RE: M. herbertaxelrodi

Bruce Hansen (bhansen at oznet02.ozemail.com.au)
Thu, 16 May 1996 08:38:07 +-1000

The original fish apparently had yellow bodies and essentially yellow fins ( not the full red fins we often see these days), It was only the tail and caudal peduncle that had significant red. Looking at all the photos I have , books and NA slides, there c

ertainly seems to be some reddish colour in the fins especially in the outer 1/3 to 1/2 and more obvious in the anal fin. Neil sent me a shot of this species marked < 15 years after first fish arrived in the hobby> and the correlation is remarkably good.

So there are still some good "herbies" out there - we just have to search them out and circulate them.Peter is right, the original gene pool was from only 5-6 fish. So the potential for phenotype ( and eventual genotype change) modification is strong espe

cially when the species is "new" and everyone wants them so they are being churned out generation after generation, and often bred as soon as mature.

BTW I understand from the ACN list that as far as species maintenance is concerned we should be keeping each generation as long as we canbefore producing the next to reduce the incidence of genotype change which axiomatically is most likely to happen at e

ach mating.Perhaps our geneticists could tell us if it is better to cross our F1 fish back to their parents ( which I suspect is so) or to each other?

As an aside I still have some of my original "wild" Wonga tris if anybody wants some eggs?

Bruce Hansen ANGFA(N&Q)