Amphilophus variations

[Guapoteguy291]

I've noticed alot of color variations in amphs mainly the midas and red devils. Some stay barred some go orange, yellow, red, white or piebald. My question is: Is there variation within a particular spawn or do they all end up the same? Do they resemble parents or do they do their own thing? Do some peel and some not? My pair are both yellow will their offspring be yellow as well? Kind of getting into genetics where what might be dominant and what is recessive. I'm sure many of you have bred amphs just wondering what your experience was regarding this color variation

 

[ragin_cajun]

There's been some recent conversation/explanation of this here. I think the long and the short of it is....if you have 2 barred midas, they spawn, most of the offspring will be barred, but some percentage (5-10%) will be be "piebald" -- they'll peel when they reach around 5 inches. If you start with 2 Piebald parents, you'll get a much higher percentage of Piebald offspring, and some will be Barred, too.

Red Devils, same thing. Other species like Amarillo, Chancho, Hoga, I THINK none of those offspring will peel--I'm not sure about that, though.

Also, I've heard there are lakes in Central America that have wild Barred Midas/Citrinellum, and none of the offspring peel in those lakes are Piebald. So the Piebald thing may be a recessive gene in only some populations of Citrinellum and Labiatus--not all.

 

[Ihsnshaik]

I used to breed Midas and RD for many years.. I can tell you this having over easily 20,000 fry that most fry will looking like mom and dad and a mixture of the two. I have a deep orange and almost 99% white one. I'd say 30 percent were almost all white and 50 percent were orange and 20 percent were orange and white. Father even though was a F1 didn't have a large hump as I wanted but my female did. Many of the fry had large humps and some didn't.

It depends on the ancestors as well. Like grandparents. If the grandpa was creamickle and so was mom but their siblings were all orange they can carry that to their kids.

Never kept barred species before but all my fry faded at 1-3".

With that being said you need pure species to know the genetics because a "RD" or "Midas" might be a midevil or even another mix like a chancho involved.. Mine were F1 from Midas the parents (Jeff Rapps).

I never got one that was out of the ordinary. Plenty of Stunners but none that stood out like theres no way thats their parents. You need to Midas or RD to get to 7" at least to get a good basis of how they're going to be. I had many peel white at large sizes and became creamsickles.