Peacock Question

[Sonny Disposition]

I was researching the Aulonacaras as future residents of my Malawi tank. One reference said that the males were extremely variable in terms of color.

When you breed these, do you always get some colorful vs. non colorful males?

Through selective breeding (by including only good males in your breeding program and judiciously culling the rest) can you eventually eliminate the drab ones from your stock?

Thanks
Bob

 

[maddog10]

Peacocks can be a dull color when not breeding and when there are no other males in the tank. They usually get much more vivid color when in breeding dress or displaying at another male. There will be fish with better colors, better distribution of color, etc.... You can selectively breed them for color.

 

[Charlutz]

There are some very clear examples of line breeding peacocks for color -- eureka red, rubescens red, OB peacock. Those are some of the deviations from what you would see in the lake, but are proof that you can selectively breed a line for color while maintaining healthy fish and replicating the color in future generations. You could also selectively breed to preserve the brightest yellows or blues in a species.

The color, head and body shape, and finnage in male peacocks can vary greatly. Luckily, they breed readily at a young age and are compatible with harem breeding, so you can mass produce them fairly quickly.

Something you might look into if you are interested in show males is lighting and water quality. When I visited Old Fish New Fish (RIP) I was amazed at how small the males were colored and how stunning the colors and finnage were. I grilled Bob for an hour trying to figure out what he and Maddog did differently than I did. The three things I noticed were that all the fish were in species only tanks, the water was changed over once or twice completely per week, and one other thing I hadn't considered -- very little light. The fish were in a warehouse in racks stacked three or four tanks high. The only light was some weak flourescents on the ceiling. Bob said the lights were very rarely on unless he was in there. So, if the male fish wanted to breed, it would really have to work to be seen by the females in that dim light. I would love to experiment and see if lack of lighting was the secret. But it's not practical for someone who likes to see their fish in a community tank.

Anyway, there are lots of variables, but you can affect color.

 

[phishphorphun]

Charlie, you brought up an interesting theory with the light. I remember Bob not happy with his peacocks and haps when they were displayed at Scales for sale. Of course lighting has to be adequate for potential buyers to view the fish. But he always would remind me that they looked so much better back at the warehouse. And I'm sure they did.

There is no question that the more artificial light you have, the more washed out the colors will be, particularly on vivid colored fish that display inconsistent coloration due to their dominant behavior. Since male peacocks show more color when breeding and when establishing a higher level on the hierarchy, they are examples of fish that don't sustain a constant coloration. I feel that the lighting issue is a evil that is unpreventable if you want to see your fish without a flashlight in your hand all the time. Also consider the temperature of the light source. Some lights will actually make the fish look more vivid and saturated. While others will wash the color out and/or give them a yellowish tint. Often it is the personal taste of the fishkeeper on how they want to view their fish.

Bob, I have successfully raised a variety of male peacocks in the same tank for years. And normally, they all show dominant colors. A good example would be when I had two beautiful male yellows show phenomenal colors together. One a sp. stuartgranti maleri and the other a. baenschi (the one that just did well in the aquafest show). They grew up together and constantly fought, but were always quite colorful. (BTW, the baenschi was the long time survivor). The same species males on the other hand will not normally show more than one dominantly colored dude. In a big enough tank that is overpopulated, you may have a few of the same males show similar colors. But they often take turns on who is "king of the jungle".

Also would like to mention that keeping a few of the same species males together can be rewarding too. They will take turns on the heiarchy. A subdominant male may actually win a battle or two and make the more dominant fish become passive. Over a little time, the roles will reverse and the sub fish will become the dominant one. I have witnessed this several times in my own tanks. Kinda like a Rocky movie. :lol:

When keeping an all male peacock tank, be prepared to have fish with like colors to constantly fight. I added a Lemon Jake (a. jacobfreibergi 'Undu Reef') and it would be in the mix with the baenschi and the s. maleri. The ruby red would pick battles with the s. maleri too. Perhaps because the engineered lines for this fish came from the yellow sunshine peacocks of the stuartgranti strain. The a. hansbaenschi and the a. hueseri were the two blues that always went at it. Then when I introduced a flametail (a. stuartgranti 'Ngara') to the blue mix, the three of them would battle each other.

At one time I had about thirteen different male peacocks in the same 120g tank, all showed good mature coloration at the same time. And they weren't alone. More than a dozen male haps were in there too. However, I will admit that aggression ran it's course. But then again, why keep aggressive fish if you don't want them to entertain you?

I still have the tank running with six peacocks (flametail, lemon Jake, ruby red, German red, blue neon, and usisya), five haps (fryeri, gracilis, turquoise hap, mloto, and p. phenochilus), five clown loaches and two synodontis. And while the peacocks are all showing mature color, they are also showing their age and battle wounds.

While this doesn't directly deal with line breeding for color, this is my experiences with the peacocks Bob. Perhaps not scientific, but candid. :winking0011:

 

[Charlutz]

Bobby's experiences are very consistent with my own.

One more anecdote about how the fish perceives its environment controls its color -- the tanks at OFNF sometimes had 40-60 young peacocks. In those tanks, there was typically 1 dominant male. One! Very different coloration than you'd see in a peacock community tank wher multiple males will color. There was sometimes a second slightly colored male, but every other fish was in female/juvie coloration. These tanks had lilttle decor and no place for subdom fish to hide, except in the school of females and juvie fish. But I can't explain enough how spectacularly colored and small these males were. Like under 2" for the peacocks. They had several red empress in mutliple tanks that were colored with full elongated finnage at well under 3". I never had luck getting them to color until a solid 4" or more. If I saw those small peacocks colored up in a store tank I would have suspected foul play, but the proof that these were "clean" fish (aside from the owners' rep) was that the other 50 fish in the tank had no color! Anyway, there is lots you can do to experiment with what variables affect color. They are a great genus to work with because they grow fast and breed young.

 

[maddog10]

We did keep the lighting to a minimum (just enough for us to work by - sometimes had to open the roll up door to let more light in) and ALL the fish showed noticeably brighter colors than you would see in a regular lit show tank. We had species only tanks and when we were growing out fry (sometimes 50-60 in a tank) you would generally be able to easily spot 2 males (1 dominant and the other sub-dominant). If we wanted more males we would simply pull the 2 out that we could tell were males and put them in a separate tank (or two), 1 or 2 days later two more males will have colored up. We could do this until no males colored up and we knew that the rest of the fish were probably females. With peacocks you can start this practice when the fish are a little over 1" (as soon as you start seeing colored males).

 

[Sonny Disposition]

Thanks, guys, for these detailed observations. I think I'm getting more good information on this forum than I could get in any book.

On Saturday I was telling Bobby about a guy in NANFA years ago who would lightly mist his flourescent bulbs with blue spray paint. He claimed the faintly blue light would bring out the best colors in all the native fish.

If you stop and think about it, blue is the wavelength that most easily travels through water, so it would make sense that fish colors would reflect better in the presence of blue light. I took the photo of my Avatar fish in a field tank on a sunny day, and his colors were really outstanding. At home, you might try a 50-50, as Bobby suggested, or even a full spectrum daylight tube, if a 50-50 is too expensive for your budget.

We did keep the lighting to a minimum (just enough for us to work by - sometimes had to open the roll up door to let more light in) and ALL the fish showed noticeably brighter colors than you would see in a regular lit show tank. We had species only tanks and when we were growing out fry (sometimes 50-60 in a tank) you would generally be able to easily spot 2 males (1 dominant and the other sub-dominant). If we wanted more males we would simply pull the 2 out that we could tell were males and put them in a separate tank (or two), 1 or 2 days later two more males will have colored up. We could do this until no males colored up and we knew that the rest of the fish were probably females. With peacocks you can start this practice when the fish are a little over 1" (as soon as you start seeing colored males).[/b]

 

[Fishfreak69]

Hello, (if I might add my 2 cents)
In my research and experimentation on breeding peacocks the color variation is tremoundous. The males are in a line of coloring up and dominance. In my experience the DOMINANT male will only show color and the other's will look like females or subdominant males, however, once you remove that male another will fully color up. Whether or not his colors are as good as the original dominant male that is a judgement call that you have to make. In the haplochromines I had a pair of buccochromis rhodesii in which I thought was 1m/1f however, when I got more females the one that I thought was a female was a male. Well I seperated the 2 and WOW the subdominant was NICER than the dominant male.
TO get into line breeding; this is a very tricky thing messing with the genes of a fish. The way I usually do it is take a f0 colony and get fry 25-30 and raise those out. I PICK the 3 BEST MALES for color, fins, and overall quality and keep them. Then I seperate to get all the females out. I keep all of the females and get rid of the other males. I also get rid of the F0 colony except for 3 females. The reason I do this is to make the agression factor less as the bigger females will take the majority of the punishment. Once I get fry from my F1 strain I get to F2 (not accepting any fry from the larger females) and do the same thing over and over until the offspring illustrate the characteristics I am after.
Line breeding is a very cool thing but if not done correctly your offspring will have MANY genetic flaws. What I mean by this is that your fish will have genetic deformities of the spine and therefore pass on that gene as a carrier to his/her brothers and sisters. I get rid of the genetic deformations at an early stage. I try and keep my genetic deformities at about 10-12% per broad. Once I get higher I have to find another strain and intermingle this in with what I am working on. Once this is accomplished I can go about 8 more generations without the genetic deformations.
A lot of the hobbyists do quite well in introducing many different genes to their group. If this is done correctly you won't have any genetic deformities until about the 10-12 generation (approx). I see the most important changes by the 4th generation and all of the males are stunning.
As far as the lighting goes; I do agree with adding a 50/50 spectrum. I use coralife actinic, power-glo, and aqua-glo. I have tried numerous lights and these seem to be the best. You do want to try and get to the most natural sunlight so the fish can get the proper light distribution as in the wild. Try the power-glos and aqua-glos first and then spread out after that. I have had the best success with those as to much blue in the lights will really dull the tank IMO. The water doesn't look as sharp as I would want but this is yet another personnal preference. Hope that helps!!

 

[Sonny Disposition]

Wow! Was that ever helpful! There's a lot of information there, so I'll have to re-read it again. Thank you for sharing the results of your hard earned progress!

Hello, (if I might add my 2 cents)
In my research and experimentation on breeding peacocks the color variation is tremoundous. The males are in a line of coloring up and dominance. In my experience the DOMINANT male will only show color and the other's will look like females or subdominant males, however, once you remove that male another will fully color up. Whether or not his colors are as good as the original dominant male that is a judgement call that you have to make. In the haplochromines I had a pair of buccochromis rhodesii in which I thought was 1m/1f however, when I got more females the one that I thought was a female was a male. Well I seperated the 2 and WOW the subdominant was NICER than the dominant male.
TO get into line breeding; this is a very tricky thing messing with the genes of a fish. The way I usually do it is take a f0 colony and get fry 25-30 and raise those out. I PICK the 3 BEST MALES for color, fins, and overall quality and keep them. Then I seperate to get all the females out. I keep all of the females and get rid of the other males. I also get rid of the F0 colony except for 3 females. The reason I do this is to make the agression factor less as the bigger females will take the majority of the punishment. Once I get fry from my F1 strain I get to F2 (not accepting any fry from the larger females) and do the same thing over and over until the offspring illustrate the characteristics I am after.
Line breeding is a very cool thing but if not done correctly your offspring will have MANY genetic flaws. What I mean by this is that your fish will have genetic deformities of the spine and therefore pass on that gene as a carrier to his/her brothers and sisters. I get rid of the genetic deformations at an early stage. I try and keep my genetic deformities at about 10-12% per broad. Once I get higher I have to find another strain and intermingle this in with what I am working on. Once this is accomplished I can go about 8 more generations without the genetic deformations.
A lot of the hobbyists do quite well in introducing many different genes to their group. If this is done correctly you won't have any genetic deformities until about the 10-12 generation (approx). I see the most important changes by the 4th generation and all of the males are stunning.
As far as the lighting goes; I do agree with adding a 50/50 spectrum. I use coralife actinic, power-glo, and aqua-glo. I have tried numerous lights and these seem to be the best. You do want to try and get to the most natural sunlight so the fish can get the proper light distribution as in the wild. Try the power-glos and aqua-glos first and then spread out after that. I have had the best success with those as to much blue in the lights will really dull the tank IMO. The water doesn't look as sharp as I would want but this is yet another personnal preference. Hope that helps!![/b]