BULLDOG Fry- Genetic Or Environmental

Everything you ever wanted to say about "Zebra luvin", but didn't because you thought everyone would take the mickey! Plus general topics for discussion including everything from what you feed them to your personal experiences.

Post Reply
kkorotev
Newbie
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:06 am

Post by kkorotev »

I have HEARD (and it did not necessarily refer to Loricaridae) that the egg shell can be harder (thicker) in harder water, softer (thinner) in softer. In addition to the softness of the Rio Xingu, we might want to also consider the pH. Slighty ACID water (if also soft) will deteriorate a shell sooner than ALKALINE water.

I have kept West African Cichlids in water too hard for egg fertilization. An oldtimer told me the sperm banged his head so many times on the eggshell that he passed out. I lowered the hardness (and the resultant pH) and the eggs started to hatch. I really believe the effect we're discussing is just another ramification of this same issue.

We have learned quite a bit about breeding this fish, now we need to learn how to maximize the experience and give the fry a better chance at survival and growth. For example; Hypancistrus zebra fry NEED a bit of algae/spirulina: Like kids need there vegetables. They do not become hearty meat eaters until they approach maturity.

I think I will crawl back in my hole now.

Kevin
User avatar
Barbie
Moderator
Posts: 1146
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:07 pm
Location: Spokane, WA, US
Contact:

Post by Barbie »

Actually, if a problem is genetic, recessive or not, the same genes are going to be present for every spawn, in the same ratios between the same parents, so the percentage of deformed fry should be pretty close through all the batches. You wouldn't get a higher percentage at one time more than others.

Come to think of it, my L183 were having trouble hatching with just lowering the TDS of my water. I had to also lower the pH in order to get fertile spawns where I could get more than 4 or 5 fry to live. I was familiar with the eggs hardening too soon for them to be fertilized from my work with softwater cichlids, so it seemed like the logical step for me. Because the zebra eggs are fertile, I assumed it couldn't be as much of a hardness issue. It would be an easy thing for me to do a few extra RO water changes once they've spawned and see if lowering the hardness helps. It doesn't really explain why my last few batches have had no more stubnoses though, other than the male not being as frantic about blocking them from the light?

Someone's going to need to breed some of these. I know it's not going to make me popular for saying so, but I honestly don't think it's a problem that will be passed on.

Barbie
[url=http://www.plecos.com][img]http://plecos.com/plecosbanner.gif[/img][/url]
User avatar
sharko
Groupie
Posts: 89
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 3:29 am
Location: Norway
Contact:

Post by sharko »

What if the bulldog fry have crooked fins as well?

A girl i Austria have this as far as i know..

What would be the cause?

Could it be a connection in same cases?

http://www.l46.de/l46/Der_Kauf_des_l46_ ... aharn.html
Visit my home page and sign my guestbook:)
Des
Mentally Certified!
Posts: 553
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:06 pm
Location: Surrey, England

Post by Des »

Hi,
After having a look at the picture in the previous post,ie te fish with the bulldog face AND the crooked pectoral fins, I believe that they may have been in the egg longer than necessary ( due to not breaking out of the eggshell on time)and therefore got "squashed" ,as they were still growing but there was no "give" in the eggshell, due to being in harder water.
It is very unlikely that even though numbers in the wild have reduced drastically, that the parents of these "bulldog" fish have been inbred so much, therefore causing Genetic defects that we often see in other (inbred) captive bred species ,with crooked fins, gill cover deformities often seen in Discus, Rams etc
Some catfish eg Loricaria filamentosa which I have bred have used up all their egg yolk, by the time they hatch, but zebras still have most of their egg yolk when they hatch. So if their hatching process is delayed eg due to harder water than is normal in the wild,(as Kevin has also stated),I believe this will cause them to want to grow but in a limited space causing these deformities.
As Barbie and Kevin has also stated, I too have had problems with breeding soft water species such as Discus ,Rams etc where the embryo dies in the egg, when bred in harder water.
No problems whatsoever breeding discus when I changed to 10% tapwater and 90% deionised water.
So the other scenario is that they are getting deformed within the egg due to the effects of "hard" water on the egg.
Does anyone know the general and carbonate hardness of the water where the zebras originate?. I know it is soft, but how soft?.
These are my own thoughts and views.
Regards,
Des.
Ed_R
Obsessed!!
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:55 pm
Location: Dallas TX

Post by Ed_R »

What KEvin and Barbie are saying is what I'v ebeen trying to say- it's not just the plecs.
ARgh.
User avatar
McEve
Hypan-guru!
Posts: 2871
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 7:33 am
Location: Norway
Contact:

Post by McEve »

if it depends on the water hardness, then that explains why the egg clutch I raised didn't produce any bulldogfaces. The water had KH0 and GH0.

I guess I got rewarded for the soft water on one hand, then punished on the other, when it turned out the fry didn't handle that soft a water. :roll:
User avatar
KenW
Obsessed!!
Posts: 187
Joined: Sat Jan 01, 2005 2:36 am
Location: Texas, USA

Post by KenW »

If the water hardness does effect the egg shell and causes the bulldog deformity, then I would think it would be fairly easy to replicate this problem by controlling the hardness on multiple batches to see if there is a correlation. i.e., 1st 3 batches at 50ppm total hardness, 2nd 3 batches at 100ppm, 3rd 3 batches at 150ppm and so on. If this idea holds true then as the water becomes harder we should see more bulldog zebras. We may also see that the hatch rate will be smaller at harder water. The only problem will be getting a pair to breed consistantly and in harder water. What do you guys think?
User avatar
McEve
Hypan-guru!
Posts: 2871
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 7:33 am
Location: Norway
Contact:

Post by McEve »

There's a report of a Norwegian having had a spawn in a Malawi tank - with very hard water, so they can spawn in hard water. I don't hink anything came out of the spawn though, I'll have to check that further.

kgroenhoej wrote:It happens in other species as well.
I've seen ancistrus f1-fry with this defect.
And there's a picture in the New L-numbers of a wildcaught L18-"bulldog".

I'm with the egg-shell-theory. I think that the egg is sometimes to hard to crack for the fry (sometimes alone and sometimes with the help from farther). The next thing to figure out is why the egg-shell gets to hard - maybe the food?

Regards
Klaus
But we're forgetting this one. There's been a wild caught bulldog recorded. Would the water suddenly change caracheristics in the wild? I guess it could, what with pollution and other man made influences... Is there a chanse that this could have happened in the rivers they live in?
User avatar
KenW
Obsessed!!
Posts: 187
Joined: Sat Jan 01, 2005 2:36 am
Location: Texas, USA

Post by KenW »

McEve,

I suppose the water parameters in the rivers and tributaries could fluctuate in that region during dry and rainy season. Does anyone have any info. or data that might support that?

Also it could be the one wild caught zebra was a weaker fry and had a harder time breaking out of the shell, thus the deformity. But then you would think that there would be more deformed zebras with either scenarios.
User avatar
McEve
Hypan-guru!
Posts: 2871
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 7:33 am
Location: Norway
Contact:

Post by McEve »

That's true, there's a natural fluctuation in the water parameters. I just wondered about the hardness being one of these parameters, as I don't think there's been a recorded wild caught bulldog before? They spawn jsut after the rainy season, and the water gets softer and more acidic at that time I think.... I might be very wrong on this though. It wasn't a Zebra this time, it was an L18 they had found
zebra046
Obsessed!!
Posts: 101
Joined: Sat Jan 29, 2005 10:24 am

Post by zebra046 »

If the high Ph Gh Kh is the causative factor to produce bulldog fry then majority of my fry would turn out snubnosed, and why people like Barbie who softens and lowers there Ph get them, if it is genetic then we have to be carefull with this fish due to the fact that they could carry the gene, and if people from different parts of the world are producing this snubnosed fry then there are possibilities that a lot of this fish carries the reccesive gene and it may show up on the F2's. if this is caused by premature collection of the eggs then why do I get them when majority of the fry I produced where hatched by the males before I even collect them.

The big problem I got is I could not keep track of all the fry, who produced snubnosed fry, and who is breeding with what female I even thought this is just caused from over crowding, I know some of my fry are missing some of there tails and even get chewd up from the adults some of them regrows there tail but becomes crooked some adults will result in broken tails from fighting over breeding caves and still manage to heal but not in the perfect shape and for the stripes they too will get affected once they get scrapped off and grows and sometimes grows back turning into broken stripes

I believed this is environmental not genetics lets hope i'm right, its much easier to correct that problem, has anybody ever figure out how to keep the blood lines pure in case this problem is genetics or do we just breed the heck out of the fish and dont keep track of the pedigree. maybe somebody has an idea on how to go about doing this like the once they are doing with some of the Lake victoria Cichlids.
User avatar
Barbie
Moderator
Posts: 1146
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:07 pm
Location: Spokane, WA, US
Contact:

Post by Barbie »

Just to clarify a bit here, I don't lower the pH in the spawning tank. It's 7.8, just like it comes out of my tap. The TDS in my spawning tank is also rarely below 150, so it's not exactly "soft" just a big change from the 280 it comes out of the tap at is all :)

Barbie
[url=http://www.plecos.com][img]http://plecos.com/plecosbanner.gif[/img][/url]
Des
Mentally Certified!
Posts: 553
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:06 pm
Location: Surrey, England

Post by Des »

Barbie,

My tap water has a TDS of 680 uS. I currently do a 50/50 mix with RO.
To get to 150, which I believe is that value in your breeding tanks, I would need to to a 75% RO 25%tapwater mix, which I have been thinking about doing. This I believe would increase the hatch rate.
The decrease in PH that has been found to have beneficial results , I think, is due to the lower bacteria count in the water, in more acidic water. I found this to be true when breeding discus all those years ago. The acidic black water where Wild discus come from is very acidic and also has a very low bacteria count.

Des.
User avatar
Barbie
Moderator
Posts: 1146
Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2004 9:07 pm
Location: Spokane, WA, US
Contact:

Post by Barbie »

Right. I keep discus also, and used to lower the pH for them. I don't bother any more and they do just fine, but they're also just growing out, not spawning. I might at some point lower the pH for the zebras, but it's harder to keep stable that way, IME, and they've been managing spawns as large as 15 already, with the pH this high. I'm sure fine tuning will eventually happen, but for now, it's not broken, so I'm not fixing it ;)

Barbie
[url=http://www.plecos.com][img]http://plecos.com/plecosbanner.gif[/img][/url]
RisaMoe
Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 30, 2005 6:41 pm
Location: Lacey, Wa

Post by RisaMoe »

zebra046 wrote:I believed this is environmental not genetics lets hope i'm right, its much easier to correct that problem, has anybody ever figure out how to keep the blood lines pure in case this problem is genetics or do we just breed the heck out of the fish and dont keep track of the pedigree.
Keep extensive notes. We can create a common location for pedigree as we go.

If we're going to seriously breed these fish, it would be a good idea for everyone to keep notes and track pedigree as well as we can. At times it will be almost impossible to track absolute pedegree accurately, but we have our base stock to track from. I know its a pain and and many people "mean" to, but it will make it easier to establish breeding standards, spot recurring defects and determine the causes of them.

A handful of us are getting involved with saving these beautiful little fish. Using a few scientific disciplines (like journals and pedegree) will make everyone's job easier.

We all have a life outside of our fish and its easy to get busy and not write things down. You work with your fish everyday and you get a "feel" for them. But your observations are important. You may not remember today that odd little behavior you saw a few months ago and thought was strange. If you write it down you can refer to it when someone else sees it and asks questions. You'll also know what has happening in your tank when you saw it. These are important and sometimes critical details for discussions like this one.

You're knowledge is valuable...write it down!
Post Reply