Simple Question

[bettalover2033]

Well this is a pretty basic question for someone who is fairly comfortable with genes.

I was wondering, which caudal *(tail type)* is more (Recessive) than the other dominant one? The HM (Halfmoon) Or the (Halfmoon Plakat)?

My guess would be the HMPK because larger tails seem to be seen more when HMPK and HM cross. Like the VT's are more dominant tail type than CT or others.

What are the thoughts on this? Also what is the answer?

Thank you!

[DarkMoon17]

HMPK can refer to ether:
A plakat that has a halfmoon spread OR
A betta that resulted form a Plakat X Long-finned HM cross

My fry are the later, they are long finned halfmoons but carry plakat.

Long fins are dominant to PK. So if you cross HM and PK then the fry will all have long fins. However, the fry will carry PK. In theory, if you then cross the fry you will get 25% pure long finned halfmoons and 25% pure plakat and 50% HMPKs (long finned but carry PK).

If you cross a HMPK with a HM you should get something more like 50% pure halfmoon and 50% HMPK.

If you cross a plakat with halfmoon spread to a long finned betta then you will get 100% long finned bettas that carry PK.

Hope this makes sense!

[1fish2fish]

DM explained it pretty well. Longfins are always dominant over short fin. You can have kind of inbetweeners (common in a HM x PK cross) but they'd still be considered long fins.

[Curlyfatbottom]

long fin are dominate over short.
vt dominate everything.
dt,ct are recessive

hmxpkhm cross is very risky if you don't know what your doing.
cause when it's done wrong.
you'll get a lot of fish with very long anal fin.

here is a easy cross that don't seem to go wrong.
hmxhmdt

[bettalover2033]

Wow that was a lot easier to understand than I thought it was going to be.

Thanks to you all!

@DarkMoon17: So with the pair that I'm getting from you, would you agree if I was to guess...

25% HMPK and around 75% HM?

[trilobite]

if they are both parents are carrying pk then yep :)

[DarkMoon17]

Yep, you should get 25% pure HM (though it will be hard to tell which ones are HMHM), 50% HMs carrying PK and 25% pure HMPK. You should have 75% long finned.

I will also be crossing fry from this spawn so we should compare how many of each we get. I'm interested to see how closely nature follows the rules of Genetic Inheritance that they teach us lol

[bettalover2033]

That sounds correct. So I will get 75% long finned beauties and 25% short finned beauties.

We definitely should! I will love to see the variation and if we are correct about the hypothesis. Interesting way to get results lol.

[mwalters400]

DarkMoon's comments are very useful as guidelines to the aspiring breeder, but it should probably be pointed out that the traits of length and width of the caudal fin are almost certainly the result of multiple (probably many) genes working in concert (or sometimes in opposition), and the concept of pure recessive or pure dominant traits (as in the usual Mendel model) may not be valid. What does this mean for the breeder? Just that crossing different tail types may often yield some unpredictable (but maybe interesting) results.