Photo: A young breeder male Skyblue Dragon Blood Peacock Cichlid. One of my favorite aquaculture activities is the development of new strains of fish with new colors, fins, shapes, etc. That isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy maintaining wild-type fish and pure species as they appear in nature, but ... Read More
genetics
Gold OB Peacock
Photo: A breeder male Gold OB Peacock in a five-gallon bucket as he is being processed before being moved back into his breeding colony. WARNING!!! This is a rather long and geeky fish blog for my fishkeeping friends. I decided to kill two birds (or fish, whatever!) with one stone by 1) ... Read More
Giant Green Sailfin Molly
Photo: A large male Green Sailfin Molly from four years ago and one of our breeders used in our attempt to create a giant molly. For about eight years, I’ve been working to develop a very large Green Sailfin Molly, which I creatively named Giant Green Sailfin Mollies (“GGSM” for short for the ... Read More
Developing a Strain from a Single Fish
Photo: Two very young male Bronze Sailfin Mollies showing the improved coloration I selected for. They are too young to sport nice sailfins, but they grew up with large dorsals. As evidence of their youth, look at their gonopodia (anal fin), which are just beginning to develop. How many times ... Read More
Poecilia formosa – Amazon Molly
Photo: Two Poecilia formosa, Amazon mollies, collected from Coleto Creek at Highway US 77 in Victoria County, Texas. December 12, 2017, four of us plus two German Shepherds went collecting on Coleto Creek in Victoria County, Texas (see my blogs: ... Read More
Fancy Red Tuxedo Swordtails
Photo: Female Red Tuxedo Lyretail Swordtail. As is typical of our strain, females don’t have as bright red coloration as males. We’ve started working on adding three fancy fin types, lyretail, hifin, and plumetail to each of our commercial swordtail, maculatus, and variatus lines. I’m going to ... Read More
Orange Freckled Swordtails
Photo above is a male Orange Freckled Swordtail. The grid behind him is in inches and shows his size. Those of you who have read many of my past articles and blogs know that a common theme throughout my writings is serendipity (could also be called “luck”). This interesting fish arose from a ... Read More
Blue and Giant Mollies
Photo: A male Giant Sailfin Molly showing his size against a one-inch grid. About four years ago, I wrote an article about my efforts to produce a blue molly. A molly blue enough for my tastes doesn’t exist. This blog will provide an update. First, I’ll summarize the article. In ... Read More
Veiltail Swordtail
Photo: A female Veiltail Swordtail. A few months ago while processing our Blushing Swordtails I discovered an unusual female. She appeared to be a veiltail, but I wasn’t sure. Before continuing discussing that particular female, let me provide some background. Our breeding colony of Blushing ... Read More
Developing a Hifin Plumetail Blue Opal Maculatus
Photo: A group of Blue Opal Maculatus Years ago I created what I called a Hifin Blue Opal Maculatus, as its name implies a maculatus-type platy. I wrote about creating this fish for Tropical Fish Hobbyist. To read the TFH article see: ... Read More