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Marble Convicts

38K views 58 replies 27 participants last post by  AmishDude 
#1 ·
Does anyone out their know anything about "Marble Convicts" ?

I need to know origin? or how their created? I can't seem to find a whole lot of info online, maybe i'm not searching in the right places.

Their's some who say its a cross between a black and a pink convict. IMO I'm not so sure, I've had multiple spawns with this fish, never any picks, or blacks in the mix.

I would love to hear from the people out their who's breeding them also.

Please help, I need some info

Thanks

OHC.
 
#3 ·
They came from black cons. Recesive gene caused the pink. Marbles where selectivly breeded between the to. Then you got marbles. They are still cons, their not hyrbids.
 
#5 ·
I've bred convict for many years. Its been 5 or so years since I saw the marbled convicts. I found someone who wad them so I bought a few pairs.I've tried breeding Black/pink, fry from 2 B/P pairs and the combination goes on and on and on.
I'm trying to find out any info, serious information, not just people saying "Breed a black and pink" you'll get them. I don't think so!

I'm not sure but I HIGHLY doubt they cam from breeding a pick to a black IMO, however, with years of breeding it might be possible?



I'm trying to find out any info, serious information, not just people saying "Breed a black and pink" you'll get them. I don't think so!

OHC
 
#6 ·
A keen eye always helps. :)
Some cons carry the gene but don't express it, in which case you would never know unless you crossed it to one that you knew had the gene and the offspring or a percentage of the offspring turned out to express the gene.
Some cons barely express the gene at all!

This male exhibits only two black blotches above the ventral fins. Looked like a normal pink at 1/2" but as time progressed so did the black spots. Today these two spots are a bit larger but remain the only blotches on his body.


This female shows only a small black spot on the dorsal. Absolutely no other mark to tag her a "marble".


Both fish, when crossed with known marbles, give marble fry.
 
#9 ·
I'd like to take a shot at answering this question. Like you ohcustoms I've been breeding cons for a very long time. 21 years to be exact :lol: My first breeding pair was when I was eleven. It was a male pink and a female black or grey convict. ( I tend to call the regular old striped ones grey convicts) Needless to say they spawned in my 15 gallon and it may have been the coolest thing I'd ever seen. My Dad bred angels and sea horses but I never paid attention :lol:

At any rate, the spawn resulted in some pink, some grey and some marble. To my Dads and the local pet stores knowledge they had never seen them before and both told me they wouldn't be worth much so I ended up feeding them to my brothers aligator gar :lol: Big mistake apparently :lol: Fifteen years later I was in a lfs and saw them for sale for 12.99 apiece and I almost died :lol: Grant it this stores prices always run high but you get what you pay for in my opinion. It was then that I decided I was going to make my own marble con like I had done in the past. My theory was that I needed to start with a pink male and grey male and see what happens. Well as you can guess nothing happened so I decided to do a little experiment. I decided that I'd slowly, generation after generation break down the grey gene. Well it worked... I think. Here's my story... I was doing water changes and at the time I didn not use lids on any of my tanks and I think a male popped over to the current breeding pairs tank and spawned with the female. Funny because all my tanks are painted for comfort of the fish so how did he know if he jumped he'd get lucky?? The result was a few marble fry from that spawn but I don't know if it was the male that jumped in who fertilized the eggs or the male that was with her.... :x Problem was I had know idea of the jumping males background or lineage :x That was almost two years ago now and since then all convict experiments have been haulted due to my sons being born and not having a lick of extra time. Not to mention the adiction to this website.... Curse you C-F!

Here's the problem. No one knows if pink cons existed in the wild before the seventies simply because all anyone ever says is they were "developed" by two gentlemen??? What the heck does that mean??? Now the problem is pink convicts do exist in the wild and so do marbles and they could care less who they breed with as long as they can breed. Some day, probably 10 years from now I will start experimenting with cons again but not until I've got more time... which will probably never happen :lol: At any rate I have come up with a con that rivals in color to an HRP and I still have the female that I talked about in the begining of this marathon post. I've also got one of her sons.... Some day... Some day...

So in short (besides frameshifts interesting point) I do believe you can get marbles from breeding a grey convict with a pink. But the grey has to have a reccesive pink gene that been bombarded by generation of breeding it in to it.

What I mean is to do this:

GF = grey female
PM = pink male
PMRG = pink male with reccessive grey gene
GFRP = grey female with recessive pink gene

GF X PM = GFRP

GFRP x PM (her father) = GFRP times two now

GFRP times two now x PM (her grandfather) = Some marble, some grey (very few) and mostly pink.

You follow? Problem is I can't prove it. The other problem is how do you get prove pink and grey convicts, meaning there's no way to know their lineage since everyone breeds them and lots of stores take the fry....

Basicly at this point it's going to be luck of the draw when trying to come up with marble cons. That's the short answer :lol: :lol:

Here's a few shots of mine:

This is a male as a result of the spawn in question:


This is a female with pink reccessive gene twice over if you get what I mean:


This is her daughter after spawning with her grandfater who was pink:



The (what I like to call electric blue convict or poor mans HRP) will be spawned with a male pink to see what comes out of it and she will also be spawned with the male marble that's pictured here for the fun of it...

I hope this helps in your quest but I doubt it :)
 
#13 ·
i recently crossed a PF and GM and got nothing but grey juvi's! i had moved most of them to a seperate tank, the culls were eaten, and 3 somehow were left in the parents tank. I'm thinking about crossing what appears to be a lovely male with his momma to see what happens now that he'll have the pink gene, and the fry would have 2x pink gene, right?

You know, I'm even tempted, once I get 3-4 different wild strains of convicts to breed, taking a few of their F1's (just a few of each! maybe 4, 2f 2m) and crossing THEM with pinks to see what kind of colors come out. Some of the wild strains have AMAZING colors, I guess I can only get the fish and see what happens lol, not like cons are hard to breed :)
 
#14 ·
I've been breeding the "Marble" Convict (MC) for some time now. I've noticed in the spawn theirs a few approx 10-25% that look like normal pink/white cons but, with 1 or 2 small black splotches / spots on them, these I cull out. I pick the best looking MC's and breed them, I'm slowly getting the strain honed in. I'm trying to get a male and female that produce a complete spawn thats all marbled. Its harder than you think!!!! I should be their in a year or 2 LOL. If you want to try to make them on your own, the best bet id to look for a pick con with 1 or more black spots on them, easier said than done.

I wouldn't breed F0's or F1's etc.... with fish you have no idea what they've been bred to? I would keep the strain pure. Just my opinion :)

OHC
 
#15 ·
I wouldnt dare breed F0's with anything but F0's, plain and simple. However, convicts are convicts, and I'll likely have MANY to deal with, so why not see what happens with some of their kids breeding into a domestic line? Never know whats gonna happen. Its all just for fun anyways!

Has anyone ever seen true albino convicts?
 
#16 ·
con-man-dan said:
i recently crossed a PF and GM and got nothing but grey juvi's! i had moved most of them to a seperate tank, the culls were eaten, and 3 somehow were left in the parents tank. I'm thinking about crossing what appears to be a lovely male with his momma to see what happens now that he'll have the pink gene, and the fry would have 2x pink gene, right?
You got all grey because your "GM" was homozygous for the "grey" gene. We'll call that AA. You're pink female is homozygous for the pink gene. aa for short. So all your fry would be grey, but carry the recessive pink trait (100% Aa).

If you were to then cross the "new" grey male (Aa) with his pink (aa) mother you'd get 50% pink (aa) and 50% grey (Aa) but carrying the recessive trait (heterozygous).

ohcustoms, I don't think it will be possible to get 100% marble cons, because with the "marble" cons you're not just looking at one allele and, using probability, there is a pretty high chance in a spawn of hundred to get "marbles" that are all grey or all pink.

We've been selecting animals for certain colors for hundreds, if not thousands of years. If you just search around you'll find lots of articles on coat coloration. Here a a couple that deal with cats. Just imagine it's a fish instead.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/holl ... colort.htm

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/holl ... incomplete dominant
 
#17 ·
con-man-dan said:
I wouldnt dare breed F0's with anything but F0's, plain and simple. However, convicts are convicts, and I'll likely have MANY to deal with, so why not see what happens with some of their kids breeding into a domestic line? Never know whats gonna happen. Its all just for fun anyways!

Has anyone ever seen true albino convicts?
You do have a point there, you never know what's going to poop out ::) I guess it couldn't hurt to try a few?

I've never seen a "True" albino con. I've never heard of anyone seeing one either. They could exist, you never know.

JAmie
 
#23 ·
Huh, that would look awesome

Anyway, from the pink male with mixed parents, and the straight black female, I now have about 60 fry swimming around, though they are too small to see much of anything except the very beginning of some stripes. Looks like I may have a mixed batch. Maybe since the father had a black gene, these guys will have the beginning of some blotches? Probably not, but I hope so. I would love to breed these guys for a while untill I get a marble, then cross him back to his mother.

Update later :)
 
#24 ·
although i am relatively new to these fish, I currently have a nice spawn from two marbled cons. I also happen to be studying genetics in high school biology. here is what I am applying to my knowledge:

all cons carry two alleles for every gene, in this case the alleles are striped or pink. Let's consider SS to be a striped con (homozygous dominant, stripes being the dominant allele) and ss to be a pink con (homozygous recessive, pink being the recessive allele). According to simple rules in genetics, the dominant allele always masks the recessive. Therefore a con with the genotype Ss will be striped, though still carrying the recessive trait.

Then along comes the marbled convict. In this case it seems to me codominance is in effect. This is when both alleles are expressed, regardless of a dominant allele. Therefore a marbled convict contains S and s. The question the becomes: what will my spawn between two marbles consist of? here is a punnet square in which both parents are heterozygous (Ss):

S s

S SS Ss

s Ss ss

As a result, the possible genotypes of the offspring are SS (homozygous dominant, striped), Ss (heterozygous, marbled), and ss (homozygous recessive, pink). 25% will be striped, 50% marbled, and 25% will be pink.

NOTE: i have no knowledge of the genetics of convict cichlids! I'm just trying to apply my school to my tank. This is my prediction for my spawn. Does anybody have legitimate information?
 
#25 ·
That's close...

all cons carry two alleles for every gene, in this case the alleles are striped or pink
The first part is true, but the alleles don't just cover striped or pink. "S" or striped is the most common allele, but there are probably several other "s" alleles that are types of color other than the pink form, though the pink is the most common.

Color is a very interesting thing to work with in genetics, because there are many ways to alter genetically. You can have mutations that stop color production, some that don't allow for the color to be inserted in the skin, etc. I've worked with fruit flies that had white, brick red, or bright red eyes. Ended up that the white eyes had a mutation that stopped the insertion of the colors into the eye (colors were made), brick color was the "wild type", and the bright red eye mutation just stopped the brown pigment from being produced. It gets complex. That's my derail.

Then along comes the marbled convict. In this case it seems to me codominance is in effect. This is when both alleles are expressed, regardless of a dominant allele. Therefore a marbled convict contains S and s. The question the becomes: what will my spawn between two marbles consist of? here is a punnet square in which both parents are heterozygous (Ss):
Your logic there is incorrect. Ss is just heterozygous. A striped convict carrying the pink gene. As you said (and I said earlier) it is codominance or incomplete dominance that makes the marble appearence. This is much more involved than just "Ss". Your Punnit Square is spot on for two striped convicts carring the pink gene.

Technically, you should get all marbled convicts from two marbled parents. Due to probablity of recieving 100% patches (striped) or no colored patches (pink) though, odds are you'll end up with a couple striped and a couple pink.

If you have anymore questions just ask.
 
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