i was wondering how long it take till they are that old .....oh and anuther thing the fry i have i think should be eating other foods now but they only seem intrested in the fry food mix stuff should i be worryed

try some small live foods. But keep feeding what you are until they learn to take other stuff.

okay thanks i dont spose any one can answer the color qestion?

Hi

Since you haven't filled in your profile, what kind of fry are we on about ?

Emma

How old are they? I waited a fair while to move mine onto different foods and then very slowly with what they were used to aswell.
The colour of my gouramies took about...*goes to check her thread*....3 weeks. Around the time they started to breathe air in fact.
Hugs,
P.

they are three spot gouramis there probly about a munth and a half u see i was hoping on finding there age from what was said of the color time cuz i thort there color was just comeing in now u see i have not realy kept track of the time that well but i guess if it only 3 weeks for the color they must be brown ones cuz there see throo color thats not realy standing out so there probly a light brown

Exactly how quickly they develop their color depends on what they are eating, how high the temperature, how good water quality is and their size/maturity - as not all will be the same size at the same age. 3 weeks sounds about right but it can be a little sooner or a little later depending on conditions.

in other words Miss Dib Dabs frys were in onditions ...........that would not suprise me i guess cuz im still not fully set up for fry looking afer im going to set thing up better next time rownd pluss i bet the feed she users is better as well i have to use the foods that i can find and well the pet stores near me dont realy try that hard on fish thing cuz fish are a side thing for them .....mine are grewing at difrent speeds 2 are bigger then the rest and one that is the bigger of them 2 will show his color soon for shore at the moment im still wondering if there green or brown i think there probly brown cuz i think the green would be brighter by now

They won't necessarily all turn out to be the same color. You may have different colors within one batch.

how do u get different colors in a batch i mean are there conditions that afect it or is it just whats in the parents line oh i just saw how i spelled the first part of my other post it was ment to look like this,........
in other words Miss Dib Dabs frys were in better conditions then mine

Modesty aside yes. Not that I mean to be rude in any way of course! They get a very varied diet and I have access to live food and a great deal of foods ideal for growing fry. Tank temp is about 25 degrees C. it's also very green with live plants and was set up solely for the purpose of raising the gourami fry.
Colour wise their genetics will control their final colour. If you have a gold father and a gold mother chances are you'd get 100% gold fry but, as has turned out with mine, you may get some that aren't. One of mine has turned out a very pale brown colour. So somewhere in the genetics of my golds there is brown.
If you have two parents of different colours then the stronger genetics will win through. And there's so many other little scientific bits that come into play also. Some recently posted about how the genetics work for bettas in detailed form, which, while fascinating, is long winded and many ppl simply don't wanna know that badly. Conditions will not effect their final colour. It will effect their growth rate and health as adults though. You can only do the best you can for your fish. So long as their water quality is not allowed to degrade and they are fed 3 times a day food suitable for their age etc then the rest is really in their hands.
Hugs,
P.

i have fownd with this lot and the ones that i had befor theres always about 3 that are a fair bit bigger then the others is this normal if so why?......as for genetics if the parent was the brown female i think all with be brown cuz she seems to have strong genetics .............any color i would like more then brown but i think there going to be brown .......but the male may have been the Opaline Gourami so how would that change things ??cuz last time it was the normale three spot green one cant rember but i think there called blue ones any way they were all brown that time if it was the Opaline dose that mean it will have a black line that looks like alot of dots all joined together hmmm maby i should just say will it look like a brown Opaline or a normale brown

I really have no clue. Honestly. See I know there is only one Daddy in the adult tank but I do have a brown girl and a blue girl with the golds. If the opaline is the Father then you should get a mix of browns and opalines. And you may a get some inbetweenies. You won't truly know until their colours seem pretty well established.
It isn't unusual for some fry to grow much faster then others. They tend to be the stronger fry who reach the bulk of the food first. Just try to ensure the smaller ones get plenty too and that you feed food appropriate for their size rather than what is expected of their age. I'm still known to give the fry first foods sometimes despite their obvious size now. They still enjoy it and can do them no harm. In fact they seem to thrive on it.
Hugs,
P.

Unfortunately, I haven't come across any serious research into how three-spot gourami genetics work. If I had, I'd be all over that info right now - I LOVE genetics Without going into detail, it would be rpetty much impossible to rpedict what your fry will turn out as without knowing exactly what kind of genes the parents carry (their 'genotype') but, basicaly, color genetics are usualy governed by dominant genes (strong ones), recessive genes (weak ones) or polygenes (several genes that all work together and can result in in-between colors). Dominant (strong) genes, mask/hide recessive (weak) genes most of the time. In other cases, you get some of the weaker geen showing through so it has some effect on the appearance of the organism (appearance is 'phenotype'). The thing about these is that, without experimenting with several breedings with different fish and also crossing their offspring, it's impossible to tell which color is caused by which type of gene.

From what I do know, the '3-spot' color is dominant so usualy prevails over the 'opaline' pattern. However, that doesn't mean 2 '3-spots' can't produce an opaline as the parents can be carrying the opaline color as it's caused by a recessive (weak) gene.

Also, the 'natural' color of the three-spot gourami is an olive-brownish shade (probably what you are getting). The 'blue' we are all so familiar with was selectively bred. As such, this clear 'blue' color is probably caused by polygenes. It is, as such, extremely easy for fry to revert to this 'wild' color if the parents are not both clear blue fish. That's why many spawning are likely to result in that kind of color.

The gold color, as far as I'm aware, is a mutation. As it occurs in the wild, it makes sense for crosses of golds with 'domestic' blues to produce the 'wild' color as the ancestors of golds are likely to carry the genes responsible for that brown color. As I suspect this to be caused by recessive alleles, I'd expect a gold X gold cross to only produce golds BUT, because of our meddlesome selective breeding, you could also end up with lighter or darker shades.

In the case of platinums, theyw ere selectively bred from golds. The 'pale gold/brown' described (I think by Miss Dib Dabs) is likely related to someone's selective breeding experiments somewhere along the line to produce platinums. Again, these fish are probably descended from wild golds (for the most part) and, if crossed with blues, are likely to result in 'wild-color' fry. The selective breeding that went into producing lighter and darker shades of the various colors also probably played with polygenes. As such, you can get all sorts of different shades within one batch - even if the parents are exactly the same shade. Having said that, a very light shade X a very light shade probably would still result in very light fry so platinums crossed with platinums should produce platinums (but it all depends on the way these particular polygenes work and those I have any reliable knowledge of are limmited to cats' eye colors - another example, which I don't know much about, however, is human skin color).

Lavenders I'm not too sure about. They are supposedly the result of a gold X blue/blue opaline cross but I'm starting to have doubts as this would imply the blue is semi-dominant or, somehow else, the two colors manage to show up at once. I'm going to try to work that one out as soon as I have the time (I want to cross a couple of lavenders and see what I get - I actualy saw some at Pets At Home the other day! All covered in ich though It's such a shame.)

Anyway, having profoundly confused everyone even more than necessary and having over-simplified things to the point at which, to me anyway, the stuff I've been saying makes limmited sense, I still think that, if any of this offers any insight whatsoever, it was worth it

The point, realy, is, regardless of what you are breeding to what, you can't predict what the fry will look like without more info. and still be 100% accurate. Can't wait for someone to map the three-spot genome (wishful thinking!)

i have frozen blood worm now or at least i got some but the fish seem to make it gone in a few seconds should i only feed them it one time a week or as much as i like or what?.....i think the brown three spots will be lighter this time rownd .....oh and i under stand a little of genetics from what i learned from my brother when he was studying bits of the topic at school/uni so i understand what you mean but im no good at noing any more then what you said unless u had the history of the fish and the typ of fry color it has most times cuz you can make a guess if you breed it with difrent golds and others and most turn out as greens it mean most of its parents were probly the same typ as it or one of parents was unless of corse its a realy weak recessive genes evan if its got a strong line in its color its babys most of the times would be what the other parents was ..........any way i guess im saying evan if you new what should come from the 2 fish dose not mean it will u could have a freak...........points out i probly only got bits of that right my brother the strate A student whos now a computer addmistrater at curtain uni....................okay well any other intresting color info or just plane stuff about loveing your fish and habbits i would like to hear oh and the cleaning stuff used to clean the tank this may sound stupied but what do the things you surgested befor look like?

I pretty much followed that Sylvia. Talking genetics gets so bogged down and no matter how anyone words it it always ends up long winded. I enjoy the genetics too but I'm really rather new to it all. Am gonna have some fun with my bettas and their genetics soon. Have a combtail red blue butterfyl male I'm going to try with my crowntail pale blue girl. Should be interesting to see the results as I've yet to breed from either and have no clue as to their parents lines. Just waiting for him to start blowing a half decent bubble nest. He's so lazy he only blows the odd singles. The top of his tank had singles all over it until I cleaned it this morning.
The spawn between Blue and BB did fail. Not suprised since she was very scatty. He's blown another huge nest though and the tank has been cleaned and tidied (In as far as gouramies like 'tidy') so we'll just have to wait and see now.
Going back to what Sylvia was saying about lavenders (darn, wish I'd find some in a store) I believe it's a cross of a pale gold to a blue. Which would signify that both have more dominant weaker genes, if you follow me. I suspect most fry would come out wild type but some would come up lavender. Until you reach a point where you have a definite male and female lavender you cannot guarantee any. All a bit hit and miss really. Which is why the single pale fry I've had from a previous spawn will be remaining with me, whether male or female. I shall then find a suitable partner to spawn with. Judging currently I'm guessing she is female. Some of the gold fry are most definitely male. Even now their dorsal fins are elongating from the obvious females. Some are still neither here nor there.
Hugs,
P.
Edit:What do you mean by 'the things we clean the tank with'? Inside or out? Inside I only use a line of tubing suck the water through and let it go into a bucket (as opposed to my mouth). This syphons off the substrate very efficiently and is about as cheap as it gets. Takes a little practise not to suck up all the sand or gravel though.
If you mean the glass I use an aquarium magnetic cleaning thing. If you mean the outside glass I use glass cleaner. You can get ones that are harmless to fish should any accidentally get into their tank. The kind from supermarkets would be nasty to fish if it gets in.

This post has been edited by Miss Dib Dabs: Jan 9 2006, 11:00 AM

im not too shore on how u clean the sand or gravel .........i mean i under stand now its best not to take all the water out and put the fish in a bucket when cleaning the tank but what do u use to clean all the crap and muck left at the bottem??............oh and how much blood worms is good for them and can the fry eat them

Small fry won't be able to eat bloodworms but the adults usualy love them. You can feed them as often as you like realy but I preffer to rotate between different foods so would only feed bloodworms about 3 times per week at most.

A gravel vacuum looks like this: http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.cfm/fuseac...id/2506/cid/698

They aren't all exactly the same - it depends on the brand.
The basic idea is that you have a wide plastic tube and a thinner length of airline tubing attached to that.
You suck on one end of the airline tubing and that starts off the syphon.
Light materials get pulled up through the wider plastc tube, along with water, and are removed from the tank.
Heavier things like gravel stay put (more or less).

If your substrate is especialy messy, it means you have to reduce your feeding and do water changes more often. However, as long as you are not over-stocked, a weekly gravel vacuum and water change are adequate for keeping your substrate and water in good condition.