Stabilizing the "Christmas Red" strain was a little more complicated than I had hoped for (I should have searched for a better "right female" in the F2 generation). Let's see how we do stabilizing a strain of Pearl Gray Tuxedos. Pearl gray (or silver) is usually dominant to all other colors found in the tuxedo group also suspect that pearl gray is an example of an epistatic gene (this can be said of all grays). AZ defines epistatic as "a gene that is able to mask the presence of one or more other genes". (This characteristic is more important when using a gray strain in an out-cross.)
I loaded a new German Tuxedo file off the CD and selected the first pearl gray male that I placed into the viewing tank as the father of the F1 generation.
Here's our guy. His "look" or "appearance" is the phenotype I want to fix as a strain. This guy and a female close to his age were mated. The first female chosen produced a brood with all sky blue males.The second female chosen produced three males all of which were pearl gray. This batch of fry became my F1 generation.
F1 males:
I chose the best male (highest VCP scores) as the father of the F2 generation. The first female chosen produced a brood with all blue males. The second female produced this batch of males.
F2 males:
Since this is the F2 generation, an off color male is to be expected. The best pearl gray male was selected to father the F3 generation. The first female selected produced these six males.
As you can see, all of the males are pearl gray. This batch was saved as the F4 generation. (Looks like this strain is going to stabilize a lot easier than that darn Christmas Red strain did.) The best male was chosen to sire the F4. The first female selected produced this batch of eight males.
Look at those eight pearl gray tails. Not bad for the F4! This strain is going to be easy to stabilize. The best male and female were selected to produce this F5 generation.
Let's take this strain out one more generation just to be sure that it is really stabilized. After all we are just at the F5. The best male and the one and only female produced this F6 batch.
I say this strain is stabilized. I tested several random pairs from this strain by running them through the TransWarp procedure checking to see it all the broods produced contained only pearl gray males. Each pair tested passed their exam. AZ also considers this strain stabilized. Let's call this batch "Tux Pearl Gray stock".
Here are the records of this cross as shown by the .fsh files in my "Items" folder.
Since we now have fixed strains of "Christmas Reds" and "Tuxedo Pearl Gray" on file, let's out-cross these two strains to create and stabilize a strain of "Tuxedo Christmas Reds".
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