Rarest clownfish

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#22
Thanks for posting Matt. Great info. Yes please keep us posted. That is really exciting stuff.

Sucks Seasmart didn't make it. I thought I read that PNG government was going to do their own thing off the model but not sure how true that was.
 

lazeballz

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#23
not to break off topic or thread jack here - but can someone briefly talk about the "ethics" and "morals" of inter-species erotica?

They've been doing this for years on end with dogs - and look at the variety that we have! Not to sound weird, but look at women - it seems the more exotic the mix of parents the h0tter they are. (IMO)

so whats so bad about bringing the lighting to the masses?
 
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#24
not to break off topic or thread jack here - but can someone briefly talk about the "ethics" and "morals" of inter-species erotica?

They've been doing this for years on end with dogs - and look at the variety that we have! Not to sound weird, but look at women - it seems the more exotic the mix of parents the h0tter they are. (IMO)

so whats so bad about bringing the lighting to the masses?
wat...??!?!


it's not always ethics that keeps people breeding different breeds together... sometimes it's just mother nature... most of them end up sterile anyways... ligers, mules, peacock/chicken hybrids, chicken/guinea hen hybrids, canary/goldfinch hybrids, polar bear/black bear hybrids... stuff like that... there's a reason that they are sterile...

i know that you can make mutts with a buldog and a great dane, but you have to realize that the dog came from one animal... so all dogs can interbreed... just like chickens... there are over a hundred breeds of chickens... but all of them came from only a couple of closely related wild jungle fowl... that's why people right now are still making new and improved species of chickens and other birds using selective breeding...

now the fish thing... i'm not sure how it works... i have seen people pairing up premna with ocellaris but i doubt they actually breed... but whatever... who's gonna want that when other breeders are selective breeding designer clowns like photons, platinums and other ugly mutations...
 

lazeballz

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#26
it's not always ethics that keeps people breeding different breeds together... sometimes it's just mother nature... most of them end up sterile anyways... ligers, mules, peacock/chicken hybrids, chicken/guinea hen hybrids, canary/goldfinch hybrids, polar bear/black bear hybrids... stuff like that... there's a reason that they are sterile...
I guess we dont know until we see the end product, no?

gumbii said:
i know that you can make mutts with a buldog and a great dane, but you have to realize that the dog came from one animal... so all dogs can interbreed... just like chickens... there are over a hundred breeds of chickens... but all of them came from only a couple of closely related wild jungle fowl... that's why people right now are still making new and improved species of chickens and other birds using selective breeding...
But then again, the difference back then when it came to dogs, was that they were used for purpose, rather than looks. They all function vs form at the time. this is before the whole "designer dog" came into play.


gumbii said:
now the fish thing... i'm not sure how it works... i have seen people pairing up premna with ocellaris but i doubt they actually breed... but whatever... who's gonna want that when other breeders are selective breeding designer clowns like photons, platinums and other ugly mutations...
I dont care how we cut it...people who own aquariums are in it for the looks. we can sit and argue that we are trying to "preserve", but at the end of the day, how many actually release their clown fish into the proper location of where they were captured from?

"Designer Fish" more like. Im personally a fan of the whole bulldog look on clownfish
 

mpedersen

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#30
well... in all types of breeding, even in fish (like koi)... male dominant breeding is the fastest way to get clones of the actual male... it's the same as chickens... also, most patterns in koi fish are passed down by the male... if you try to get clean patterns off of a female, they come out incomplete...
So I looked into your examples of "male dominant" breeding. First the koi.
No sooner did I find information suggesting that male contributes color and female contributes conformation, than I found other articles suggesting that these notions are myths and that both fish contribute to both, and by the same token, that you can certainly get all sorts of varieties out of fish that look nothing like the parents. That is hardly surprising to read.

Regarding Chickens, well it sounds like a few genetic traits are sex-linked. That seems to be a well documented FACT. That however, does not suggest that only the male is important, far from it.

Now here's a couple more interesting counterpoints:

#1. African Cichlids. Specifically, lets talk about fish where the females are drab / colorless. In this case, other than being female and of good health and conformation, there is little if anything that can be discerned about the color characteristics that a female might impart on her offspring. So, if you were breeding to "improve" the finnage/coloration of the male form, you'd be very particular about what male you select for each breeding. So yes, a male-oriented breeding plan, but one made that way out of necessity and the limitations of what a breeder can discern from the naked eye. The female is an unknown quantity until you see the offspring that are produced from the mating (or if you juice her with hormones to reveal male traits, but that's another topic).

#2. All of our examples above we are dealing with gonochoristic animals - animals that are born male or female and stay that way. Clownfish are NOT gonochorists, they are protandrous hermaphrodites. So the fish that is one day a male will later on in life play the female role. While I acknowledge that there very well could still be the possibility of sex-linked traits in clownfish, the premise that a clownfish plays at being both male and female would suggest that it's highly unlikely, at least to me. Afterall, the same base tissues that create the male testes also create the female ovaries. Same genetic base. Obviously the gametes are still "male gametes" or "female gametes", so I suppose there's a chance. But still, they come from the same genetic base.

i never heard of the picasso line coming from a wild male picasso perc over a wild female perc... i just said it because it's kind of what breeders do...
The ORA pair that started it all was a WC male Picasso with a female normal. Not saying that you in particular needed to be aware of that, just saying that the rumor that "male drives striping" most likely is a poor derivation and miscommunication based on the initial facts.

It is again, highly interesting to note that Doni Marie recently reported on the MBI forum that she has seen no difference in stripe inheritance when the Picasso is a male, or a female, in the pair. While the genetics of being Lightning could be totally different, we can theorize that they probably have similar causes. And to that end, if that was the case, both my own thoughts on "it's the same fish, male or female", and Doni's experiences, would highly suggest that in fact stripe genetics are not a sex-linked trait in clownfish.


environmental...? hmm... it might be possible... but something that irratic and different...? i highly doubt it...
It was actually Martin Moe who proposed this (back in CORAL)

there could possibly be a couple of them in the ocean... or maybe one male that had a couple of offspring and they made it around the reefs... like they say, there are plenty of fish in the sea... i'm sure the collectors can't see every specimen out there...
We know at least 2 existed and were collected. That right there is proof enough that there's more than one ;) That is the first clue that there may be a genetic basis for this trait.
 

mpedersen

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#31
Good luck matt... what other clowns pairs and designer clown pairs have you been successful w/?
I don't work with "designer" clown pairs, although for a while I owned both a pair of White Tip Clownfish (F2 generation of Amphiprion polymnus X sebae) and Some "Halfblack" Ocellaris that simply later proved to be normal Black Ocellaris. Both were pairs given to me by Joe Lichtenbert. The Halfblacks went back to Joe, and the White Tips went to a guy who was interested in hybrid clowns.

I've spawned and reared Black Ocellaris, normal Ocellaris, and wild Onyx Percs. I've spawned the GSM X PNG pairing, but purposely did NOT rear any offspring. I'm waiting on my fires (Ephippium), sold my latezonatus to help fund the purchase of the Lightning and recently replaced them with a CB pair from Karen Brittain's breeding, have beat my head against a wall with Allardi (darn Amyloodinium magnets). I'm sitting on a pair of Vanuatu Pink Skunks, one of which is definitely of the "Sunkist" color variant, but I'm starting to suspect they both could be females and the Sunkist female has the "old fish look" about her (the male is hardly "small", and he/she seems to go through periods of ripeness like a female would). Just got a small pair of F1 CB Tricinctus to play with too, but they are months/years from maturity. Also, I neglected to remember some more failures the first time around - I had a pair of Blue Stripes die 30 minutes out of the bag, had wild PNG Yellow Chest Saddlebacks come in get brook and die, had replacement Yellow Chest saddlebacks for a long time until the female turned on the male and killed him in the span of two days - gave the female up because there was no hope of getting a replacement mate with SEASMART shut down.

I'd like to point out that while some people have criticized my limited work with clownfish, the simple truth is that I work with a lot more than just clownfish. I'm proud to be the first to have spawned and reared the Harlequin or Orange Spotted Filefish (Oxymonacanthus longirostris), I think my total number of species reared is at 9 right now, and total number of species spawned is 23 and counting. There are many that I did not "succeed" with but came very close (i.e. Mandarins, Bluestreak Cardinalfish etc..). Indeed, I work with a lot more than just clownfish, because there is more to our marine aquariums than just clownfish. I like a challenge.
 
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wickedfish

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#32
Now this is a good read, my brain finally gets tickled and on Socali.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

JOSE CASAS

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#34
I don't work with "designer" clown pairs, although for a while I owned both a pair of White Tip Clownfish (F2 generation of Amphiprion polymnus X sebae) and Some "Halfblack" Ocellaris that simply later proved to be normal Black Ocellaris. Both were pairs given to me by Joe Lichtenbert. The Halfblacks went back to Joe, and the White Tips went to a guy who was interested in hybrid clowns.

I've spawned and reared Black Ocellaris, normal Ocellaris, and wild Onyx Percs. I've spawned the GSM X PNG pairing, but purposely did NOT rear any offspring. I'm waiting on my fires (Ephippium), sold my latezonatus to help fund the purchase of the Lightning and recently replaced them with a CB pair from Karen Brittain's breeding, have beat my head against a wall with Allardi (darn Amyloodinium magnets). I'm sitting on a pair of Vanuatu Pink Skunks, one of which is definitely of the "Sunkist" color variant, but I'm starting to suspect they both could be females and the Sunkist female has the "old fish look" about her (the male is hardly "small", and he/she seems to go through periods of ripeness like a female would). Just got a small pair of F1 CB Tricinctus to play with too, but they are months/years from maturity. Also, I neglected to remember some more failures the first time around - I had a pair of Blue Stripes die 30 minutes out of the bag, had wild PNG Yellow Chest Saddlebacks come in get brook and die, had replacement Yellow Chest saddlebacks for a long time until the female turned on the male and killed him in the span of two days - gave the female up because there was no hope of getting a replacement mate with SEASMART shut down.

I'd like to point out that while some people have criticized my limited work with clownfish, the simple truth is that I work with a lot more than just clownfish. I'm proud to be the first to have spawned and reared the Harlequin or Orange Spotted Filefish (Oxymonacanthus longirostris), I think my total number of species reared is at 9 right now, and total number of species spawned is 23 and counting. There are many that I did not "succeed" with but came very close (i.e. Mandarins, Bluestreak Cardinalfish etc..). Indeed, I work with a lot more than just clownfish, because there is more to our marine aquariums than just clownfish. I like a challenge.
:the20man:
 

mpedersen

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#36
What would be a good species to get ones feet wet with?
Good clownfish species or fish species in general? I'll answer both.

Normal Ocellaris is bar none, the bread and butter. Breeds faster than most, always in demand on some level, and very rewarding early on. Way different than true percs. Clownfish in general teach you the fundamentals of larviculture for many marine fish.

Now, if you don't want to wait as long as an Ocellaris pair can take (or if you can't find a spawning pair for sale), Matt Wittenrich clued me into another gem - the Fang Blennies of the genus Mieacanthus. I want to say it took me only 3 months to get my Bundoons to spawn.

Neon Gobies would be another good choice.

So there's two species (and a whole genus with Meiacanthus) to consider. Obviously there are many others that are equally suitable too.
 
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#39
Looks like the lightning maroon has spawned its first clutch of eggs! Really good news. Hopefully some little lightning babies are in the future.

Congrats Matt!
 
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#40
IBsomeonesaystheygotdibsonfirstlightningclown


that's tight... i wonder how strong the lightning "gene" is, or if it's even a gene... hmm...
 

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