Whats possible with cacatuoides??

[ste12000]

Hi all, im itching to start a new project in the fishroom, dont get me wrong i love breeding the Apistos i have and get great pleasure from them, sometimes though it can get a little bit routine and to keep my interest i like to start little projects, ive done a lot of tetras, pencilfish and discus as side projects alongside my rack of Apistos however im now looking for soemthing slightly different(For me anyway!)

Im drawn to the Blue angelfish and in particular the Pinoy and Paraiba forms which have recently been developed. While researching these fish ive been trying to learn basic genetics, im a very long way off understanding the basics but am slowly learning more and more and enjoying myself in the process.

Now breeding Angels is all well and good but they flood the fishroom with fry, take upto 12 months to mature and breed(Meaning it can be 18 months before results can be seen) and dont interest me as much as the Apistogramma.

Now ive always had cacatuoides knocking around(They help pay the bills) and currently have three pairs that i know are strong strains with no mixed genetics. One pair of double reds, one pair of triple reds and one adult pair of white/golds and plenty of young pairs of each strain. I also have pure F1 males and can get some orange flash males from a friend.

Now what im thinking of is to start mixing strains up, raising them up seperately and seeing just what can be produced by mixing genetics in cacatuoides.. I have several ideas for new possible strains, id guess that anything is possible if someone actually worked hard with the species.

Compared to the Angelfish breeders who know the genetics of their strains back to front and the discus breeders who have opened a pandoras box of colour strains and hybrids with their work, the Dwarf cichlid hobby is miles behind in comparison.

Im not looking to solely keep domestics, i still have lots of wild projects in my 18 tank Apisto rack but am looking at devoting a dozen or so tanks over to this cacatuoides project.

The reason for putting this up on the forum is to get some feedback and help, is there anyone aware of work done with Apistogramma genetics? or any references of any serious hobbiest breeding with cacatuoides? ive obviously trawled the internet and found snippets but nothing really detailed or interesting. Id be interested in anyones input on this subject.

Cheers, Ste

 

[Mike Wise]

I haven't heard/seen anything on this, so I can't help you there. Personally, if I wanted to breed new color strains of A. cacatuoides I would try to find and improve the blue forms. There were photos of some phenomenal almost electric blue cacatuoides back in the 80s. I never saw any myself, but would prefer this to all of the red forms.

 

[Melanochromis]

To me, it appears that "orange flash" is a recessive trait, while the "double/triple red" is not. It is possible to have some flash babies from triple red parents (if they both carry the flash genes) and this is confirmed by a couple of reports from breeders in my country. But I have never heard of triple red babies from flash parents.

Hope this helps

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

To me, it appears that "orange flash" is a recessive trait

I'm not sure about colour, but dark chequering is definitely dominant, so you won't get a chequered tail from 2 Orange Flash parents, as they don't have the gene for chequering.

cheers Darrel

 

[steve1572]

Very interesting ste ive been doing the same with my cacs at the moment im trying to breed my golds with all yellow and all orange fins with no chequering ive just got a spawn from gold male and yellow finned female and johnny has offered me some orange flash to do the same with what were you thinking of trying

 

[Melanochromis]

Hi all,
I'm not sure about colour, but dark chequering is definitely dominant, so you won't get a chequered tail from 2 Orange Flash parents, as they don't have the gene for chequering.

cheers Darrel

Agreed. I have that assumption too and so far I have seen only supporting evidence.

 

[Apistoinca]

Does caca reali have sneaker male??? Does it apply that all Apisto do have sneaker male...