By Mike Jacobs

Wellllllll....how did you do with the questions about genetics last time? Let me try to help with some really easy things to think about. Let's say that if a particular genetic trait is dominant, then we will mark that with a capital letter such as in angelfish the color silver is dominant sooooo we will mark that as 'S' for dominant...let's say that we are dealing with fish that are at most carrying 2 genes in its makeup for color...there could be more than 2 but for purposes of illustrating the situation we will leave it at that. A pure silver angel would have a S x S configuration in its genes (2 S's because we said that we would be dealing with fish that had 2 genes for color...you'll see how it works if you stick with it here!!)...back to genetics 101... let's say that you mated a pure silver to a pure silver the genetic boxes would look like this:

and you would get this if you were to match up the appropriate genes.

Let me try to tell you what you have here and how it will allow you to predict the colors of some of your angels, and other fish. Vat' vee got here Ethel is a parent, S S, mated to another, S S, and the children will be all SS....and all of the young are genetically 'pure"...SS...silver angels, and everybody is happy........but what about color variations??? Let's not muddy the water here. We are not here to discuss how variations come about...just to discuss how to predict what will happen once they do happen. Let's say that you go to your local shop and get a "pure" gold angel...what is its genetics....I know.... gold is recessive ...which means we will represent its genetic map with lower case letters...'g' for gold and lower case for recessive... What will happen if your 'S'ilver king decides to have some "puppies" with his 'g'olden queen...what will they have? Let's see.....

their "puppies " will all be Silver but they will now not be "pure". They will be of a mixed parentage, but the dominate 'S' will be just that...dominate...as it should be. They will absolutely be silver but only you will know that they are not pure...they will have the recessive gene sitting there waiting to frustrate some future breeder, but maybe you wanted this...maybe you could not find a gold male anywhere and this is the way to produce your own gold strain...yea, you got it look at the next generation (brother-Sg to sister-Sg):

Our "litter" has 3 types of fish in it but only 2 colors of fish... try this on for size...there will be:

Soooooooooo.........if the King and Queen had 200 grandkids there would be:

So how do you get a black angel without black parents......remember...silver and black are both dominant....and if you put 2 dominants together you have co-dominance ...or a mixing of the 2 dominant colors (blacklace). Therefore the genetic make up of a blacklace angel is S-B a co-dominance that has a dominant S and a dominant B. So what will happen.....it's magic:

here you get:

Just a minor list of colors and patterns I know of:

recessive...gold, pearlscale, blush, albino, 1/2 black...Do you know any fer' sure...LET US KNOW...!

Just a note on my discus...I originally purchased 16 fish...I now have 16 fish...that in itself is nifty, and they have all about doubled in size. They are feed 3-5 time a day on frozen brine...frozen blood worms...Wattley's beef heart...Pro-Discus beef heart. Temp. about 84-85... all are in a 55 gal...the biggest is about 5" diameter and the smallest is 2 1/2", and the color of all of them is beginning to show...it's really nifty. About 1/4 of the water is changed every other day...so far there doesn't seem to be any difference in the health of the Panda discus vs. the others...will let you know. Remember how healthy the Pandas were suppose to be...no problem here, it's just that all of the discus I bought seem to be as hardy as all get-out. So I went out and bought a reverse osmosis unit...oh my...is my rent due yet? Have had the discus since the end of November....more notes to come.

Question about names...If someone sells you a group of "purple widgets"...now your "purple widgets" have young... do you get to sell them as "purple widgets"? Or do you get to call them "'my' purple/red widget". Think about it...it's not as easy as you think......continued next month.

Fins up...........................................................Mike.