I know many of you are members on the TAF II site, so most will already be aware of this, but it seems appropriate to post here also...
I'm not the first to report this, but hopefully the accompanying photographs will add weight to my observations.
When I first saw a photo of what was then being sold as an "albino altum" I suspected that the fish was actually an albino Rio Nanay aka "Peru altum".
To produce such a fish by crossing a domestic albino with a Nanay, then sibling crossing to get a 50% Nanay albino, then repeat for 2 generations to get a 75% albino Nanay and probably repeat again to get an albino 87.5% Nanay would be a long and labourious process, and I suspect that it wouldn't be until you got to the 87.5% stage that the fish would look like the fish being offered. I wondered why if someone had gone to that trouble with an albino gene they hadn't gone to the trouble of doing the same with other, potentially more interesting genes like Philippine blue, dark etc. I also wondered how they had resisted the temptation to release fish on to the market at intermediate stages 50%, 75%, etc. and I suspected that the reason was that this was an albino mutation that had spontaneously appeared in wild stock, or in a line of fish bred from wild stock. I wondered if it might be a new albino mutation. See this thread on the TAF II forum http://www.angelfish.net/VBulletin/s...ad.php?t=30871
I've heard a couple of reports of others crossing an albino "Dantum" with a "normal" albino and getting non-albino offspring, most noticeably a thread on TAF II but the poster only managed to raise one individual, I therefore decided to try the cross for myself.....
I paired this male albino
with this albino "Dantum"
The "Dantum" came from a UK based wholesaler at the end of last year. The male is a fish I bred myself and probably has lots of other genes present like dark, gold, smokey, stripeless, streaked and Philippine blue. His albino gene was almost certainly introduced into my stock with fish obtained from Ken Kennedy in 2010.
They spawned on 21st July and I pinched the eggs to hatch away from the parents as previous spawns had been eaten around about the point that they were due to hatch.
they hatched on 23rd
and as you can see were definitely showing some melanin.
subsequent developmental photos were taken :-
24th
25th
27th
Although not yet quite free swimming it's clear that these offspring aren't phenotypically albinos and that therefore the albino gene carried by "Dantum" angels is a new mutation.
I have suggested that the new gene be known as Type two albino with an abbreviation of a2. I'm open to suggestions as to a suitable phenotype name, but quite like the idea of "Dalbino" which nods towards "Dantum" and "Danziger" whilst avoiding the potential confusion that adopting those two trade names might entail.
Whilst it's most likely that the new gene is located on a different locus from the "normal" albino gene, there is a theoretical possibility that a fish that was a/a2 could be phenotypically non-albino, so, assuming I'm successful in raising these youngsters, I intend to carry out suitable tests to determine if this is the case. I do not intend to carry out tests for allelism with all the other known genes as I have neither the time, inclination or facilities for such an extensive battery of tests, but I will share the outcome of any further breeding results with these "Dalbinos" on this and other forums.
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