Albino's

[African_Fever]

With the recent topic on some albino fry that NWCD had from his 'F1' Aulonocara's, I thought I'd see if any other members on the forum have ever had any albino fry of their own from 'normal' parents (ones not carrying any albino gene).

Personally, I've been breeding cichlids for close to 15 years and have never once had an albino fry. I've had plenty of deformities (some from obvious inbreeding), as well a couple of 'oddities' (all from Aulonocara's). A siamese twin joined at the belly (one was upside down when the other right-side up), one with two heads (died while on vacation), one with no head, and one born just a head.

I've always wondered what the occurence of albinism was in fish that don't already carry the albino gene. Seeing as most albino Haps/peacocks are derived from crossbreeding with an albino peacock (the new albino D. comp's definitely don't look right), it would be interesting to find out if anyone has ever had any occur naturally.

[rahim101]

I personally have not had any experience with this, however, I have witnessed Denis (at Gold Aquairums) strip a none albino carying Aulonocara koningsi Mbenji Peacock and recieve 4-5 albino from that one female. None of the other females spat any albino fry.

Really cool!!!!

[African_Fever]

With that many albino fry appearing in a single brood, I'd bet that both parents again had some albino history. With albinism being so rare when it's 'true', I have a hard time believe that 4-5 mutations just 'happened' to occur in fish that have no history of it.

[RD.]

I just posted this in another thread .........

I spoke with someone yesterday whom I consider an authority on this subject, his response, 99% of the albino Africans in the market are hybrids.

This person has been breeding Africans for 25+ years (on a very large scale), and is responsible for developing approx 25 strains of albino fish. He's obviously not a purist when it comes to African species, he breeds them as a business. He told me that even though some of these strains took over 10 years to develop to the point that they are 99% pure, in the end they are all developed from cross breeding.