$2.00 95p (Canada & Foreign $3.00) • Our 36th Year • December, 1987

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TO THE HOBB

At Last a New Angelfish Strain:Introducing UA . r_

Ghianni's KOI ANGELPHIL JONES

Photos by Ettore-Winter

How does one begin to express the ex-citement when a "fish friend" sends,via express mail, a box of fish he's de-veloped, and upon opening the box he

finds one of the most beautiful strains of angelfishhe has ever seen? This fish is not a variation of anage-old standby, but a fresh new strain teemingwith vibrant color, bold yet delicate, and with fin-nage that puts the most dynamic strain to shame.How does one begin to express thanks to thegiants of the hobby—Jack Wattley, Dr. Herbert R.Axelrod, and Heiko Bleher, to mention but a few,for helping this strain to be marketed worldwidein a matter of months?

Only in our hobby is jealousy and profiteeringput aside and aid given to young hobbyists with afish and a dream. Why would the established hob-byist bother? The answer is, quite simply, to ad-vance the hobby and help one another in thisunique fraternity called "tropical fish hobbyist."

Many hobbyists are constantly looking for themutation of a lifetime to show up in one of theirspawns. This happens every day, but instead oflooking for a guppy with a tail fashioned as theAmerican flag, one must first find one fish inthousands with a single star. Only the most per-ceptive eye will pick out a small mutation by de-lineating the minute details of every member ofthe spawn.

Such skilled perception is where this story be-gins—what was initially a seemingly insignificantmutation will become the cornerstone of "Ghi-anni's koi angelfish."

Jody Ghianni, age 23, from Getzville, New York,my friend and partner, is the genetic engineer re-sponsible for this fabulous creation. In my 23years as an avid, active hobbyist, I have neverseen such genius so meticulously carried to itsmaximum potential as in Jody's seven-year questto develop "Ghianni's koi angel." Jody was a 17-year-old boy with the talent, keen eye, and desireto achieve excellence, tempered with dedicationto see this desire through to its exquisite end.

He loved all angelfish, but, like all of us, he hadhis own favorites. He loved the transparent, deli-cate beauty of the blushing angel, the brilliant no-ble coloration of the gold angel, and the individ-ual uniqueness of the marble angel. The nextlogical step was to combine the favored attributesof these varieties. Mathematically the formulawould look like this: blush + gold + marble =Ghianni's koi angel. However, in genetics the pro-cess of fixing the recessive and/or codominantgenes to consistently appear and breed true, aswell as to reduce harsh undesired dominantgenes, is not quite a simple math problem.

For Jody, the first order of business was to findthe right fish of each strain which possessed theoptimum finnage, coloration, body shape, andoverall beauty to be raised as his breeding stockand the forefathers of a new breed. Here are thecriteria he demanded:

1) Gold angel-Jody searched for the most dy-namic orange-colored gold he could find. Thefish he chose had tremendous orange pig-mentation on the head extending posteriorlyinto the dorsal fin. This was the gold trait hewould carry into the final creation.

2) Blushing angel—The desired trait here wouldbe a fish which possessed the transparency ofa glass of water with no other pigmentationpresent. This would become the canvas onwhich the master would paint his creation.

3) Marble angel—The angel chosen here be-came available in the Buffalo, NY area inearly 1980. This "gold marble" strain pos-sessed a gold crown and a very sparse mar-bled pattern which was lighter in pigmenta-tion than the common marble seen in tanksthroughout the world.

The gold crown, doubled with orange gold onthe dorsal area of the gold strain, would producethe royal crown that the prince of our hobby

Facing page: A spectacular full-grown specimen of Ghi-anni's koi angel, an exciting new strain.

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1) The new Ghianni koi angelfish strain produces 25% gold blushers. 2) Young Ghianni koi angels in the rearing tanksof their creator. 3) Jody Ghianni feeds his koi angels—the product of painstaking selective breeding. 4-6) Young Ghi-anni koi angels showing fine form and color.

would wear. The lesser amount of black pigmenta-tion would allow the transparent quality of theblusher and the desired transparent cellophanelook desired for the finnage not to be masked byan excessive amount of black pigmentation. Thiswould also inhibit the intrusion of coloration, ver-tical bars, or marbling in the transparent "base"of the "koi." This strain selected was unique, hewould later discover, in that it produced 75% goldmarble and 25% golds, which indicated that thegold in fact was codominant. Now the breeding

stock in his basement tanks was complete and wasnow awaiting the direction of the master's touch.

Generation #1 was gold marble to gold. The ob-jective was to double up gold genes and set themas codominant. The result was a larger percentage(approximately 47% gold and 53% gold marble) ofprogeny bearing the desired colored crown.Hence the gold had been doubled, and from theoffspring the individuals were chosen with thedeepest orange along the crown and dorsal, mini-mum coloration in finnage, and desired marble ef-

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Ghianni's Koi Angel

World's Cleanest HatcheryIntroduces the First New Angel Since 1976

Introducing the World's first quarantined, computer monitored, high-tech Angelfish and Discushatchery! Ghianni's Koi, Black Veils, Marble Veil, Gold Marble Veil, Gold Blusher Veils, GoldVeil, Zebra Veils, Black Lace, Leopard Veil, and silvers, with many more standard and veil angelsavailable; as are Turquoise, Red/Turquoise, Heckle-Royal Blue Cross, and Tefe Green Discus— all from Jack Wattley strains, Brown Discus, and Schmidt-Frocke Red Discus. All "Koi"Angels are PERSONALLY bred by Jody Ghianni. "Ghianni Koi Angels" are now being offeredin limited quantities.

VEILS $24.75 STANDARDS $19.75

Send name, address, telephone number with 50% deposit to hold order. Make cashiers check,or money order payable to: New Breed International Fisheries, Inc. Live delivery guaranteed.

All Angels and Discus are tank bred, NO IMPORTS, clean, and alive upon delivery. Ordersfor all stock accepted from Jobbers, Wholesalers, Retailers, and Mail Order Hobbyists. We shipinternationally! Send $1.00 and SASE for full price list of all available strains.

NEWBREED

INTERNATIONALFISHERIES, INC.

1001 Missouri Blvd., Jefferson City, MO 65101 USA • All Inquires (314) 634-5963Telex/Easy Link # 62840544 (62840544 ESL UD) Telex # 424107 (IPMO6MO) Facsimilie # (314) 635-3036

In Missouri, distributed through Fish-n-Stutt Aquarium/Summit Aquatics Unlimited, 1406 Missouri Blvd., Jefferson City, MO 65101Missouri residents add 6.225% Missouri sales tax.

feet which would represent a "koi" color patternrather than an entirely marbled specimen. Spe-cial attention was also paid to finnage and overallbody shape. These select few were in fact the mut-ations of a lifetime and indeed cornerstones inthe building of the "koi."

Generation #2 was the crossing of generation #1to the blushing strain. The resulting offspringshowed no sign of the blushing trait; however, thisdid not surprise Jody, as he had previouslycrossed the blushing strain to colored strains withthe same result. Again, the select few were chosenusing the same criteria plus the new trait of themost transparent base color being added to thelist of desired traits.

Generation #3 was the cross of generation #2back to the blushing strain to reinforce the reces-sive blushing trait. This was repeated in thefourth generation—hence, the recessive genes ofthe blushing trait were doubled enough to be co-dominant and show up in 75% of the spawn in the5th generation (the remaining 25% were goldblushing). These select specimens of the 75% pos-sessing all of the desired traits truly became thefirst generation of "Ghianni's koi angel."

The 6th generation presented a 75% yield of"koi" and the 7th and present generation produ-ces these same percentages; therefore, the strainhas been set as a true-breeding strain and not aselect number of mutations. The remaining 25%are blushing angels with varying degrees of goldalong the dorsal, making the remaining membersof the spawn commercially marketable also.

Jody and I have joined forces with computer en-gineer Tim Taylor, whose expertise lies in the ar-eas of environmental automation and monitoring.We will utilize these talents in our commercialbreeding facility, over which Jody will supervisethe genetic/selective breeding process in our ef-forts to develop and market the most fascinatingstrains of angelfish we can possibly develop inour efforts to help create a new and intensified in-terst in this hobby of ours.

We are collectively New Breed InternationalFisheries, Inc., 1001 Missouri Blvd., Jefferson City,MO 65101. Our goal is to carry our hobby into thenext generation of hobbyists and meet the comingdemands of our "high tech/high touch" society. Inaddition to introducing the "koi," in late 1988 wewill introduce yet another strain for internationaldistribution, the "bronze angel." We are also pres-ently working on a red angel and a red-facedblack angel. Please feel free to contact us at anytime—our objective is to better serve you, the hob-byist, with any and all of your aquarium needs.

Adults of the new "koi" have deep gold color, a cello-phane delicacy to unspotted areas of the fkis, and lim-ited black markings quite unlike those of marblestrains.

December, 1987