interesting link on the subject
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?472102-reproducing-synspilum-with-citrinellum
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?472102-reproducing-synspilum-with-citrinellum
The Creation of Blood Parrots Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Chrisplosion
- Start date
IMO looks like the mom met a male convict and then he was one of the offspring
these i found at my local petsmart
a very long time ago i had a short bodied female midas and a male red head.
they spawned and voila, blood parrot babies...
they spawned and voila, blood parrot babies...
To confuse the issue I have had what we loosely term red texas here (sibling inbreeding from blood parrot mumX super green texas dad) cross with synspilum to produce a couple of spectacular looking "parrots" when and if they faded. Bit of a surprise because I thought short bodied genetics was a bit more complex than that but given the result suspect that the synspilum used had some parrot parentage. Incidentally the male I kept from the spawn had the typical parrot notched head and beak and after a couple of attempts proved fertile - another surprise.
The parrot notch is a result of body shape mismatch, so yes it goes that hericthys could be used as the female instead of amphilophus
One of the interesting things - for me - was often good male fertility coupled with short bodied parrot characteristics. When I crossed my hericthys male with a parrot female I got a variable bunch of offspring - some a bit deeper bodied than the texas but some the same as the dad and when and if they faded, a watered down orange background colour but usually with pronounced large pearling which encouraged me to go further. When the best of these offspring were paired (with some difficulty as some males were not performers) some of their offspring were decidedly parrot but not as beaked and with mouths that most often closed. The fish that were not parrot were bulkier than their grandpop. Males that I cared to breed from were usually fertile and it was one of these (deep bodied but not parrot) that paired with the synspilum to produce fertile parrot-like males that may fade to something a bit like rainbow kings with texas pearling. Maybe the message is that it is possible to breed your own fertile blood parrot males if you want to produce a self perpetuating parrot breeding colony rather than cross inbred lines of sb amphilophus and vieja - if that is what they do in Asia. It also seems that the more species in the mix, the lower the hybrid male infertility - is that other peoples' experience too?
