Page 4 of 6 FirstFirst ... 23456 LastLast
Results 31 to 40 of 51

Thread: Bulgarian Green Variations

  1. #31
    Update on batch #3



    Well as you can see, both parents are still doing a fine job.
    If you look very closely at some of the fry, you can just make out that they are blushing, this means that both parents must be ghosts. As the male is a smokey, this means there will be 6 different phenotypes even before we start looking at the main body colours of the parents :-
    S/S - Sm/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg
    S/+ - Sm/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg
    +/+ - Sm/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg
    S/S - +/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg
    S/+ - +/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg
    +/+ - +/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg

    The parents came from a cross of D/+ x D/Gm which means there are 4 possibilities
    D/D
    D/Gm
    D/+
    Gm/+

    In my experience with Bulgarian Green so far, D/D tend to be the darkest, with Gm/+ the lightest, and the latter tend to have clear rather than black fins. I'm pretty confident that the male is D/D, as he was one of the darkest individuals in the batch, so much so that I was beginning to question if he was homozygous for the Bulgarian Green Gene. However looking at how light the babies are I'm now confident that he is.
    The mother I'm more unsure of, the lightness of her fins suggest Gm/+ but there's no obvious sign of any black markings from the Gm gene (the black blotch visible in the photo above can fade with mood, so is part of the ghost patterning, likewise the blotch at the root of her tail.) So there's a possibility that she may be D/+. As the babies develop, I'll have a better idea, particularly if any show signs of the gold marble gene.
    Blessed are the cheesemakers!

  2. #32
    Update on Batch #2 from post #24

    Both parents from this batch are clearly homozygous for pb, mother was D/+ and father is D/g

    That means there should be D/D, D/g, D/+ and g/+ individuals in this batch
    Here are some photos of the Bulgarian Green offspring at just over 4 1/2 months old
    all are pb/pb - bg/bg


    I think this one is D/g :-


    I think This one D/+ :-


    I think this is D/D - Sm/+ - the amount of red colouration on this fish is quite interesting


    I think this is the flip side of the fish above


    I think this is either D/g or D/D
    With this batch I can clearly see why Raiko called these fish Bulgarian Greens, there's definitely a green sheen to them at this size.
    Blessed are the cheesemakers!

  3. #33
    Update on batch #3
    I've always said that in trying to identify what's going on with a new gene, that it's not always necessary to cross to a wildtype silver, so long as you can clearly identify the influences of the other gene(s) in the mix....
    Well, here I am over 3 months on and I'm still trying to work out exactly what I have!
    It would appear that I may well have got the genotype of both parents wrong. In order to help work out exactly what's going on I've repaired the male with a different female and I'll post more on that in a week or two when I'm 100% sure of what I have in the mix.
    So watch this space.
    Blessed are the cheesemakers!

  4. #34
    ..good to know..thanks, I've been following your progress...and admiring your great pics..

    ? tho....is it common for all these fry...to have the brownish coloring up thru the dorsal?
    Last edited by Mugwump; 09-20-2018 at 05:27 PM.
    Jon
    He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
    - Douglas Adams

    http://www.mugwump-fish-world.com/index.php

  5. #35
    As promised, a further update. I think I've finally decided what's going on with batch #3. I was very puzzled by what I was seeing and that made me re-pair the male with a different female (batch #4). But before I go into details, a little recap, which in the process should answer Jon's question...

    The first photos of Raiko's fish were of fish that became known as "Bulgarian Seal Points" or "BSP's", according to Raiko these were D/Gm - S/+ - bg/bg. Raiko then set about carrying out a number of test crosses to other genes which meant that the fish he shipped to the UK in late 2014 were quite a mix, some were homozygous for pb, others heterozygous, some were D/D others +/+ and others D/+, I don't think there were any D/g or D/Gm individuals. Also some were ghosts and others didn't have a stripeless gene.

    In general my experience with the gene seems to support Raiko's observations, namely that the best looking "Bulgarian Seal Points" are fish that are D/Gm* - S/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg
    * I suspect D/g would be even better, but at this stage haven't produced any of that type.

    Basically, in homozygous form, the gene seems to greatly reduce the expression of melanin in the body, but less so in the fins, this fish from batch #2 is a typical example


    Fish that are D/D tend to show some pigment on the body, for example this fish from post #1 in this thread which I'm now confident was D/D - bg/bg


    By contrast fish without a dark gene, wouldn't normally have particularly dark fins, and so don't have them when they're homozygous for bg.

    This fish for example is almost certainly Gm/+ - S/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg


    Infact Raiko coined the name "New Platinum" to describe these.

    One of the effects of Philippine Blue is to reduce the amount of pigment a fish expresses, so a gold angel with two pb genes is a platinum, this is also very obvious with fish with the Bulgarian Green gene,

    This fish is Gm/+ - S/+ - +/pb - bg/bg and has a distinctly yellow/brown colouration to the body


    Next for comparison a Platinum marble veil Gm/g - V/+ - pb/pb



    and a Gm/+ - Sm/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg



    The first thing to notice is how much darker the black is on the platinum marble when compared to the Bulgarian Green below.
    Secondly on the Bulgarian Green, if you look closely at the black marks you'll notice that they are darker in the middle and lighter at their edges.
    Thirdly, if you look very closely at the rear of his body you can see the very faint shadow of a smokey pattern.

    So far so clear.
    There are however 3 complicating factors.
    1. Time, with bg/bg fish that have black marks from a gold marble gene, my feeling (I haven't yet done a sequence of developmental photos to confirm) is that these seem to fade as the fish ages, they tend to be more prominent in younger fish.
    2. Mood. With gold marble and platinum marble fish, the expression of black pigment is fixed, irrespective of mood, this doesn't seem to be the case with Bulgarian Greens with a Gold marble gene, as they seem to be able to fade or intensify the markings with mood. This makes taking a meaningful set of photos to show the developmental progression of pigment loss even more tricky!
    3. Water Chemistry. When Raiko sent his fish to the UK, the importer supplied them to a number of retailers. According to the importer, some fish went much darker in some retailers tanks, whilst others went much lighter, the importer noticed that this seemed to be regional and to correlate with water hardness, I have not yet attempted to experiment with this, but my water is reasonably hard kH ~5dH GH ~18dH.

    On to batch 3
    My original hypothesis was that father was D/D - S/+ - Sm/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg and that mother was Gm/+ - S/+ - +/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg, I reasoned that the reason the male was expressing so much dark pigment was that he had a "triple whammy" of two dark genes and a smokey gene, I also reasoned that his appearance, in terms of the shade of blue, was very different from any smokey pinoy I'd previously bred. What I was therefore expecting was a lot of classic "BSP" youngsters with dark fins and light bodies. That's not what I got...

    What I got were a lot of what appeared to be platinum marbles and a significant number of fish that looked very similar to their father. I thus began to suspect that father was D/Gm rather than D/D.
    To test this I paired him with this female to produce batch #4


    I know this female is Gm/+ - S/+ - +/pb - +/bg

    Sure enough it soon became clear that there were fish without a dark gene amongst their offspring, and others that were clearly Gm/Gm.

    So the male is definitely D/Gm and presumably therefore not homozygous for bg.
    However, that did not completely explain what I was seeing in batch #3. I still haven't done a complete phenotype count, but from a quick glance there appear to be about 40% dark individuals and about 60% platinum marbles. If the female was Gm/+ and the male as now established D/Gm, that should give 25% D/Gm, 25% D/+, 25% Gm/Gm & 25% Gm/+. If the male didn't even carry the bg gene then that should equate to 50% blacks, 25% platinum marble and 25% blues, of which half should be blue smokeys, yet none of the offspring appear to be blues, and there are no light individuals that show obvious smokey pattern. Because of her parentage the female can't be homozygous for Gm, so the only plausible explanation is that the female is D/Gm as well...

    If both fish are D/Gm and the male doesn't even carry the bg gene, then I should have given 50% D/D, 25% D/Gm and 25% Gm/Gm individuals, in this case the proportion of light to dark coloured offspring is far too high, so my final conclusion (at least until I get chance to test cross the female) is that the male is het for bg and the pairing is as follows :-

    D/Gm - S/+ - Sm/+ - pb/pb - +/bg x D/Gm - S/+ - +/+ - pb/pb - bg/bg

    This should give
    37.5% D/D or D/Gm individuals that are het. for bg. (but as D/D fish are notoriously tricky to raise, I'd expect a higher proportion of losses of these)
    12.5% Platinum marbles that are het. for bg.
    12.5% platinum marbles that are homozygous for bg. (and therefore should look very similar to platinum marbles but with less black on their bodies)
    25% D/Gm - bg/bg individuals (which will also look light in colour and may have some black marks)
    12.5% D/D - bg/bg's which may look reasonably dark.

    looking carefully at the youngsters, this seems to reasonably reflect what I've got. Until recently I couldn't identify any of the theoretically 25% of them which were D/Gm - bg/bg, but in recent days some are starting to develop those characteristic BSP dark fins.

    Unfortunately the tank where they are is proving really tricky to take photos, I will try and provide some when they get moved in about a month.
    Last edited by Pterophyllum; 10-14-2018 at 03:53 PM.
    Blessed are the cheesemakers!

  6. #36
    ..thank you.....nice update....those plat marbles intrigue me....beautiful angels...

    ""D/Gm - bg/bg, but in recent days some are starting to develop those characteristic BSP dark fins.""......can't wait for these pics....
    Jon
    He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
    - Douglas Adams

    http://www.mugwump-fish-world.com/index.php

  7. #37
    This has been fascinating and enlightening. Thank you All for sharing

  8. #38
    One further thing to mention...

    In post #17 I highlighted that from a mixed batch which included 64 Bulgarian Greens, I only got 1 rather than the 30+ bg/bg veiltails that I was expecting, and suggested that this could be evidence for gene linkage between the veiltail and the bg loci.
    Unfortunately I lost the male so wasn't able to repeat the pairing, and although I still have the female I have as yet not managed to re-pair her with a bg/bg male.
    I do have six babies from the one bg/bg veiltail who turned out to be a female, but as her partner didn't carry the bg gene, we have to wait for them to mature before I use them in test.

    However in the meantime, Raiko has carried out a similar pairing to my one, and reports just 4 veiltails from over 300 bg/bg offspring. This is pretty conclusive evidence that the bg and V loci are quite closely linked with a crossover rate in the region of 1% - 2%.

    I'm not sure if there is an official way of indicating gene linkage, but until someone corrects me, I shall in future use the following nomenclature

    V_bg - a veiltail gene linked with a bg gene
    V_+ - a veiltail gene linked to a wildtype gene at the bg loci.
    +_bg - A bg gene linked to a wildtype gene at the Veiltail locus
    +_+ - Linked wildtype genes at both loci.
    Blessed are the cheesemakers!

  9. #39
    How are these doing now?
    Jon
    He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
    - Douglas Adams

    http://www.mugwump-fish-world.com/index.php

  10. #40
    How are these doing now?
    The more I work with this gene the more puzzled I become...

    Batch #3 are disappointingly slow growing, I've recently moved about 15 mostly paraibas to a seperate tank to try and grow them out, but I'm struggling to find many classic "bsp's" in the batch. I know previously I said...

    but in recent days some are starting to develop those characteristic BSP dark fins.
    However it's worth noting that most of those were some of the larger ones I took to the shop, and the colour only really emerged when they got there, the ones at home by comparison still look very washed out.
    Conversely...

    Batch #4 these seem to be growing much faster and are rapidly catching, up with batch #3. In this batch there seem to be a reasonable proportion of youngsters with the classic "bsp" darker fins, but most of these have much darker bodies than I would have expected, this does however confirm that the male is at least het. for bg.

    Finally batch #2
    Some of these, seem to be expressing surprisingly strong body pigment, these are all fish with a smokey gene.

    I have been pretty busy of late and haven't had chance to take many photos, hopefully I'll get chance in the next few days.

    However, what is becoming increasingly clear is that the expression of this gene seems to be extremely variable and is probably dependent on both environmental factors such as diet, temperature, lighting and water chemistry as well as the interaction of other genes, in particular, if you want to produce "classic" looking "bsp's", make sure you keep smokey genes out of the gene pool!
    Blessed are the cheesemakers!

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •