Designer clownfish thru selective breeding

[JHardman]

A recent post about a hybrid clownfish prompted me to write this up. http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=276934

I thought I would share some insight, and get some feedback, as I am not a genetic expert by any means.

Here is why I do not think we are going to see any designer clownfish hybrids anytime in the near future… This applies for breeding for a specific marking trait and not a full blown cross bred like an orange skunk X with a blue stripe to produce a white cap clown, which is another subject all together.

Someone posted about a hybrid between A. Percula and A. Ocellaris, resulting in an unusually marked/barred clownfish. BTW this hybrid has been documented in the wild, with similar results.

It would take a long, long time to get that. It is not as easy as it is with say dogs, that will mate with anything when the female is in heat. It just doesn't work that way with clownfish.

For example...

Pair #1 (F0) is formed with adults, the soonest one would reasonably expect a spawn is 12 months.

Pair #2 (F0) is formed at the same time.

So you are at 12 months from producing one fish with the desired trait you want. Let's say you get lucky and produce fish with the trait you want in the first couple of spawns and do not have to wait for many many spawns to get what you want. Now with A. percula in the mix this could well take upwards of 9 months to see the final barring/coloration pattern of the offspring. I would venture a guess and say that the percentage of fish from this F0 pairing with the desired markings would be very small, likely less than 1 in 1000 fish, assuming it is a strong trait, if it is not, then something like 1 in 10000 is more realistic.

Pair #3 and #4 (F1) formed from one fish from pair #1 and one from pair #2. Considering that the slow to mature A. percula is involved in the mix, I would not expect a spawn for 18-24 months from the time they were hatched, assuming that they were paired in a grow out technique. Now wait another 9 months for the offspring to fully develop their markings and form a new pair. At this point I really doubt you are going to get a very significant increase in the percentage of offspring with the desired markings.

Pair #5 and #6 (F2) formed from one fish from pair #3 and one from pair #4... Again you are looking at somewhere around 36 months to see results... At this point you might just start to see a significant increase in the desired markings.

I will venture to say that you are looking having to go out to about F4 or F5 generations before you see enough of a percentage of fish with the desired markings to make it anywhere near viable to breed them, i.e. IMO at least 75% of the fish with the desired marking.

So at the F5 generation you are looking at 36 months X 5 + 21 months for the F0 generation or 201 months or 16.75 years

Now if I am wrong that you would get a significant percentage at F4 to F5 generations and it actually takes something like F8 to F10 generations, well just tack (3) years on for every generation past F5... We are talking decades here folks.

Now you would not really want to do it this way, you would want to start with at least (10) F0 pairs of WC fish to help insure you had a half way decent genetic diversity so that they do not end up like black A. ocellaris, which most breeders have inbred so much that they are hard to find without deformities. And this would have to be done by many breeders at the same time, or you will end up with the same problems as black A. ocellaris if they became popular in the hobby.

So if you can find (9) other breeders that are willing to dedicate all of the time, money, and resources to try an experiment like this, I am game.

[t1guyton1]

John, good thread. I have wondered about the same thing you just layed out for us.

[NFed16]

You said that in another thread you wanted an all white ocellaris or a. percula. Allthough not really possible, couldn't you get ocellaris with much more white on them, by selectively breeding the fish with widest white bars, or misbars with large amounts of white on their bodies. Since the ocellaris are faster to mature and far easier to come by, it would be easier to find suitable fish for the experiment. Allthough this probably wouldn't produce as much white as the a.Percula X a.ocellaris cross, wouldn't this be a faster route to a similar fish?

[Atticus]

Faster is only a relative term when you are talking about decades of work....

[JHardman]

Originally posted by NFed16
You said that in another thread you wanted an all white ocellaris or a. percula. Allthough not really possible, couldn't you get ocellaris with much more white on them, by selectively breeding the fish with widest white bars, or misbars with large amounts of white on their bodies. Since the ocellaris are faster to mature and far easier to come by, it would be easier to find suitable fish for the experiment. Allthough this probably wouldn't produce as much white as the a.Percula X a.ocellaris cross, wouldn't this be a faster route to a similar fish?

Actually I was talking about a trait that is reproducible, and not one that you are trying to change, which would likely take even more generations to produce.

For example, you have gone thru (8) generations to produce a hybrid between A. percula and A. ocellaris trying to consistently produce fish with the wide bars that cover the dorsal fin. You see that some of the fish, a small percent of the fish, that they have even more white barring than you were after. So now you start the whole process over again trying to get a nearly or completely white fish. Since you are already starting with an established trait, chances are that it will not take as many generations to produce, but even (3) generations is like (9) years of work, with no guarantees that any of it will workout to something that is viable for anyone but pure researchers with budgets that do not demand pure profit at the end.

And the one thing I haven't mentioned thru all this, is... What do you do with the fish that are not what you want? Do they all get culled? Do you sell them as "nothing special about them, but they are hybrids"?

[Fishy Something]

The other side of this is in my very limited experience there is no guarantee that the trait will breed true anyway.

My pair of perc's are both CB & the middle band is not complete in either of them, so if this were a trait that you were wanting to select for they would be two fish you may choose. Funnily enough every one of their surviving offspring is fully banded, not something I would have expected (or had planned for/considered either), but it certainly would throw a spanner in the works if you were trying to plan.

James

[NFed16]

Even if you sold the unwanted hybrid fish they could end up adding to the gene pool of either species, making the cross more common. So is genetic engineering the only feasable route?

[JHardman]

Originally posted by Fishy Something
The other side of this is in my very limited experience there is no guarantee that the trait will breed true anyway.

My pair of perc's are both CB & the middle band is not complete in either of them, so if this were a trait that you were wanting to select for they would be two fish you may choose. Funnily enough every one of their surviving offspring is fully banded, not something I would have expected (or had planned for/considered either), but it certainly would throw a spanner in the works if you were trying to plan.

James

There is some evidence from ORA that you can selectively breed for fish that produce a higher percentage of mis bars, but frankly IMO it has more to do with nutrition than genes. Many a breeder will tell you that they have mis barred pairs producing nearly all offspring as normally barred fish. So having a genetic predisposition to throw mis bars is one thing, but being able to produce high percentages of mis bars is not so straight forward.

I would venture to say that with enough generations 8-10, that you could have a pair that would produce a very high percentage of mis bars.

But with the example I am using, the barring is not what most would consider mis barring, in that the hybrid typically has white or "barring" on dorsal the fin, which is not something that most breeders would call mis barring. Most would define mis barring as incomplete bars or additional bars. For example I have a GSM male that has a gold dot between his mid and tail bar, I call him mis barred.

Originally posted by Fishy Something
Even if you sold the unwanted hybrid fish they could end up adding to the gene pool of either species, making the cross more common. So is genetic engineering the only feasable route?

I guess I will answer a question with a question. Does anything, be it selective breeding or genetic manipulation need to be done at all?

[teevee]

What if people started gene-splicing when breeding clownfish. We've already got those glowing things. Maybe we can get a clownfish with hair.

[NFed16]

Im not saying that anything needs to be done, or should be done, in fact I'm pretty much against all man-made changes to a species, but it is fun to wonder sometimes...

[trueblackpercula]

lets keep them the way they are.

[oama]

Please define "the way they are".

Should I be culling my true percs if they have a lot of black on them?

Or are you saying that if God made a fish a "stubbie" in my hatchery, they should have a long and happy life?