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why do some fish have "more" of an ability to be an ablino or leucistic. for example.

u often see albino tiger barbs, where finding albino gars is kinda rare.

besides the whole nature and albino = dead fish thing, if these fishes are both breed in aquaria, why do u see albinoism more readily in some fishes than in other types.

Life tables, basically (something you learn about in the more boring ecology lectures). Animals with a shorter generation time will go through more generations, and so people have just kept more individuals of some species and bred more because you go through generations faster with smaller, higher fecundity fishes (like tiger barbs and cories), and some of these species have been kept for several decades, so the odds of having gotten them by now them are much greater.

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Hmm also different fish have different genetic makeup. albinism would involve homozygous recessiveness in one or more genes.

Selective breeding is also to blame. once the gene is found it can be exploited by breeders. finding one albino fish is hard enough as it is, getting a breeding pair is even harder. so some fish jsut haven't had a breeding pair of albinos.

At least this is what I would presume.

Many of the more common albinos are breed to be that way. Because of the recessive genes a "normal" fish can have albino offspring. May fish like Tiger Barbs may have normal and albino come from the same spawning. In these species the albino is present in the genes so if you breed yours they may have albino babies.

20 Gallon Long:
Aquaclear 300
2 Bolivian Rams, Mikrogeophagus altispinosus: Gumby and Pokey

ok i thought about selective breeding, and i still want to find an albino gar.

You can only selective breed to a point, the fish to breed with have to be available first.

bettas have oodles of variations from selective breeding, but you very rarely see albinos in any form. I have seen one, and seeing as there was only the one it would have been hard to work with that (could have done an F1 cross I guess, but that spawn ended up with growths etc) and well, by most accounts the albino males seem to have similar faults to the light coloured males. Theory is that they are somehow weaker than other colours, which sounds like tosh, but there is something in it IMO.
Also, albinism can affect vision, and with fish that rely on parents rearing the eggs and fry, that could cause problems.

There ya go bit more food for thought




For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

calla, u may want to try this if u want to breed an albino, awhile back jack something a award winning breeder, told me to keep breeding cellopanes together, and i should by breeding light colored bettas get an albino. he himself had many albinos and didn't consider them special.

Jack Tobin?

Cellos themselves have a 'drop dead' characteristic, so i don't know if that'd give you stronger albinos, but its interesting to know that someone had success.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett