The first brood (with me anyway) of my Honduran Red Point cichlid has sprung a suprise on me: Albinos!
The parents are meant to be F1 (first generation from wild) but are brother and sister. A number of the young are transparent where the black is meant to be.

Is is possible to get Albinos in F2, or has someone been told some fibs? This isn't the first indicator that they may be hybrids with a little Convict DNA in them

Here's one of the Albinos:

And here's a "normal" fry:

Hi Grimbadger,

As far as I know, albino HRP's are completely white, but that fry is another variant known as leucistic - partial albinism.

Genetically speaking, if albinism occurs naturally in HRP's (which it probably does) it will be a recessive gene. It's perfectly possible to have a wild caught pair both of normal colour and both carriers of the gene for albinism. If they breed there's a 25% chance of albino offspring in the F1 batch. If only one of the wild pair carried the gene, there'd be no albinos in F1, but 25% would carry the gene and two of those carriers mated together would have a 25% chance of albino offspring in F2, and so on.

The odd colour of the fry would only be indicative of cross-breeding if this gene never occurs in wild HRP's as it would then have to have come from hybridisation. That said, there are a lot of hybrids going under the name of the HRP.

Both parents carry 2 genes for colour each of which can be N ormal colour (dominant) or A lbino (recessive). If they each carry a copy of the albino gene they will look normal but they will be genetically NA. Each fry gets one of its genes for colour from each parent. So fry can be NN - normal colour and not carry albino gene, NA - normal colour but carrying albinism which can then be passed on, AN - normal colour but carrying albinism which can then be passed on, or AA - albino and will always pass on the albino gene. The leucistic gene is passed on on a similar way.

Did you get these from the chap on BCA who was selling a pair recently? I know his carry the albino gene as he mentioned it when selling fry, but as I said earlier, your's doesn't look like an albino, it looks like a leucistic variant.

A got them from a guy of BCA, who I thought was a more established breeder than he actually is, but hey-ho you live and learn

I should have said, I knew it must be a recessive gene carried by them both as I have c.25% of these odd fellas - I also seem to have a number of much darker fry which I guess could be double-dominant I just didn't know how common genes like this are in wild fish - but thanks for the explanation anyway

I'm thinking of keeping a male fry as their dad has been throwing a non-stop tantrum for about a month now and has destroyed two successive spawns and left wounds all around the females mouth as well as terrorising her - he's now in his "naughty" box (fry hatchery 3in1 thing) until I decide what to do with him, or he calms down. I just can't decide if I want a "leucistic" fry or a normal one, but thankfully they're still little so there's no rush in making my choice

One quick point. You should never breed from related fish, i.e, Mother/Son, Brother/Sister, Father/Daughter etc, as this can create problems with fry when defects are bred in through inbreeding. You should always select pairs from separate sources. This is generally why it is advised to buy 6 or more as young fry from different breeders and let them pair up naturally.

If the male is acting aggressively then you need to get one from another breeder and start a new bloodline. Do not pair the mother with a male offspring, or another Sister/Brother from the same brood as this generally leads to weak fish in the hobby.

I'm well aware of that, but my main concern is to have a pair of adults that get along so that I can learn how to keep them happy.
Given the difficulty in getting another male who is guaranteed to not be related, or inbred, or a hybrid, and the likely fate of most of my fry (I'll be giving them to the LFS) I'm not going to be too concerned about the biological relationship between my adults - at least not until I'm ready to move on to a more advanced level of Cichlid ownership.

The point is when you give those fry to your LFS and they sell them you are putting possibly substandard fish into the system, that many of us have spent years trying to avoid. This in turns create a line of possibly weak fish that eventualy down the line will give that species a bad name. You shouldn't rush breeding and do your research first sourcing out respected breeders and suppliers, who can provide you with the 6 or so fish you need to to attain a pairing of unrelated fish. It doesn't matter if you are doing it for practice or not... If that is the case we should tell newbies "don't cycle the tank just chuck the fish in as it doen't meatter you are only practising", you are practising with a living creature that should have things done properly from the start. Also your male is already, even being related, giving you problems, so what is different about getting an unrelated male who may be less aggresive. You dont move onto the "more advanced level Cichlid ownership" until you get the basics right and sourcing out unrelated fish to breed is part of the basics.

Not just that you will get a bad name among the hobbyists who look down on the practice of inbreeding, and have spent years trying to irradicate it.

I'm not interested in getting drawn into an argument over this.

I'm sure you'll be glad to know that, although it's for my own reasons (I'm sick of his attitude/behaviour), I've taken the adult male to the LFS. I'm going to see how the female gets on alone for a while, although I have now been able to reintroduce my dithers as unlike her brother/husband, she isn't interested in attacking them.

Back to the Lucistic fry - would I be right in thinking that because the adults are likely to have got it from the same parent, the gene is probably on the X chromosome (unless by a random fluke it was "crossed over" when the gametes were produced)? Therefore all of my lucistic fry are likely to be female as they must have two copies of the gene to show it as a phenotype, and therefore would have double X chromosomes?

Hi Grimbadger,


Firstly, there's no reason to assume that your fish inherited the leucistic gene from the same parent. Having a random brother-sister pair from a previous spawning who both carry the gene (which they must to produce leucistic offspring) makes it more likely that both parents were carriers, as does the breeder's awareness of the presence of the gene. He must have seen leucistic fry in the same batch to know the gene is present.

If the gene was inherited from one parent and by chance your pair both have the gene, there's no particular reason to believe the carrier was the female or that expression of the gene is sex dependent.

As it's known that both male and female HRPs can be of leucistic coloration, there's no pointer to the fry having to be female. On that basis, I would say that the colour is no indicator of gender.

I know you've said you don't want a debate on the ethics of breeding and that's fair enough, but I do feel I must point out that consistently breeding related fish back to each other will be detrimental to the fish and to the hobby and is not something FK would condone or support.

It would be a big mistake to mate these F2 fry to each other or back to the parents even if the parents were unrelated, but as they are brother and sister and you suspect hybridisation in the pair you have, it would be madness. If you are serious about wanting to breed fish then starting by breaking one of the most important rules is really not the way to go about it.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I do not like to see beautiful fish taken from the wild and then treated as merely an experiment. By all means enjoy the hobby and the experience of breeding, but please don't risk the health of the fish or the reputation of the hobby as you do so.

Me again. Just looking back over your old threads on this and am wondering which tank you have them in? It looks like the 30 inch 88 litre. If so, the problems between the male and female may well be down to tank size - it's a tad small for a pair.

Also, if the pair you have are the ones I think they are, they're F2 and I believe were probably inbred right the way down from WC. The fry you have are therefore F3 from all related parents, grandparents and great-grandparents (unless as you suspect, Convict blood was introduced along the way). This may well explain the weird colour of the fry which seem neither one thing nor another. Continuing to breed within this family is not something you shoud consider IMO.