Clownfish strain??
- Thread starter meir
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mpedersen
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Thanks Meir for the "shout out" to MiniWaters; it popped up today. I have definitely NOT had time to read this whole thread, but wanted to clarify and comment just a little bit.
Up front, my retail website was cited as the "breeders of the fish" but I want to state up front I'm pretty sure your fish were not bred and sold by MiniWaters; I haven't wholesaled any clownfish to any stores in NY. The "Just Barely Grade" is a "grade" we see in Mike Doty's Fancy White X Fancy White offspring; his pair is SA-lineage, pure Ocellaris. We get a wide range of "Gladiator / Davinci" gene expression in his offspring in the typical expected genetic spread of roughly 25% Wyoming Whites, 50% Fancy Whites of varying grades, and 25% wild-types (which SA sells as Vivid Fancy to denote their genetic origins, as occasionally a fish graded out as "Vivid Fancy" supposedly winds up carrying the DaVinci gene...and so we too follow suit). As we sort (grade) the fish, there are some fish that fall so far below what I'd expect a customer to 'want' when sold a "Fancy White", that we had to come up with a new grade just to convey that these fish *should carry* the Davinci Gene, but from a desirable pattern expression standpoint, they are the "bottom of the barrel".
As I gathered, your pair was simply sold to you by a LFS as a "mated pair of perculas"...and well, there's a lot wrong with that on multiple levels as the fish were far too young to be considered a "mated pair" in my book...although they'll certainly grow into one as they mature.
Your noting of the "backwards baseball cap" type marking, and equating it to the "Just Barely Grade" of Fancy Whites that we sell is an astute observation; this trait repeatedly shows up in the lower grades of Fancy Whites. We presume these fish are carrying the DaVinci gene, but are expressing it "just barely"...hence the name for the "grade"...a grade simply being a way of sorting fishes based on aesthetics more than anything else. It's quite possible that a "just barely" grade Fancy White could yield incredibly complexly-patterned offspring.
Your other fish, the future male, well...Blood Oranges aren't exactly flooding the fish store shelves. Mai Tais are also out there too (the difference is simple, Mai Tai is White Stripe Maroon X Ocellaris, Blood Orange is Gold Stripe Maroon X Ocellaris). I think it's premature to presume that the fish is a hybrid. I can say with certainty that your male is NOT a Amphiprion percula; that part is very easily sussed out by the dark eyeballs. The thin stripes on an "ocellaris-ish" fish are a trait of both hybrids (no one is intentionally producing Citrons, which are WSM X percula, to the best of my knowledge..they were a one time thing for Bali and were very expensive here in the US...as the US market apparently got all that were produced).
If I were to GUESS, it would not surprise me to find out that these two fish might be siblings from a local breeder or something, and that they are both probably therefore out of some sort of Davinci / Fancy White / Gladiator breeding. Your future female probably carries a DaVinci gene, and your male probably does not. Sure, it's possible that your male could wind up showing more definitive characteristics of being a Mai Tai or a Blood Orange...but that could take more time.
But that's ALL speculation. I would not hang your hat on my thoughts as "solid IDs".
The breeders I work with and know and encourage all keep good records and are starting to understand the importance of transparency and uniformity. I'm going to sound rather elitist when I say this, but because of how rapidly and deeply clownfish breeding is evolving, and how much "excess" gets produced alongside the really coveted individuals, you're going to see a lot of "random junk", cast offs from designer breeding, showing up in the trade. And the trade, by and large, has never really known how to deal with this stuff appropriately....which is why you wind up with what outwardly looks like A. ocellaris, possibly with one carrying a designer gene, being sold to you as "Perculas" and a "mated pair" when clearly the one fish was so much of a juvenile it hadn't even started to develop the black margins on its stripes yet.
So these days, if someone is wanting to start breeding clownfishes, my unsolicited $0.02 is that one really needs to do their homework, and probably should seek to procure good fish from sources that have reputations for knowing what they're doing (conflict of interest noted as I type that). I love my LFS wholesale customers, and if I ever found them mislabeling any fish I sold them I'd definitely correct the problem in a heartbeat. There are many trustworthy sources out there.
So when I reflect back on this pair, the reality these days is that a name lost means a true, definitive ID can't be made on most any captive-bred clownfish offered, particularly in the Ocellaris / Percula / Darwin / GSM / WSM groups, as the group as a whole has been rapidly hybridized and back crossed and so forth to the point that we have intermediary forms that lean strongly in certain directions but may well not be pure. Again, breeders who understand, track, and adopt a communal ethic of transparency and standardized naming / genetics can produce quality fish where you know what you have...but if that info is lost...nothing anyone can do about it. In the orchid breeding world, a $2000 plant can become compost material just through the loss of a name tag in a pot...so it's not so far fetched to understand the value of getting information, but also being able to recognize when the information you're presented with is wrong (as it was in this case).
Even I can only say "I *think* it's X"...but there's no way I could ever be certain. Only if you're able to return to the shop, find out more about where the fish were sourced, and possibly follow that all the way back, could you maybe regain a proper ID. But it's highly unlikely. So these wind up being "pet grade" fish for lack of a better term; they're the kind of clownfish that shouldn't be bred with because a) you won't get anything terribly interesting out of them but b) you'll also never be able to sell the babies with any legitimacy behind whatever name you're trying to slap on 'em.
I hope that insight is interesting and helpful...good luck with the pair!
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