RedPanda
May-2024 It all started with a beautiful mutation male from BrightPoppy strain
around Jan 2024, I spotted a very unique and beautiful male from bright poppy mutation tank ,this male has bight yellow-orange to fire red color tail, and dark blue half lower body, with red dorsal fin, first half body is golden yellow, with a very unique red face mark starts right behind eyes and cross through the whole upper body in the same vertical level of pectoral fin. I temperately called this fish RedPanda due to the very similar color pattern as the red panda
I picked two types of females total 5 of them to start with the male, among the 5 females, 3 of them has very similar body color mutation first half body yellow and lower body with dark blue or brown. the other two females have overall body in dark brown.
This is the first time I use mutation to start a strain creation, as mutation is not stable and I have no way to tell from male and females generic mix on cross breeding, I will expect the first couple batches are going to be all over type of color patterns. hopefully, I am going to be able to get a couple of males which similar to this original male.
Although this male is unique and beautiful, but I am not sure if he is the final form I would like to stabilize or I may tune some characters , so I do expect to see what the offsprings going to looks like.
I may want to add some white pattern on the face and upper half body, and introduce some ring pattern on the tail.
Jun-2024 Breeding tank and program setup
Due to my strain breeding setup change for matured stains like Transnow, I have a 30 gallons tank available to host the breeding group,
I design the breeding program a little bit different from previous strain creation, I will have the group breed and raise the fry in this breeding tank, I will start curling the male as soon as it can be told the sex into a male only tank, for female , I will leave them in this tank until 3 month old then I will select most of females to mutation female tank, but will remain 5-6 in the breeding tank to get a chance to cross breed with this male to increase the generic similarity to have more males close to the origin starter male.
For males, I will curl them when they grow 6 month old, if I get luck to have some males I can use to continue the strain, I will introduce them back to breeding group, I will keep the original male in the group until I got suitable males from offspring to continue the strain development.
I should be able to get at least 20 batches from this male from original group and cross breed with next generation female. I should have high chance to get some males to continue the strain development.
if unfortunately I got nothing out of 20 batches, then I will close the strain or if anything in the offspring can be used to alter the strain creation to some thing new.
Spt-2024 Curl first batch males
we have some offspring from the first batch start showing colors, I would like to pick them out as soon as I saw the sign of the male start developing the gonopodium. most of time, I can wait until it is fully developed, and by then most of male should start showing their display colors.
I do not do regular culling process as I can not tell how the males going to look like once they fully matured, since this is the first batch from a two random mutation fish, I do expect to get all type of different looking males , if I am luck , I hope I can get one or two males look like male here.
I put all the males into a raising tank to keep tracking the variety
Oct 2024 First batch male results
I selected 14 color displayed young males, and luck enough, I got 7 of them looks like the original male already, or even better. the rest of them I have some yellow tails with spots and grey light body with some light orange areas on the tail. I am kind of know what they are from, I will talk about those mutations later
from the 7 males do look like the original males, they are not all the same, all of them have the majority character with orange tails and top dorsal fins, brown/black body, and specially the orange from eye to first half body mark up. but as the picture shows one of male I really like and select to continue the line, it developed more dark blue body (almost black), and specially I like the pectoral fins with completely black. and with black lips. I like these black elements added to the strain, they bring more contraction from orange tail and dorsal fin, also more like red panda as the name states.
I will continue on this strain and see if I can stabilize it.
One thing worth to mention, then they start displaying color, it is completely different fish, it will start show yellowish tail, no color on the dorsal fin and light brown body, and then color starts enhancing day by day.
This is still very young male, I will update the full grown later, I expect the tail and dorsal fin should be much bigger.
