Since I gave away my first two spawns of F1 CTPK, I've had a rethink on a number of fronts.
I'll not be giving away anymore fish, unless it's in special circumstances. I'll be happy to trade or to have them purchased from me, but I don't think I'll be actively offering them up for sale in the short term. If you're after something specific, I'm happy to take requests and if I can help, I'd be happy to sell/trade to you the specimen(s) in question.
When I start creating good quality CTPK, then I will start actively offering them for sale...and that's still a long way away.
Next number I figured out the other day...while I was doing a water change on an F2 spawn...a 1 in 8 chance...that is the possibility in getting a male F2 CTPK out of a spawn.
The long fin trait is dominant over the short fin trait, so we can work a simple punnet square to work out the approximate chances of getting plakats (sf) back from a F1 sibling pair.
Long Fin (Lf)
Short Fin (sf)
Fish from a cross of a long fin CT and a short fin HM = F1 spawn carrying both LF and SF genes. Crossing a sibling pair from this F1 spawn gives us Lfsf x Lfsf:
x Lf sf
Lf LfLf Lfsf
sf Lfsf sfsf
25% (or 1 in 4) LfLf = Long fin
50% (or 1 in 2) Lfsf = long or mid-fin
25% (or 1 in 4) sfsf = short fin - these are the plakats we're after for the CTPK line.
Of course, we need a male and a female, so we have a 25% chance of getting a short fin, but then there's a 50/50 chance that it is either male or female (at least until someone figures out what is behind male or female heavy spawns).
So things fit nicely into all these number games, we then say that the 50/50 chance will play out evenly in the long run, resulting in every second short fin being of the opposite sex. Naturally, this is where Mother Nature steps in and laughs at our carefully prepared punnet squares and throws up female heavy spawns, or only female short fins, or the opposite with male heavy spawns or only male plakats.
Maths isn't a particularly strong point of mine, and genetic punnet squares are not as simple as the one I've depicted above. There is the background of the fish, the environment, the preparation, then there's the caring for the fry - cant say I know many people who have never lost a fry during the 3-8 months it takes to get them to maturity! What if the only fry lost are the short fins...or maybe only the male short fins? What if you only get a small spawn of 10-15 fry? You need 16 to better your chances of getting two short fin fish, let alone the astronomical odds of those two being a perfect breeding pair.
This is where time and patience come into play. Creating a CTPK line from scratch (HMPK x long fin CT) is difficult. You may have to spawn the same pair a couple of times, or cross an offspring back to a parent, or cross over to another line, or introduce another HMPK to increase the odds of getting short fin at the cost of webbing reduction. Lots of options, but what's right for the situation your line is in?
And what do you do with all these less than ideal fish you're producing looking for the elusive plakats with some form of webbing reduction? If you sell all of them off into the Betta community then you'll recover some of your costs...but what happens when you finally get to the quality CTPK specimens you've always been after....everyone else already has their/your previous spawns building up to the arrival of your quality fish....who will want, or have the room, for your newly discovered fish-par-excellence? Pet shops will only give you so much for them, and usually it's only in store credit.
So, I've come to the conclusion I'm not doing it anymore - selling (or giving away) less than quality fish, I mean. Like I said before, if you want something, then feel free to ask - if I can help I will, but I'll not advertise another fish for sale until I have some quality fish to sell...which should be right about the time I'm ready to show!
Now I need to experiment and find the best way to make home-made Oil of Cloves...
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