This is about Martinboys Piebald Zonatus

[fsirico]

OK Guys the cats out of the bag lol. It is a 100% Zonatus. A Couple of years ago I bought a Wild pair from Gage and one of the spawn threw out 6 piebalds
out of about 400. I asked Don Conkel and Gage about this and they never heard or saw this either. They asked to see picks of the Zonatus pair he sold me
and confirmed they are Zonatus. So I am in the works of breeding more. One of the piebald fry must of jumped over into the Regular Zonatus tank next to it
while I was feeding them. So Martinboy got lucky lol. I'm am still working on the Breeding project and will have them hopefully Available in the future.
I will put up pics later of some of the other piebalds later.

 

[Madness]

Wow, interesting. Just a stupid question but was the Zo's by them selves when they spawned? Is there a small chance that another fish fertilized a handful?

 

[TMSB805]

hmmm.....

 

[RD.]

Do you know what the collection location was of this wild pair? And/or were these some of Don's zontaus listed as Zonatus 'Mojarra Prieta'?

 

[dogofwar]

I would suspect that the "zonatum" have some other Paratheraps in them (like sp. "Catemaco" or "conkeli") that produced the unusual piebald offspring...before I would consider it to be a natural mutation that produced 6 "sport" offspring from a single spawn.

I would also ask Don / Gage about the particulars of sourcing the "wild" Zonatum. It hasn't been legal to export fish from Mexico - especially for commercial purposes - for some time (except under very strict circumstances). Don must have some paperwork to demonstrate when he sourced these fish from Tehuantepec, Mexico (where Zonatum are found)...

Matt

 

[RD.]

I would suspect that the "zonatum" have some other Paratheraps in them (like sp. "Catemaco" or "conkeli") that produced the unusual piebald offspring...before I would consider it to be a natural mutation that produced 6 "sport" offspring from a single spawn.

I didn't want to be the first "hater" to say that, lol, but I agree with Matt.

 

[fsirico]

Wow, interesting. Just a stupid question but was the Zo's by them selves when they spawned? Is there a small chance that another fish fertilized a handful?

all my pairs have their own tanks so there wasnt any chance of that.

 

[TMSB805]

I didn't want to be the first "hater" to say that, lol, but I agree with Matt.

\

Hence the reason my first post was simply......hmmm

 

[fsirico]

I would suspect that the "zonatum" have some other Paratheraps in them (like sp. "Catemaco" or "conkeli") that produced the unusual piebald offspring...before I would consider it to be a natural mutation that produced 6 "sport" offspring from a single spawn.

I would also ask Don / Gage about the particulars of sourcing the "wild" Zonatum. It hasn't been legal to export fish from Mexico - especially for commercial purposes - for some time (except under very strict circumstances). Don must have some paperwork to demonstrate when he sourced these fish from Tehuantepec, Mexico (where Zonatum are found)...

Matt

I've already went over this with Don and Gage. These Zonatus were wild caught and quite large when I bought them so he had them for a while before I even bought them. I know Don knows what he has and been doing this practicaly all his life. He is also amazed.

 

[fsirico]

When I was talking to Don he also told me about a Bifasiatis pair that did the same thing that happen to me years ago. He sold the couple he had cause he got big money for them. He said to himself that they would throw out more piebalds but never they never did again. Now he's upset about selling those.