a gene isn't expressed doesn't mean it's not there. unfortunately if there is any pigion in the bloodlines you WILL get some fry (50-99%) with some peppering.

if you cross your clean babbies with each other or any other strain you wil stilll get some peppering.

the further from pigion you get the less peppering there will be.

[GreenDiscus]

Thanks Illusn

Whilst I felt like replacing them with a pair that may give a higher percentage of viable young, I guess we also breed Discus for the challange and fun of not knowing what you will get !!!!!!

Do I assume you do not think it is possible to retain the pidgeon yellow without peppering etc for a large perentage of babies, even if the yellow biased cross bred babies are used ?

Interesting that the cross babies from the first pair (see topic below) are developing some peppering (nowhere near 95%), but the cross babies from the second pair are ALL very clean albeit a small number of eggs fertilised.

To me this may suggest that the original "clean" yellow male carries the peppering gene whilst the yellow female does not. What do you think ??

The prodgeny are deliberately put in a tank with black substrate, so I can see the results clearly. This regime has meant I have had to bite the bullet with culling which was initially distressing..........

[Merrilyn]

It is distressing Green Discus. But if you want to achieve a clean bloodline, it's the only way.

Just because your adult fish show little or no pepering, doesn't mean that a large percentage of their siblings were also clean. Very often the asian breeders will cull heavily, and we only get to see the clean fish. The peppered siblings having been used as feeders for large fish.

Any line that comes from pigeon blood genes will most certainly throw fry with peppering at some stage. The only way to eliminate the peppering is to breed from fish, which have no pigeon blood in their history. A very very long task indeed.

Without the pigeon blood gene, we wouldn't have a lot of the gorgeous red fish that we have today.

[GreenDiscus]

Thankyou Merrilyn

Clearly this is much more of a long term challenge than meets the eye. However, this is part of the thrill of breeding modern pidgeon strains, since as you say they are gorgeous, and even more so if only 5% are pepperfree and hence rare.

The mixed blood yellow babies dominate the blues well above the 25/50/25 formulae I was expecting, showing the strength of the genes. Do you know breeding was perhaps more successful because the newly hatched fry went to the blue (black) parent for most of the first week before moving to the yellow parent after that.

I used to cover the black filter with a 100mm white waste pipe, and stick black tape in the tank corner close to the breeding pot wrigglers for the two yellow parents for the first week. (ie-fry kept in the black corner with the yellow parents and did not perish in the filter)

Cheers Mike

[discus lover01]

Hi 1 thing to try but this takes many years to get clean fish is to grow up clean babies and breed back with mum and with dad then you keep some from thise spawns,then breed them back over with there mum and dad again, You then grow these fry up and breed them together , with luck the pigeon gene is almost gone giving either full clean yellows or sone that have very tiny amount of peppering.
It's a 3-4year plan but if you are getting less peppered in the spawns as they grow means you are reducing the pigeon gene and getting a much cleaner fish.
It takes about 3-4 years to make new Colour strains of discus so this gives examples on how far in front the discus farms plan.
Hope this helps

[the german]

3-4 years? wishfull thinking,i would say it takes you 6-8 to create a new strain,at least.and you must have some luck as well,a new strain dont means you have a few of the fish you want in each spawn,it means poeple can buy your fish and when they breed you get at least 80% young who look like their parents.

[GreenDiscus]

Thanks Guys

Just wondered what is the reasoning for "breeding back with mum and dad" rather than with very similar clean siblings ??

So between you we think 3-8 years is needed to get a new strain with 80% similarity of young plus one hell of a lot of luck !!!

I hope to still be breeding discus in 8 years, and whilst I can see the attraction of breeding recognised pairs of a known breeding outcome, I personally find mixed breeding a facinating challenge, if sometimes disappointing !!

I will try and take a few pictures of my first "mixed blood" great, great grandparents Stage ONE this weekend, bearing in mind I may be 8 years away from a WOW response back from the forum haha....!!!