cacatuoides 'triple red'

[fearnespippin]

Hi everyone

Thought i'd share a few pics of my cockatoos, my first go at posting so apologies for the poor quality pics and i hope it works!

I had a very nice male the other year with colour on both ventral fins (a quadruple red?!).

I couldnt find a colourful female to cross him with, but some of his sons had a bit of orange, i've crossed one of them

with a nice female i found a couple of weeks ago

who's now got about 50 week-old babies, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Chris

 

[blueblue]

The female caca is also very beautiful!!

 

[Genes]

Superb female specimen!

 

[fearnespippin]

Cheers blueblue, genes, i thought she was a little male when i first saw her! It's a shame i couldnt breed her with my original male. Her and 'Dad' are making very good parents though, I've got them in a 17 gallon tank with four marbled hatchetfish and four Nannostomus marginatus.

It'll be interesting to see how colourful the male babies turn out, i don't know how closely the genes for colourful males and females are linked?

Also, does anyone know if the food you give cockatoo babies affects their colouring? I know with some species it can make a difference, but my baby cockatoos seem to colour up anyway (i feed them on BBS for the first month or two, and then flake and occasional bloodworm and other frozen food).

 

[fishgeek]

most pigment molecules are pretty much orginated from similar core building blocks

by suppling these in the diet you can allow more colour to develop
carotene(the green of grass) makes chickens egg yolk more yellow
similarly the crustaceans flamingo eat feed on algae and this green leads to the flamingo pink


i believe cyclops are one of the higher quality foods for nutritional pigment building blocks(for want of a better term)
some will suggest actually buying astaxanthin etc to utilise as one of the favoured building blocks
i have not tried it as i dont make my own feed
spirulina may also be of benefit

andrew

 

[fearnespippin]

Cheers for that Andrew, can you breed cyclops at home to feed to young fish? Or can you buy them freeze-dried, I don't think i've seen them frozen?

Is the spirulina that you can buy in flake form likely to do the trick?

The cockatoos seem to colour up regardless, compared to the macmateri and aggies i've bred before - with my aggies i went from thinking i'd got mostly boys to realising that they were mostly girls! Whereas I've got some cockatoos that are just over 1cm long, which are already starting to colour and quite easy to sex.

Chris