First time breeding: Advice needed on conditioning and my pair

[flyingpony22]

Ohh. I understand what you mean now. That's rather disappointing. I guess I should have researched them a little better before purchase. I didn't know rosetails were that bad. On a scale of 1-10 how bad do you think the male is? If he's really bad I guess I won't breed him at all even to another female. I wouldn't want to create fry that were defected.

[VictorP]

The male is probably a 5 :)

[flyingpony22]

Thanks for all your help and quick response :)

I've been reading up a lot on rosetails and as far as my meager knowledge can tell, he doesn't have any of the visual deformities, aside from the obvious rosetail. From your ranking of him and my research I would say he's a moderate which means he's slightly safer to breed then an extreme one. I think I'm going to attempt to breed him anyway, I'm just going to look for a better female who will hopefully correct (most) of the possible deformities that may arise. I'm going to take indjo's advice and look for a delta tail. I think that may be the best choice and a little safer then choosing another female halfmoon.

I'll post the possible choices here when I find them and if either of you would be able to critique them I would REALLY appreciate it.

[flyingpony22]

I know it's hard to tell from the picture but do either of these females look promising? I'm requesting better pictures from the breeder. There are hardly any deltas for sale at all on aquabid or eBay and I can't think of anywhere else to look for them :/

http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/aucti...asd&1351018211

[indjo]

The problem with rose tails is that they might not show any defects. Take this male as an example;



in your opinion, how rose is this male? Physically, he doesn't look that bad of a rose. But it was this male that started my rose problems for generations. And due to lack of knowledge on roses at the time, I added more rose genes and made it worse.

If I have to grade the "rose-ing" I'd give your male a 5 - 7. His small caudal and the female's form may suggest he carries defected genes. But that's just a guess. He may not carry the bad genes - considering that breeders now know rose potential thus would probably not inbreed them.

Females: look at rose female's dorsal. It opens like a fan. That's what you're looking for. The second female's dorsal leans to the back. Further her wide caudal suggests that she may have multiple rays which would add to the rose-ing. But a better picture would help - better judgement.

[flyingpony22]

I understand what you mean. I think I'm just going to try to breed out a generation and see where that takes me. Hopefully he doesn't carry the defected genes but if he does ill retire him and look for another pair.

Sorry to be a bother but could you tell me what you think of these two? Haha it's so hard to find something decent when you're actually looking for it. These are both halfmoons. I like the first one the best but its really hard for me to tell what's a good form and what isn't. Everything looks the same to me.

[flyingpony22]

It wouldn't let me upload the second one in the same post.

[Maddybelle]

The first one has a bumpy topline, and she seems kinda skinny to me. Her branching is uneven, and her dorsal is very small.
The second one has a much better body, nice and plump with a pretty topline. Her branching is more even, but she has slight web reduction: crowntail genes in her bloodline. She also has a lot of red on her and a small dorsal. Overall, I like her better than #1, though.

[polukoff]

Those females look alot better. I'd stay away from any heavily branched fish and look for nice even spread with good webbing.

[indjo]

Female #1 has poor body in general. She has a spoon head and un-even top line. Plus she also has bumpy sides. Her dorsal is poor- but she is not flaring, so I could be wrong. Her caudal and anal is much better than female #2. They're balanced and meet/overlap. She seems to have pointy edge potential.

Female #2 has much better body in general. She has better dorsal but not so good caudal and anal. Her caudal is too round (but complimented by male) and her anal is ... I don't know, just looks off. I know she is a delta, whose caudal and anal often do not overlap, but the anal just doesn't seem right. Color wise - she has too much red - unless you like multi colors.