Photo is of a Dragon Blood Peacock Cichlid male, one of our breeders.
A while back, we processed two breeding vats of dragon blood peacocks. This is a strain we got from www.livefishdirect.com in November 2012. The photo shows a typical male of this strain. We grew the fish to maturity and set them up for breeding. Interestingly enough, when we processed them we found about half the fish were grey bodied instead of gold. Among the gold bodied fish we found two types of males. The purplish-pink (red) ones like the photo and some that were powder blue instead of purplish-pink. I was puzzled at the time about the genetics of this color strain as I’ll discuss below. After adding mature females from the offspring, I split the breeding colony into two, one with red males and one with blue males. Creatively enough, I called them red dragon bloods and blue dragon bloods respectively. The breeders were placed into 300 gallon cichlid breeding vats. The juveniles were split into dragon blood and non-gold dragon blood as I called the grey bodied fish.
Now to the genetics of the strain. The first thing to occur to me is that the gold body has to be dominant over the normal grey. Why is this? Well, if it were recessive, then there would have only been gold bodied fish. The appearance of grey fish from gold parents meant gold was dominant to grey and that at least some of the original fish carried the recessive grey. The next thing that occurred to me is that an almost 1:1 ration of gold to grey was unusual. Even if all the original fish carried the grey recessive, you’d expect a 3:1 ratio of gold to grey. A couple of things could have happened to explain this anomaly. First, it’s possible the gold fry aren’t as good at avoiding predation and got eaten more frequently. Another reason could be that the gold dominant is lethal when homozygous, meaning when a fish inherits two copies of gold it dies. I was skeptical about this because that would lead to a 2:1 ratio of gold to grey and we’d gotten closer to 1:1. Even if gold was a homozygous lethal, then something else had to be going on.
Okay, back to the events. When we processed the two breeding colonies we got a 6.5:1 ratio of gold to grey. That is more like what you’d expect if gold was not a homozygous dominant. The relatively low numbers of grey fish indicates that most of our breeders were homozygous and all of their offspring would be gold. I also could tell from the numbers that at least one male in each breeding carried the recessive grey. So, why so many greys the first time around? I think my predation theory holds up. The original breeding colony was small and for some reason it seems small breeding colonies tend to be more cannibalistic. I speculate that has to do with fewer fry being produced. If there are large numbers of fry, the adults seem to become inured with them and cease to think of them as food. This phenomenon happens with not only cichlids, but also livebearers, rainbowfishes, barbs, and tetras.
While I’m certain (relatively) I’m correct about the dragon blood genetics, I’m going to set up some test crosses to prove it. I’ll mate greys together to see if I get only greys. By the way, they are very attractive fish in their own right. I’ll also mate dragon blood males to OB peacock females. This is a dual purpose. If I get 100% gold offspring from a mating, then I know that male is homozygous. If I get 1:1, then he is heterozygous. Knowing this can help me build dragon blood breeding colony with only homozygous gold males that would produce 100% dragon bloods. Also, I wonder what the dragon blood pattern would look like on an OB color pattern.
I’ll let you know what happens…
tom says
I am curious as to the outcome of the grey bodied dragons? What happened?
charles says
Tom,
I just recently processed the vat containing the male Dragon Blood and the OB Peacock females. I’ll blog about that in detail later this week. But here are some results. The gold Dragon Blood background color is dominant. The male Dragon Blood I used is heterozygous for Dragon Blood. I got nearly a 1:1 ratio of Dragon Blood to grey bodies. Although OB is dominant, the Dragon Blood gene makes it impossible to see. I’m hoping as the fish grow up, I’ll be able to see some sign of OB in the Dragon Blood offspring. I did get the expected number of OB fish in the greys, considering that some of the OB Peacock females were heterozygous. I’ll give lots more detail in the blog.
Charles
tyler says
Is getting greys in your fry batch a normal thing? I have a breeder here in town telling me that he gets only dragonblood no greys and that I should cull the group if I’m getting greys after stripping. He is a very experienced breeder.
Thanks!
charles says
Yes, if your breeders are heterozygous for “dragon blood.” The gold body color is dominant to the gray body color. So, a dragon blood could be carrying the gene (technically “allele”) for gray. If two such breeders mate, about one-quarter of their offspring will be gray. If only one is not carrying gray, all the offspring will be gold, but half of them will carry the gene for gray. So, if you are getting grays from a pair, both are carrying the gray gene. A simple way to determine if a fish is carrying the gray gene is to mate it to a gray dragon blood (a reason to not cull the grays!). If none of the fry are gray, then the gold fish is homozygous for gold and is not carrying the gene for gray.
By the way, we never strip. We always allow the females to carry to term.
Vinny Ritchie says
The dragon blood is a O morph which came from the red zebra. So just like red zebras if you breed two O morphs together you still will get blues out of them. Only by breeding O to O over many generations will you omit the blue off spring . OB works the same way
Vinny Ritchie says
Just to let you know the O and OB morph are not dominant over the blue . The O and OB morph are a polymorphic . If anything the blue is the more dominant and if you breed blue to blue you wont get any O or OB unless it pops up as a spontaneous random gene mutation. There is no heterozygous in this case just polymorphism
charles says
Vinny,
My test matings indicate the dragon blood and “red” alleles are dominant to non-“red” and “blue.” They (or it if it is same gene) are classical Mendelian dominant/recessive genetics. The OB color is also a classic dominant and is NOT an allele of the same gene and is therefore not polymorphic with those characteristics. I have produced OB Dragon Bloods and the segregation of the alleles indicates the OB and dragon blood/blue alleles belong to separate loci (genes).
Charles
charles says
Vinny,
There are disputes about the origin of dragon blood. It is true that the “red” of Red Zebras is a dominant allele (to the normal background color). If you mate a Red Zebra to another Lake Malawi cichlid, the F1 will be “red.” The F2 will generally be 3/4 “red” and 1/4 non-“red.” This is, as I’ve discovered via test matings, also the situation in Dragon Bloods. So, it is certainly possible the allele controlling “dragon blood” background color is the same allele controlling the “red” of Red Zebras. This is testable. Simply do a number of reciprocal crosses of Dragon Bloods and Red Zebras. Then from the F1s produce F2s and F3s to see what gene segregation occurs. It could also be done by creating F1 Red Zebra x any Aulonocara (non-dragon blood) and F1 Dragon Blood x any Aulonocara (again, non-dragon blood). Cross the two F1s. The resulting fish could answer the question if dragon blood and “red” are identical alleles. I can provide the results that would prove whether the alleles are identical or not if you like.
In response to eliminating blue offspring, since the “blue” is recessive to dragon blood, the simplest way to eliminate the blue allele is to test mate your dragon blood breeders by mating them to non-dragon bloods. The homozygous dragon bloods will produce 100% dragon bloods. Heterozygous dragon bloods will produce 50% dragon bloods and 50% non-dragon bloods (roughly speaking). Once you have proven male and female homozygous breeders, the “blue” allele is eliminated.
OB in Lake Malawi cichlids is also dominant and can also be tested for as described above.
Charles