A pair of red tailed variatus-swordtail hybrids.
Maculatus-swordtail hybrids
The F1s from this cross are very attractive and have not developed melanoma. The male hybrid shown above was bred to a white swordtail female. By breeding these fish for several generations it should be possible to develop a strain that is both attractive and tumor free.
Birchmanni-variatus hybrids
In an attempt to develop both a hifin and a black birchmanni, I crossed a birchmanni female with a male from Karl Trochu's "Hawaiian" strain of black hifin variatus. The birchmanni colored offspring (top image) are almost exclusively males and surprisingly, they are fertile. I only obtained 7 black hybrids, one of which died from a non-melanotic tumor. The black hybrids are growing at very different rates and they all appear to be females at this point.
Veiltails
Neither of the parents in this cross are veiltails, yet a relatively high percentage (~50%) of the lyretail offspring are veiltails or partial veiltails. Whereas the lyretail gene (L) is inherited as a simple Mendelian dominant, the inheritance of veiltail is more complex, possibly involving incomplete dominance. These results again confirm that veiltails do not necessarily contain two copies of the lyretail gene.
