Most out-crosses will offer several interesting phenotypes for the guppy breeder to isolate and stabilize. In our previous exploration of the gene pool offered to us with our out-cross of the "albino Christmas red" and the "cobra tux tiger multi blue" we saw an interesting male in the F2d generation. My color utility suggests that the colors this male has are equal portions of coral, Christmas red and burnt orange. Let's retrieve the F2d file and see if we can isolate and fix this "albino tux tiger coral Christmas red" as a strain. (I dropped the orange. Enough is enough.)
Here is a look at the males offered to us in this F2 generation.
This albino guy's colors are very intense and I think his phenotype is worthy of being stabilized. We'll mate him with several of his sisters and see what AZ gives us to work with. Two batches of fry were saved.
Batch F3a:
Mom must not have been tux. Here we see the right color but not in tux. A back cross to dad "might" resolve this situation.
Batch F3b:
No males of the type we are looking for (but I want to save this batch and try for the snakeskin multi another session).
Although I mated the selected male from the F2d with all seven of his sisters, his phenotype did not appear in any of the F3 generations. Maybe, just maybe, a back-cross to the F2d male with a female from the F3a will work.
Here are the males produced in this F4 generation.
Well, we now see one male that looks like granddad, but we still have non-tux in the pool. Back-crosses usually take two generations or more to show results. We next pair a female from this generation with granddad.
Here are the males produced by this pair.
One male like granddad, but we also see the snakeskin pattern (which we have previously stabilized and filed away). No more back-crosses. We will mate this guy with his sisters, hoping to find one "right sister" that matches his phenotype. Did this back-cross work for us or against us? Here are the males produced by the first female selected.
Boy, did we get lucky? We might have found the "right sister" on the first try.
I took this strain out four more generations with no deviations in the phenotypes exhibited by the males. Here are the males produced by a random pair from the F9.
The F10 generation:
We have now stabilized this strain of "albino tux tiger coral Christmas red".
Here is a pic of one of the F10 males matured to 300 days old.
For those interested in how the crosses were saved and records kept, here is a pic of my "items" folder upon completion of this strain stabilization.
There is another phenotype that I find most attractive in this gene pool that I do not yet have on file as a stabilized strain. Let's see if mother AZ will let us have a strain of "albino tux snakeskin multi tangerine coral with violet".
|
