? on genetics; color morphs of Mikrogeophagus ramirezi, GBR, rams

[Turbosaurus]

I'm an experienced breeder of many SA cichlids - angels, aistos and discus- but tonight I came home to find a pair of young electric blue rams spawning and I am wondering about what I might expect in the spawn based on the parental phenotype, before I tell you what that is...

After about an hour of sifting through thousands of search results containing nothing but speculation and outright BS I was hoping someone here would have done the digging or have first hand experience WITH A SPAWN RAIDED TO ADULTHOOD and could share actual knowledge of how the genes for color morphs are passed down.

I'd like to respectfully ask the members here to NOT post links to, or cut and paste from un-vetted posts or off topic - if it does not say genotype or phenotype AND M. ramirezi it does not belong here- I want to have a conversation that is focused on chromosomal arrangement and gene expression in THIS species.

These are interesting fish. A lot of people admire them and have questions or preferences they'd like to share- if you start a new thread for your specific questions or concepts, there will be no shortage of people to join you, including me. Give it a very specific title and it will hopefully help new people looking for THAT info for years to come-



My phenotypes- The female is an electric blue (over blue) ram, the male is a long finned electric blue (over gold). what do you KNOW about what their babies might look like? Is EB recessive or dominant? what about blue/gold?



A huge gold star to anyone who can tell me for sure if temp/pH will favor one sex over he other like it does in Apistogramma. If you can tell me about finage (long v. short) you get two stars and can be team captain next recess.

 

[Turbosaurus]

someone knows- so bump.....

I am so so grateful to all of the members of this community who didn't cut and paste any of a million unreliable links- You guys are awesome

 

[Tifftastic]

I did a couple of quick sweeps through the scientific literature for you, particularly in question to the effect of environmental conditions on sex determination. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything about rams, with the exception of their divergence in terms of locomotor phenotypes, functional morphology in terms of feeding and their genetic differences from other Geophagine cichlids. Interestingly, they are extremely closely related to the Geophagus genus, which as far as I know has strictly genetic sex determination. Based on the closeness of the two genera genetically, I would assume that rams are not sex determined by environmental factors. However, I can't find a single study claiming one way or another. I can however find them for Kribensis and a few other non-cichlid species. Sex determination by environmental conditions is something that is currently being studied pretty well in fish, due the impact that we are having on the conditions of our water. So, either the scientific community doesn't believe that this species is sex determined that way, or they are just used as lab fish so little that the study doesn't exist yet. I'm unsure one way or the other. But subbing for info, cuz I love stuff like this.