Tips: Breeding Hongsloi

[blueblue]

I have kept several pairs of top quality German super red Hongsloi,
and many of them have spawned and some F1 have grown up...

To my big disappointment, most of them do not inherit their parents'
super red coloration... so, i wonder whether there are any tips to
create super red Hongsloi F1, which are as red as their
German super red parents... (P.S.: excluding the bad tricks of using
harmones or chemicals, i have tried all the best quality natural food
for enhancing their color, and i am successful in getting super red F1 of
Aggie, Eliza, BUT not hongsloi!! ...) any sharings are most welcome

 

[Mike Wise]

The super red color comes from feeding cyclops. You might be able to produce the same intense colors using a marine micro-plankton, too.

 

[fishgeek]

astaxathin powder i think contains some of the precussors for pigmentation
i believe it is product found in the exoskeleton crabs so mikes suggest maybe a natural way of feeding it

i believe it maybe sold as a health food/miracle cure for almost everything in people
prehaps supplementing there diet with it may help intensify colour

andrew

 

[blueblue]

Thanks Mike and Andrew. In fact, i also fed the fish that i want the
coloration to be super red with the whole freeze dried cyclop-eeze and bbs.
It works very well for Eliza and Aggie.. but fails for the Hongsloi... maybe i should increase the amount of cyclop in the food mix

 

[apistobob]

I have the same situation with my hongsloi. The offspring fail to achieve anywhere near the colors of the parent. I have fed a variety of diets rich in color enhancing ingredients with no success. The fry I produce are very drab.

In my more cynical moments I suspect that the females provided with these spectacular males are line bred to produce poorly colored offspring. this keeps other breeders from producing a competing product. I might be creating a conspiracy that doesn't exist but....

In about 1990 I received a pair of the first cacatoides "Orange Flash" that were imported. The male was a spectacular fish and the female a typical cac. The F1 generation of these fish were the dullest cacs I have ever seen no color of any sort in the males. Through father/daughter and then father/granddaughter crosses I was able to get fish that expressed the orange. I was then able to line breed to fix the strain.

I took the female from the import pair and crossed her to a double red and the offspring were horrible - no color at all. This lead me to believe that the female was selected to not produce colorful offspring, in the hope that other breeders would not produce this desirable fish. Of course, this could just be my paranoia!

In terms of the Hongsloi, another possible answer is the use of hormones but I just don't get the feeling that these fish are hormone treated.

Not much help but I thought I'd chime in.

Bob

 

[blueblue]

Thanks Bob for your sharing.

Yes, i agree that hormone kind of additives could work BUT i myself would never consider this option.

The importance of female is actually a secret by my fish farms.
I have talked to a couple of local fish farm owners and breeders,
they all believe that the female fish is the most important ingredient
in getting good F1. For hongsloi, their tips include finding the female fish
with a more shiny face (but do not require red body!?). This one works to some extent but i still feel disappointed about the F1... especially compared to their top quality german parents...

 

[apistobob]

I completely agree about the need for quality females. Most of us focus on breeding the best/most colorful males. However, it is likely that the female is the most important in terms of passing on good traits.

Bob

 

[The Pack]

I too am having the same problem with my A. hongsloi. My original stock is from the Czech Republic and the males looked like those on pages 478 and 479 of Romer's Cichlid Atlas Vol.1. The f1 males which are now approximately 9 months old look like the picture at the top of page 485.
I feed live BBS until they are large enough to handle chopped frozen blood worms and from that time on they are fed one meal of the BBS and one meal of frozen blood worms each day. They are all very healthy but very drab looking Apistos and I am seriously considering giving their tank space to my growing population of A. baenschi.
It is somewhat comforting to know that I am not the only one with this problem and will be watching the boards to see if someone can come up with an explanation and a solution

 

[Mike Wise]

Unless you have access to a lot of cyclops, I imagine that you will continue having the same problem with these cross-bred hongsloi. The old Rotstrich/Red-streak hongsloi of the 80s never were as colorful as the forms sold now, but at least they could be bred & the offspring had the red colors of their fathers.