Origin: designer clownfishes

[nemoboy1]

I'm no expert by all mean so I thought I will post this thread and see what people's thought and the facts are if any.

So when I started to keep clownfish (nemo species only)in 2009 I really didn't realize how many variety of nemos there are. My first pair was an onyx female percula(transitioning to female i believe)1.5" and a wild male 1" percula. Somehow i was never into ocellaris, dont know why. Had them for while and decided to sell because I was moving into my house in April of 2010.

I believe the designer clowns were out but it hadn't quite hit me yet. After I moved into my house I started to have the itch for another salt tank. Found some stuff here and there on CGlist. One day I got lucky stumbled upon this Ad, this older lady was getting rid of her salt tank and she had two clowns and a couple of other fish left. I contacted her and she replied that the pair of clowns she have she has had them for over 1.5 maybe 2 years and she believe they are a pair also that she spent a lot of money on them. She gave me the name where she bought them from donis Reef. Quickly google it and found out these are designers. So I snatched them up I paid $100 for the pair. Long story short I got into designers clownfish after that.

I have always been a fan of true percula clownfish designers or not but never really look into occellaris. Soon found out there are some but my mind was set on perculas maybe its the name.

We all know when Picasso was introduce to the world there were photo of the original Picasso that ORA acquired. That's how he started the percula designing clowns.

My thing is I can't find any information about occellaris designer origins like the Wyoming whites and a few others. Now my question, is there an elaborate conspiracy out there regarding occellaris designing clowns? No one knows how the first designer occellaris came to be no pix no evidence.

My theory is that they used some Percula from PNG (I believe has a strong Picasso gene pool or even a picasso offspring) and breed it to an occellaris thus created the designers for occellaris.

What are your thoughts and are there any facts regarding origins of either species? Which specie was the pioneer for designer clowns?

I have done some googling but nothing really solid. Plus wanted people's opinions.

 

[Tmoriarty]

There is many designer ocellaris clownfish that have no a. percula genetics. Wyoming whites came from c-quest as a lucky variety they would occasionally get from a pair of standard a. ocellaris clownfish.

There is some sort of secret conspiracy (although if you know the right people the info is there), people making money breeding clowns do not want to devulge the information of how they got any certain cross of clownfish.

Like I said the info is there if you look for it or know who to contact about it. I am currently working on a large breakdown showing all current designer clownfish (along with their alternative names) and where they came from (with original breeders where I can obtain the info).

I have a lot of information for it already just need to compile it all and get it up for people to see. As someone who breeds clowns, I hate the naming that goes on, to many people name clowns that are the same morph as another with different names.

 

[nemoboy1]

There is many designer ocellaris clownfish that have no a. percula genetics. Wyoming whites came from c-quest as a lucky variety they would occasionally get from a pair of standard a. ocellaris clownfish.

I don't believe that that is the case if it was there would be more of the same carrying genetics in the ocean thus creating a few WW in the ocean... It can happen as Cquest is stating but until there is evidence I will stick to my theory. I don't know if there are any designer occellaris that doesn't have some small percentage of designer percula in them.

There is some sort of secret conspiracy (although if you know the right people the info is there), people making money breeding clowns do not want to devulge the information of how they got any certain cross of clownfish.

knowing the right folks would help on this secret

Like I said the info is there if you look for it or know who to contact about it. I am currently working on a large breakdown showing all current designer clownfish (along with their alternative names) and where they came from (with original breeders where I can obtain the info).

I have a lot of information for it already just need to compile it all and get it up for people to see. As someone who breeds clowns, I hate the naming that goes on, to many people name clowns that are the same morph as another with different names.

cant wait to read it.

 

[Tmoriarty]

There is a lot of fish in the ocean with "designer" designs. The difference is in the ocean fry survial rates are sub 1% where as we as breeders can reach survial rates up into the 90%+ area. When you have that many fish going through your systems you are going to see some with genetic differences affecting stripes.

A good example of this is the WC PNG lighting maroon clownfish. This clownfish is wild caught, not captive bred, yet it has an insane pattern that you would not see anywhere else.

In the past these "oddities" became culls, fish with misbars and odd patterns where thought to have defects and were culled because of these defects. Now people have grown to like misbars and other fish with various stripe patterns.

Percula has its own set of wild caught designer fish. For example my Female wild caught a. percula is an onyx. Not quite as much black as rods but she was very close, almost completly black minus a small amount of orange on her face.

Here is a quote about the C-quest wyoming white...

"C-quest tells us that the strain started showing upalmost three years ago in the batches of three different older pairs of Amphiprion ocellaris which looked completely normal in every respect."

Read more: http://************.com/2009/08/06/wyoming-white-clownfish-cquest-ocellaris/#ixzz2IB0rRbXI

Stripe variations are genetic variations, they occur naturally, we are just exploiting them as breeders and using these variations to continually breed the mutation.

In the wild a clownfish with odd strip patterns may be less common simply because they would stand out and could always present an easier target for any fish that would see the clownfish as prey.

 

[phender]

If memory serves me right, TMC(Tropical Marine Centre) in England were the first ones to offer Darwin (Black and white) ocellaris. You probably don't consider them designer since they exist in the wild.
TMC was also the first ones to market "Snowflake" ocellaris. Somebody in Europe (Sweden, Switzerland...?) had a pair of normal ocellaris that would occasionally throw babies with a lot of white. TMC bought up the pair and started selling the babies with extra white as snowflakes. They obviously made their own pairs from the babies so their odds would be better in the future.
I think that most (not all) of the varieties of designer ocellaris come from the selective breeding of offspring from this pair.

 

[phender]

double post:furious: