Can you help ID please?

4 posts

Discuss all topics related to freshwater and planted tanks.


tobytyler11
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:16 am

Can you help ID please?

by tobytyler11

We have 3 dalmation mollies, 3 sunset wag platies and 3 mickey mouse platies. There is also 15 or so rosies in the tank. Some fry were born a couple of weeks ago. Some them are clearly the sunburst with markings like the adults. However, there are two other kinds of fry that are also about the same size/age. I know they aren't rosies as they were a live birth and 'tadpole' looking when first born. I'm thinking they are a cross of the dalmation and one of the platies. This particular one is yellowish with red cheeks and black tipped fins. One of the others is a light gray also with black tipped fins. Again, this doesn't match any of the adults. Your thoughts?

I check this site regularly but finally made an account when I didn't find any similar ones in the gallery pictures.

Thanks for you help!
*edited to clarify the fish description*
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Okiimiru
 
Posts: 275
Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2009 10:19 pm

by Okiimiru

Those are baby platies, Xiphophorus maculatus. That's actually a pretty standard coloration for a platy, too. You can see an image if you scroll down to the bottom of this website: http://www.bbayaquariums.com/platy.html If you do a google image search for platies you'll see all different colors. That's one of the reasons that platies are fun to breed; you can combine traits to come up with the coloration of your choice :)

Recessive traits aren't expressed by the parents but can be expressed by offspring. If the parent is heterozygous, they only have one copy of the dominant gene. If they reproduce with another heterozygous mate, one out of four of their offspring will express a different phenotype than the parent. So because of recessive traits, babies can look different from parents.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punnett_square
Breeding fish is really interesting and fun! I'm glad you're intrigued by your fry :)

Mollies are of a different genus (Poecilia) and can't interbreed with platties.
Guppy/molly hybrids exist (they're both poecilia) and platy/swordtail hybrids exist (both Xiphophorus) but I've never seen any evidence of poecilia/xiphophorus hybrids.


mbunaman
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 21, 2012 10:51 am

by mbunaman

Its a platty.


tobytyler11
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2012 4:16 am

by tobytyler11

Thanks very much. I knew there several colors but I didn't realize they wouldn't neccesarily have the markings of their parents.

Can you help ID please?

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