Cross 3

Snow white and maybe tequila sunrise crossbreeding

Purpose: The third deliberate outcross to begin the program to restore the snow white phenotype.

Male (Gandalf):

  • Bought from a big box store during February 2023 as part of the initial stock.

  • Strain: Snow White

  • Relevant genes. Some are assumptions, indicated with italics. Although their decedents strongly support the claims:

    • Base body color: Blond (bb)

    • Magenta: likely homozygous (MM)

    • European Blau: (rr)

    • Stoerzbach: (ss)

Female (Female #3):

  • Bought from a big box store during February 2023 as part of the initial stock.

  • Strain: Unknown but maybe tequila sunrise or sunset micariff.

  • Relevant genes. Some are assumptions, indicated with italics. Although their decedents strongly support the claims:

    • Base body color: Gray (bb)

    • Magenta: likely a non-carrier (mm)

    • European Blau: (RR)

    • Stoerzbach: (SS)

Cross breeding results with a snow white and maybe tequila sunrise guppy

Offspring:

  • Born: July 7, 2023

  • Brood Size: 48

    • 27 Male

    • 21 Female

  • There was just one phenotype:

    • All the males and females looked like the ones in the figure. The females were duller but likely the same as the males in terms of their color. The males were light red to an almost pink color, depending on the lighting. Very uniform. Although the males had more iridescence compared to their half brothers from Crosses 1 and 2, I still considered them to not fully express stoerzbach.

  • Likely genotype(s) following the order of the listed genes for the parents:

    • bb|Mm|Rr|Ss

  • Notes:

    • This was the first cross where both the parents had the same blond body type and it was reassuring to see that all of the offspring were blond-based. This confirmed the recessive-ness of the blond-based body color.

    • I initially did now know if the female carried the magenta gene or not. It seemed safe to assume that she didn’t because magenta looks to be an incompletely dominant gene and I could not find any signs that she expressed magenta.

    • European blau was a gene I only became aware of during Cross 5 but it seems to be important in these crosses. I’m not 100% convinced that it is European Blau but so far, the data seems consistent.

    • Because these females all looked the same and this resultant phenotype was the closest to the snow white, I chose 6 females to backcross to Gandalf (Cross 5). I labeled all these females as Cross 3 Females A (C3AF)

    • A YouTube video detailing this cross can be found here.