Video: Pregnant Micropoecila Pictas That Just Won't Drop Fry?

So I've noticed over the months that my Micropoecilia Pictas seem to take three times as long to mature as my Endlers and that they take a long time between fry drops. That is, I haven't seen any babies in a few months, and I don't think they're eating them as the females don't appear to shrink and then grow again. And all 15+ girls are pregnant, so I'd think that some fry would have to make it. There are plenty of hiding places in the glass pebbles. On the other hand, I have to admit that there was a lot of hornwort in the past, and I had to get rid of it when I had an insane algae outbreak. Maybe I need to put more in. Has anyone else had this had to wait several months or are your Pictas dropping fry monthly?

 

Isolated one my fish thinking it had a week or so.. took 2 and half weeks isolation till she popped them out lol

 

So I've been looking around more on the internet, and it turns out that they can live 2-5 years, so I figure that means that they compromise on fertility, having babies less often in order to have the energy to devote to longer survival. I would imagine that, since a female Endler may live 1 to 1.5 years, reproducing, say 12 times, that would mean that a female Picta would drop a litter every 3 months to total 12 litters over a period of 3.5 years, say.

 

emeraldking I saw that you'd posted a while back about the scarlet livebearer color morph not being found in the wild. Do you know where and/or who had this mutation show up and started line breeding them?

 

Well, these pictas do come in several colors in the wild but no red. There's a orange morph in the wild. Who exactly started to linebreed the red color morph is not clear. But we do know that most linebred red color morphs are bred in Asia and mostly Thailand. Best guess, is that the orange morph has been used to create the red color morph.
I've written an article about the M.picta in the Poecilia Netherlands magazine before. Research has taught that also M.pictas can be superfetative. So, a certain number of those females are carrying embryos in different stages and so the number of fry being dropped do differ. But it's pretty common that also a non-superfetative female won't drop large batches in comparison to an average guppy.
What also happens with M.picta females is that if they don't feel comfortable enought to drop fry when they're due, that they'll absorp those embryos. So, in that case no fry will be found. They can even hold the pregnancy for much longer than a guppy if they need to.
To rehash "superfetation" in this topic: We can't say that M.pictas are superfetative for they whole strain should be superfetative in that case. But it seems that a certain number of females do have the ability of a superfetative pregnancy. It's still a mystery how this is possible.

 

Well, these pictas do come in several colors in the wild but no red. There's a orange morph in the wild. Who exactly started to linebreed the red color morph is not clear. But we do know that most linebred red color morphs are bred in Asia and mostly Thailand. Best guess, is that the orange morph has been used to create the red color morph.
I've written an article about the M.picta in the Poecilia Netherlands magazine before. Research has taught that also M.pictas can be superfetative. So, a certain number of those females are carrying embryos in different stages and so the number of fry being dropped do differ. But it's pretty common that also a non-superfetative female won't drop large batches in comparison to an average guppy.
What also happens with M.picta females is that if they don't feel comfortable enought to drop fry when they're due, that they'll absorp those embryos. So, in that case no fry will be found. They can even hold the pregnancy for much longer than a guppy if they need to.
To rehash "superfetation" in this topic: We can't say that M.pictas are superfetative for they whole strain should be superfetative in that case. But it seems that a certain number of females do have the ability of a superfetative pregnancy. It's still a mystery how this is possible.

That's interesting about the orange ones occurring naturally but the red ones probably starting at in a Southeast Asian breeder's tank. I'd noticed that the red ones seemed to be quite rare, so now I know why between the origin question and also the greater difficulty in breeding M. pictas in general. Do you know where the orange ones are found in the wild?

Superfetative pregnancies! Wow! What a concept! So of course I had to look up and see if it happens in humans and found this NY Times article () So it seems like there's something in common between M pictas and **** sapiens in that some may be superfetative but not all are. I learn so much here

I had noticed that there was something weird going on with my female M. Pictas' reproductive cycle. My first female was very pregnant but just didn't seem to drop fry for a couple of months. She then dropped a handful, and it seemed like there should have been more, but it was like she was hanging onto them. And then, stupidly, I tried to move her into a different tank, and she ended up passing suddenly. It seemed like it was related to giving birth and being very stressed out. Then I got some more M. Pictas from my source, and there was a pregnant adult female with some younger ones, but she only dropped four fry. Then she seemed to wait until the younger ones were very pregnant, and it seemed that several had some fry together for a total of 12. Now, it's been about 3-4 months, and those fry are maturing, and all the females seem pregnant but not dropping any. I wonder if they'll all end up having them together again?

 

Well, superfetation is a phenomenon which happens with lots of mammals. So, not only humans... And also some sharks are superfetative.
When it comes to livebearers, there's a range of strains which are truly superfetative.
In September this year an article of mine about the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa) will be published in the german livebearer magazine "Viviparos". This specific wild strain of a molly reproduces itself by gynogenesis. It's an asexual strain which consists only of females. They use sperm from a related wild molly strain to reproduce themselves. The genetic material of the male will be absorped and only the genetics of the mother is crucial. So, all offspring will become the exact clone of the mother.

I've noticed that M.pictas do best reproducing themselves when left alone. Some salt may do the trick to get them triggered to drop fry. But with most micropoecilia strains (so, not just the pictas), the number of fry is small.

M.pictas can be found in a couple of countries in South-America. But orange morphs can be found in Surinam for sure. But also other colors from gray, yellow, bluish, purplish, brown and sand colored. So, also very dull colored ones.

Most wild versions do occur in waters with a certain salinity. Most asian linebred versions are bred in freshwater.

 

emeraldking
That's amazing about Poecilia formosa. I wasn't aware of gynogenesis at all. I had to read up a bit more on Wikipedia and learn about triploid males. Wow! Another incredible direction in the whole reproductive scheme. I cannot tell you how limited things are in this part of the world. There's this weird fascination with the pairings of Noah's ark, and so many people don't want to look beyond that to the wild array of reproduction. Too bad I've forgotten all my German--although it was never at a level to read academic articles.

That's cool to hear that the M. Picta orange morphs live in the wild in Surinam. (Another country that I've only heard about, and I'm now at an age where I'm realizing that there are many places I will never get to.) I did once have a pregnant female that our friend in bio caught in Trinidad. She produced some cute males that were mostly grey but with some tawny flecks, black spots, a few stripes, and an orange mark on the tail. The females all had a black spot on top of an almost gold spot just in front of the dorsal fin. They were so wild like the mother--you could feel their tension, just ready to fly. I really liked them and was bummed when their tank sprang a leak, and I had to stick them in another tank with equipment that turned out to be cross contaminated. I lost them all eventually. Sigh.

As for the M. Pictas that I have now, it's obvious that they've been in tanks for generations as they are quite interested in my comings and goings, associating me with food. They seem to like our hard, alkaline water. I haven't tried adding salt although our bio prof friend did say they'd like it. I'm hesitant because I like keeping lots of plants with them, and I dread the idea of having to track the salinity on top of all the other things I have to do every day (20+ fish tanks, 5 dogs, and chauffeuring an annoyed teen who doesn't drive yet but has her first summer job). I'm one of those people who will go through periods of high anxiety and remeasure, retest, etc, and then I give up and just go by feel (sort of why anything I cook rarely turns out quite the same as I forget to buy different ingredients). So I will just wait and see if more fry start to show up. I'm glad that I never mixed them with other fish even though I was told I could. I wouldn't want them to feel discouraged about dropping more fry