Do koi angelfish keep the blushed gill plates as adults?

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Plecostomus
MFK Member
Dec 26, 2007
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Antelope Valley
Hi,

I like the look of the red gill plates on some quarter sized koi angels, but I wonder does that go away with age?

One LFS angelfish breeder says that kois are supposed to keep the red gill plates, but I've seen some mature kois without the red.

Thanks!
 
I have been breeding angelfish for many years, but never really looked into "genetics".

If the angelfish already display a blushing gill plate, then they will continue to keep that color. ( This is based on my own experience in breeding & raising koi angelfish). Once those angelfish matured and started to spawn, their offspring would also carry the blushing gene, making it possible for many of the baby angels to also display the blushing trait.
 
How cool! Thank you for bringing that wealth of experience and knowledge to the forum! I truly appreciate it. I know that's what forums are supposed to be all about.

This emboldens me to go out and get me some of them kois!
 
Kois are, by definition, blushing. This means they have no pigment on the gill plates, and therefore you can see the gills underneath. That's why it looks like they have red gills. They don't. It's the gills that are red.

They are sometimes confused with gold marble, which are not blushing.

A blushing angel is homozygous for the Stripeless allele (one that's heterozygous for Stripeless is called "ghost"). This means if you cross a koi with a koi, 100% of the offsprings will be blushings with red "gill plates".

But this is not what you were asking, was it? You were asking whether the blushing trait persists in adults. Well, in many cases, it doesn't. They seem to gradually regain gill plate pigmentation as adults, so they become harder and harder to see through, and therefore less and less red.

Angelfish genetics is fairly straightforward, but nevertheless fun even if you don't want to be a serious breeder ;)
 
Two types of blushing angels, The Sunset Blushing angel or the Blue Blushing angle.
The blushing gill plate is found on the juveniles may or may not disappear over time.
For the Koi to have the blushing gill plate it must be a cross between the Koi and the Sunset Blushing angle which would be a very nice fish.
 
Eventually the blushing will become less and less visible and get covered with irredescent(shiny) plates/scales. One way of knowing if the Angel has the blushing trait after it disappears is by looking at the fins (tail as well as dorsal). The fins will have no straitions or vertical lines.

There's more than two types of blushing angels. I've had Blushing Silvers, Blushing Half Blacks, Blushing Gold Marbles (kois), Blushing Golds (Sunsets), as well as Blushing Black(Velvets). To produce blushing angels each of the fish in a pair must have at least one copy of the stripeless gene. The stripeless gene is recessive and needs two to express the trait. Angels with only one copy of the stripeless are called ghosts and are not blushing. If both fish in the pair are blushing (stripeless) all( 100%) offsprings will be blushing as well.

For more info on genetics you may visit Angel Plus or The Angelfish Society(TAS) web sites.
 
Here is a photo of a Sunset Blushing angel and a mix between a marble and a gold angel. The sunset blushing angel has two doses of gold and two doses of stripless a white body and clear fins or the body could be a tangerine or a pinkish color. angel3.jpg
I have breed and raised angel for over 30 years and the one thing that angel breeders have in common is the cross breeding the angel trying to come up with a new look.
This is where the fish pick up the trats of the other fish.
The angels in the photo are 2 1/2 years old notice the gills on the sunset blushing.

angel3.jpg
 
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