OK, this has been asked a few times in the past few weeks and I think its time we had a Sticky

Crossing bristlenose

Some bristlenose can be crossed and other cannot. In short if the two different bristlenose you want to cross are different species then it’s a no go. For example, crossing a peppermint bristlenose with a orange spot will not work, or crossing a starlight with a L144 will not work. They are different species and as the biological species concept tells us, different species are not able to interbreed. I know there are rumours of people crossing long fins commons with peppermints to make long fin peppermints, in all my research i have never seen any evidence of this, and for me, seeing is believing and i sure don’t believe.

So what can you cross?

All the variations of the common bristlenose can be crossed. The variations include common, albino, long fin, short fin, marble (calico), super red and L144. There are other morphs of the common bristlenose as well however these are much rarer and more expensive. My advice is if you have these rarer types of the common bristlenose and you want to breed them, get a male and a female of the same variation as crossing may result in having none of the desired results in your fry.

So, if all the variations of the common bristlenose can be crossed then what are we expecting to find when we do cross them. This is the million dollar question. No one has ever actually done any proper genetic work into the colour morphs of the common bristlenose. While this would make telling the results of a cross a lot easier we now just have to make do with assumptions that are undoubtable wrong. What this means is that we assume that one gene is dominant over another but what we’re seeing is most likely a combination of several genes working together. Owing to this we find that our predictions are often off the mark, sometimes only slightly and sometimes by a huge margin. This is the nature of the beast and this is half the fun.

The first obstacle you will face in trying to uncover the possible outcome of a cross is knowing the genetics of you breeding pair. For example, if you are crossing calicos together and trying to predict the outcome of the cross the genetics of the parents will have a lot to do with it. If they are both pure bred calico then when you cross them you would expect 100% calicos. However, if one of the parents is the result of a cross then you don’t know the breeding pair’s genetics and the outcome is almost impossible to predict.

There is some hope though. Over the past few years the ratio of genes in the population of bristlenose has remained relatively constant. What this means is that there are actually very few breeder out there actually selectively breeding the different lines (when you consider the total number of breeders). Most just cross what is in their tank and hope for something cool. Because of this we can hazard a guess at the genetic of the breeders and try to estimate the outcome of the cross. The following information is based on the results of passed crosses and the current ratios of genes in the population.
Crossing commons with commons will result in common fry. There is however, sometimes the odd albino proportion of the spawn if the both parents were the product of an albino x common spawn.

Albino crossed with an albino will result in generally 100% albino fry. The reasoning behind this is that the albino gene is recessive and therefore if you have an albino fish it must have two copies of the albino gene meaning that the only colour morph genes the fry can get is albinos.

When you cross a common and albino the results are variable. In general you expect a 50/50 split across albino and common. This is because the albino gene is very common in the population and a high percentage of the common bristlenose will actually carry the albino gene. If you follow the Mendellial genetic cross of this you would expect 25% but it seems to be higher than this. Anywhere between 25-50% albino is common.

Crossing calicos is a bit trickier to predict as those crosses are not done as often and the genetic controls for these morphs are not understood. If you have pure bred breeders then it is a bit simpler. Calico crossed with calico will give 100% calico, Calico crossed with albino will give 100% calico and calico crossed with common will give a 50/50 split of common and calico. If you have cross bred parents then this will vary markedly.

The super red line came from the albino type 2 line as far as I can tell form my reading and asking a round. Basically they bred the ones with most pink/red on them until the entire fish was covered in red. That’s the basic version anyway. Super reds are one of the fish I would suggest getting a breeding pair rather than crossing. This goes for the green and blue lines as well. While these will interbreed I suggest that the crosses will product mostly common or albino fry as the red, green or blue colour is going to be very recessive and easily covered but covered by the more prevalent albino or common…or even calico gene.

The other crosses are the long fin/short fin crosses. There is a lot of debate surrounding these and it by no means settled. There are those who believe that the long fin gene is dominant by rare in the population, while others believe that it’s recessive. I haven’t made up my mind yet as I don’t have sufficient data to call either way. I’m leaning towards dominant but not willing to put the house, or even a fiver on it. Basically, the purebred rules apply here too. These rules will apply to pure bred. Short fin crossed short fin will give 100% short fin fry. Long fin crossed long fin will give 100% long fin fry. Short fin crossed with a long fin gives between 25-50% long fins. If the parents are the result of crosses then is becomes very hard to tell.

The other thing to remember is that these are all estimates. The result of any cross is based upon the chance mixing of genes from the parents. So even if there is only a 5% chance that you will get a albino from a particular cross, that is a 5% chance for each individual fry. So there is a chance, however remote, that all of the fry will be albino even though the chance of each individual being albino is so small.
For a bit of further reading on the topic this is a good place to start

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_inheritance

The section where it begins to talk about Gregor Mendel and his peas is of particular interest. All of the above arguments are based on mendellian genetics, named for Gregor Mendal.

At the end of the day there is nothing wrong with crossing any of the above mentioned variations of the common bristlenose. As always I am very interested to hear the results of any cross (fin type or colour). See here

http://www.bristlenoseworld.com/t1616-crosseswhat-do-you-get-please-help

Enjoy your crosses

Great post Doug That answers a lot of questions

I have updated the initial post here guys.

I have added a HEAP of information. If its a bit too technical let me know. I have tried to keep the jargon to a minimum.

Great work doug...

thanks Doug

hi about 2 months ago i prchased a group of longfinned albinos, longfinned brown, and claros. [unfortunatlly due to unforscene problems they have all ended up in the same tank]

i noticed about a month ago that all the abino longfinned females where very gravid and that the long finned albino male had took up residence in one of my slate caves and all the females where surrounding the outer cave enterance. The only problem being that the male would not let any of the females anywhere near him.

In the past week i had noticed that the male was not coming out for food and was being very violent towards and intruders to his cave. Last night i bit the bullet and set up the floating baby tank and shuck the cave over the top of it. Out came about 40 baby BNs.

There is only one problem look at the pictures and let them do the talking



i will ad the pictures when curby approves

Had a look at the pics while i was approving them.

Its interestng but not unexplainable. If you dont know who the mother was then looking at the fry then i would assume it was a common. Going off our understanding at the moment it would have been an albino crossing with a homozygote common female (she has two copies of the common colour gene). this would mean that all the fry have one copy of the albino gene from dad and one copy of the common gene from mum rendering them all common.

The fact that you saw the albinos hovering around the entrance to the cave doesnt mean they are the ones who spawned. in fact when multiple females are present I find is the sneeky ones who end up being mum for some off reason. maybe they seem less desperate or something...who knows

here are the pictures

http://www.bristlenoseworld.com/gallery/Personal-album-of-simo-notts/dscf2391-pic_815.htm

http://www.bristlenoseworld.com/gallery/Personal-album-of-simo-notts/dscf2390-pic_814.htm

http://www.bristlenoseworld.com/gallery/Personal-album-of-simo-notts/dscf2389-pic_813.htm

the only thing that makes me think that it wasnt the longfinned brown females is that the babys dont seam to have long fins. unless this is something that becomes more evident when they get a bit bigger or if they ended up with the normal finned dna via hybridisation, only time will tell i will ad some more pics as they get bigger.

also i have breed common browns before [how hasnt ] and the babys didnt look anything like this they where speckly. the thing i find most bizzare is the strip running from the dorsal down to the plectrals. anyway thanks for the advice

Lovely looking babies either way!!
My babies all have the strip that you are talking about too... In fact, they have pretty much the same markings as mine lol!
Mine are from a common shortfin boy and common shortfin girl...
Great looking wigglers though... Congratulations!!

Many of my common brown fry also have the line from dorsal to pectoral that you refer to. Since you have long fin browns, long fin albino and claros in the same tank, were you wondering if the fry were possibly common BN X claro hybrids?

I don't know if those 2 species hybridize or not, but I have seen a photo of a fish that was SPECULATED to be a BN/Claro hybrid. The fish in question was at first thought to be just a flashy BN, but as he grew he stayed unusually small and colorful. His pattern was dots like a BN on the head which became larger and then reticulated like a claro on the body; his bristles were also very claro like. This fish bred freely with common brown BN females and all the fry were ordinary brown, none were ever as colorful as the father, all of which led his owner to speculate that this male was a bn/claro hybrid.

Now if your fry had been spotted in front and reticulated in the back........

This is just one of many anomalies I have come across. There is no way to know if this fish was in reality a BN/claro hybrid or just some sort of recessive mutant BN but I thought it was interesting nevertheless.

Hi doug.
I have a breeding pair of albinos , the male is a long fin and the female is a short fin.The first hatch of 85 they had about 20 browns 50\50 split long and short fin.The albinos were about the same.
They just hatched out I am guessing about 200 this time and no browns.When I start to move them I will take a count of long and a count of short.

In the other setup I have a pair of short finned browns and they just hatched out about 80, I will do a count and see if we get any long fins, but as it looks for now they are all short and no albinos. The one interesting fact that I see is the albinos are very slow growing compared to the browns. Both batches were born within 2or3 days of each other and the browns are easly twice the size.

Hi,I am new to this site and found it by doing a search on crossing bristlenoses.At the moment I have a young pair of super reds and a young adult female calico and another small calico (too young to sex as yet,but i am really hoping for a male so that i have a pair)At the moment these four are all in the same tank.I am getting another tank in the next couple of weeks so that I can keep the two colours seperate.Yesterday I noticed the adult female calico was in with the male super red and they have spawned.He is now happily fanning a large clump of eggs in his cave that I drilled into a piece of wood (done before any fish were added to the tank)I really didn't want this to happen and thought i would have my second tank before any of these were ready to breed.I was a little dissapointed at first in myself for not getting a second tank quick enough but now am getting quite excited to see the outcome.This is the first time either of these fish have had babies but he seems to be doing an excellent job of guarding and fanning them.There are no other fish in the tank only my four bristlenoses so the babies should be quite safe.i hope they hatch and do well.I will keep you informed of the progress of these babies.

Posting this just for info really .....

Male Albino BN crossed with Female Common Brown - I got 100% brown babies.

Male Albino currently fanning eggs from Lemon (l144) female - will post results when known.