[toffee]

BPs have been around for so many years. It took me a long time before I warm to keeping them, now my oldest BPs are 6 years old and close to 10" long. So BPs have been around for over 10 years?

Do we know their origin? Can't believe a secret can be kept for so long when so many different fish farms are involved.

Any idea? This is not a thread for hybrid haters or to debate the pros and cons of hybrid etc.

 

[dwarfpike]

Don't believe anyone knows how they were first created even to this day. First created in the mid 80's on some SE fish farm, theories abound.

There was interview with someone from the fish farm that alledgedly created them, saying it was a test tube creation with three species, but no one really believes that article.

 

[Psuedofire]

Its a line bred version of vieja synspilumXmidas/devil. The fry from this were selected for thier short body gene and bred to create the super short body parrot. This dosent happen over night so it definitely took some time, but you can see the resemblance of each fish by the white eye (Vieja) and the super red bodies and finage (red devil) There are a few other fish that came from the crosses such as king kong parrot and red mommon (the trophy of the BP line). I do not know the sequence that was used in ratio on breeding back but I do know that the male fry were most likely to 99% infertile. so they had to be bred back to parent species of either type. The myth is that severums were used in the mix but that was just spectulation, if severums bred with red devils you would see it used in the hybrid hobby today.

 

[dwarfpike]

The severum part came from that article, as it was one of the 3 species supposed used in the test tube gene splicing. But I doubt that a fish farm could afford gene splicing at the cost it would take today, let alone the cost of it 25 years ago.

 

[toffee]

Sounded like as hobbyists, we still aren't sure how BP was created. Guess we have to admire the secret keeping ability of those fish farms in the Asia.