I was thinking about that. What does the future hold for my fish breeding program. Why do I make the choices that I do with regards to my breeding program.
I have several lines of fish, but one you may as well say is extinct. That would be the Silver Flame line.
The Silver Flames were just about as disastrous as the orange dals.
I started this line with a trio. They were
Wild Magic,
Silver Queen, and Sweet Spot. Shortly after purchasing them, Wild Magic was dead. I contacted the breeder, and made arrangements to buy a batch of the spawn mates.
There were four spawn mate brothers. Three spawn mate sisters, and a spawnmate pair that were the F2 breeding of these guys.
One of the F1's was not what I was looking for, and I gave him to a friend I thought would be able to use, him. she ended up naming him
Aggie, after the marble.
The males I kept were
Tom,
Rick, and
Harry.
In the mean while, Sweet Spot had died.
Every time I tried to breed these guys, it just didn't work out. I tried the sister
Sokali, but nothing, and then she died. I paired Tom and Silver Queen up, and they both came down with SBD within days of eachother, and died within days of each other, months later.
When I tried Rick, he hid under the heater. Finally I stuck gold with Harry and
Sibeal.
I swear, I bred them together at least 10 times, and nothing. I got two fry to show for it, and they were both deformed.
All the other fry would get so big, and die off, disappear, he'd eat the eggs, everything, you name it.
After a few rounds with Harry, I tried Sibeal with Rick, and it worked, but he munched all but 5 eggs, and they were infertile.
I tried Harry with different females and unless they were pure white, he was not breeding with them. He would cohabitate with them forever, even court them, but not breed.. which is what happened with his cambo niece,
Siovale.
Then Sibeal died, and Siovale suicided..
Now in the interm, I bought five other fish to cross into this line. They were related, with one sibling pair being pure platinums, and the others being a platinum/NR cross sibling trio, who were cousins to the pures. Both males died on my fairly fast, but the females were study...
I bred Rick to
Stain of Red, and the fry died, or were munched, then I tried it with her sister,
Stigma Red. I even bred the pure plat
Snow Shadow to Harry, or at least tried. I don't know what happened, my records say there was a spawn, but I don't have any fry, so he must have munched, which in this case it wasn't a bad thing, because later, she began to get deformed as you can see by the picture
So at this point, I am down to Rick and Ti Phile. I talk to the breeder, and I buy a reverse trio off the
father of Rick.
The female I introduce to Rick, in a tank of juvies he was daddy sitting, and then one day, right before I was going to pull them out, and let them breed, she disappeared, and I have never found the body of
Shameless Silk. Then Harry died, and I was left with Rick and
Ti Philippe, the F2 nephew to Tom, Rick and Harry, and the half brothers to Rick.. Casino, and Murphy.
Now I have four males, and two females... Those being the plat/NR cross females. I contact another breeder, and buy 6 platinum females from her, two of them being from copper breeding, but the other four were just what I wanted, being from platinum/red breeding.
Then Casino got sick, and died, despite all I tried to do for him.
And I tried breeding Ti Phile with Stain, because she is the smaller of the two experienced sisters. But she is still too big for him, so I try the smallest of the new females, and he dies. And I don't know why, I just thought it was age, though Rick was still alive.
I get two more siblings to the half sibs of Rick, I call them Shaded Gem, and Wilde Magik, because he looks so much like the first one I bought.
I manage to get a spawn off Rick and Stain, but they all died except for one. I try breeding Murphy to the same female I tried breeding Ti Phile to, and he gets shredded, never quite gets over it, and dies.
Murphy gets sick and dies, Magik and finally age caught up with Rick, and he dies.
That leaves me with Rick's baby, Shaded Gem, and 4 red/platinum bred females.
And Rick's baby is a female.
I don't have any platinum males, and I really can't afford to buy any right now, if ever, and as much trouble as this line has given me over the last year, I don't know that I WANT to fight this line any more.
The best I can do, because I do know they carry yellow, all of them, is start breeding them into Jamaica, and into Luce Del Sol, a yellow male of mine. That also goes for Fancy Girl, a female I bought to cross into the line, along with her dragon DT half brother Diamond Boy. The thing about this male, and why they would cross so well is HIS father was a spawn mate to the mother of Rick's half sibs.
Well, Diamond Boy was a perfectly healthy fish. I spawned him to Fancy, and he was dead the next day.
I even bred Rick to Fancy, and he ate the eggs, which was the first time he did that for a long time, and all I can think is she taught him to eat eggs, because she is an egg eater, and even taught Jamaica to eat eggs.
I really don't like this female and I was seriously thinking of selling her at the show, but decided not to. Though it was close.
I am hoping that by crossing into Jamaica, and later into SoHo, I can get golds.
At this point, it is the best I can do, and I have the Jamaica fry by Stain, who is again half yellow.
I just don't know what else to do at this point with this line. The plat/red bred girls obviously carry yellow themselves. Other than getting rid of all of them.
Though he just bred, (and ate the eggs), I have introduced Jamaica to Shaded Gem. And in a couple weeks, I hope to be able to breed SoHo, though he'll be bred to his cousin Tempest first.
That is the best I can do. But as much trouble as I have had with this line, I don't know that this effort is worth it.
But that is the only thing I can think of to salvage what is left of this line, and work it into something viable. Either that, or get rid of the females..