Dirty Blonds

Blond Midnight Moscow

I would probably not make much progress penetrating into the secrets of guppy genetics if I did not invest in a good camera. The guppy you see above was practically invisible to me swimming with his brothers and sisters. I was writing my "field notes" on a Midnight Moscow male X Full Red female cross today and pulled as many different F2 males from the fish room as I could find for documentation with the camera. I spotted this guy and thought it a bit peculiar that he was so light in color.

I took his picture in the photography tank. Then I dumped the image to my computer and looked at him on my 19" screen.

Wow.

Here is a sibling to the Blond Midnight guppy.

The blond Midnight Moscow is much, much lighter...but still grey!

I had almost given up on the Midnight gene. It had refused to do what I wanted it to do, which was to create Black Leopards and Black Metal Heads. When I first collected the F2 drop several months ago I was annoyed that none of them were blonds. I should have got blonds. The P1 mother was a blond Full Red. Why was I not getting blonds in the F2? I should be getting 25% blonds. And there was none. Man, this drop was @#!#^!

Wow. There it was, the missing blond. Looking nothing like a blond. Do you see it?

Here's a close up.

Close up of the previous image.

Punctate melanophores on the dorsal of the guppy. The melanophores are supposed to be much larger and corolla in shape.

For comparison here is a close-up of a Midnight female (sister to the above guppy) roughly in the same area and at the same magnification.

Midnight female sibling to the previous guppy.

I am not sure if indeed the non-blond guppy does have wild type corolla cells. I am going to have to check that with a microscope. But it appears to have a lot more melanophores. Obviously the blond gene reduces the number of melanophores, but not enough that the black color totally disappears.

So that appears to be what the Midnight gene does: it makes melanophores associated with the guppy's reticulation pattern more numerous. And it may make them punctate, which might explain why the black on Midnight Moscows does not fade. Big, black punctate melanophores more numerous than guppy breeders at an aquarium store sale.

I guess I'll call the Moscow at the top of this page a Blond Midnight Moscow. But I am tempted to say Dirty Blond Moscows, because they are grey blonds.

Actually the cross I documented yesterday (Midnight X Snakeskin) had a dirty blond in it. It was a female dirty blond. I tried to categorize it as a cream guppy. It was a dirty blond in fact.

See the tiny dots in the irregular reticulation pattern of this female? This is a guppy with a Midnight gene, a blond gene, and snakeskin genes. You can see the dotted snakeskin pattern in the fins. Awesome. This means that the cross I spoke of in the previous blog (Panning for Guppy Gold) does not need the golden gene to explain its strange reticulation pattern. That cross probably does not have the golden gene. But it definitely has the blond gene.

I was a victim of my own preconception. That preconception is that blond guppies should be blond not grey! But there it is staring out from the monitor at me. Open your eyes, it tells me.