M. herbertaxelrodi (was Re: FW: Those Red-Tailed Fish)

Andrew Boyd (andrew at pcug.org.au)
Sat, 11 May 1996 18:43:16 +1000

At 09:26 AM 5/10/96 +1000, Richard wrote:
>
>
>Hi everyone!!! Ok I am a member of the ANGFA (NSW).
>I believe the fish in question is the empire gudgeon.
>A fellow in sydney has recently caught a few empire gudgeon
>with yellow colour instead of red. Might be a wild mutation
>or even a new species. I'll try to scan the photo for you.

Richard, the fish under discussion here are Melanotaenia herbertaxelrodi,
the Lake Tebera Rainbowfish from New Guinea. As the instigator of this
thread (albeit under Alan Ford's login at the time) I would like to
apologise for not being specific in the title of my original thread.

A bit of history - there has been an argument going via email between a
couple of rainbowfish hobbyists here in Australia and a couple of others in
the USA about whether M. herbertaxelrodi naturally occured with a red caudal
(tail) fin or whether their current red-tailed status was a result of
aquarist's selection of the most attractive specimens to breed from. There
was a lot of discussion on this and other related topics at the ANGFA
Conference here in Canberra, ACT, in October last year. The consensus FWIU
was that group breeding was preferred as this ensured a cross-section of
more and less "attractive" (to the aquarists) specimens contributed to the
next generation.

Regards, Andrew Boyd
___________________________________________________________________
Andrew Boyd - andrew at pcug.org.au - http://www.pcug.org.au/~andrew
Ceteris Parbiter - Cavem Draconem
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