Ram Breeding Questions

[TheRamShack]

Hi all! This is my first post. I'm Erika from California. Hope it's okay to post in this thread. I've been breeding rams for less than one year, but I think I'm hooked. They're such fun little fish! I have been breeding black rams, but just recently I have crossed

• standard fin black male x longfin electric blue female (fry now 13 days old)
• longfin electric blue male x standard fin black female (eggs)

None of the surviving fry appear to be very dark; there is quite a bit of pigment on them, some more than others, but their eyes do not appear to be black. I have never been a patient person, and I'm dying to know what I will end up with. I'd love to develop my own line, but with my limited knowledge and stock, I don't know if that's truly possible.

Does anyone have photos of fry at around 2-4 weeks of age of GBR, gold, electric blue, and black; so that I can compare? Also, please, at what age will I be able to tell if they will develop long fins?

 

[ProudPapa]

Hello Erika, and welcome to the forum. coralbandit would be the person to help with that. Hopefully he'll see this and reply.

 

[coralbandit]

If you search my threads you will find all sorts of fry .
My Youtube has tanks galore with fry a various stages .
Here is one video to get to my youtube ~

 

[TheRamShack]

If you search my threads you will find all sorts of fry .
My Youtube has tanks galore with fry a various stages .
Here is one video to get to my youtube ~

Thank you; I'll do a search. I am looking for up-close photos of young fry to try to figure out what I have. It was easy to distinguish blacks from golds, but I'm curious with EBxblack.

You are a legend around these parts, and I'm so stoked to have gotten a response from you!

 

[coralbandit]

You will clearly see the difference between golds and blacks in the same spawn by 2 weeks !

Not my pics but in the top Right pick you can see the gold and the black fry . That may even be at 1 week old .

 

[Dunk2]

Not great, but this is the best picture I could find of a Gold (left in picture) and Blue (center). This was at about 3 weeks.

Like coralbandit picture, the Golds were clearly gold even at a very young age. In my case, the Blues were sort of grayish. Parents were both Blues.

 

[TheRamShack]

Not great, but this is the best picture I could find of a Gold (left in picture) and Blue (center). This was at about 3 weeks.

Like coralbandit picture, the Golds were clearly gold even at a very young age. In my case, the Blues were sort of grayish.

View attachment 828235

Thank you, this helps! With that information, I do not believe any in my batch are golds, as they do have some pigment and aren't that light in color.
Here is a recent pic of the fry. It's a poor quality photo, unfortunately. I believe the fry are too dark to be golds, and too light to be black. I can't seem to find a similar photo of an EB fry to compare to.