Albino Angels

[Jdmcfast]

Does anyone have suggestions on how to raise the albino fry? Every spawn they seem to live a little longer but I still can't get any to survive for the long haul. Frank don't you have some albino lines?

[Mugwump]

Does anyone have suggestions on how to raise the albino fry? Every spawn they seem to live a little longer but I still can't get any to survive for the long haul. Frank don't you have some albino lines?

Vinegar eels.....feed at free swimming to get them growing , so they can eat the bigger bbs...
I've used lower water levels, and much less aeration turbulence too.....it's still iffy, as their food sometimes has to smack em in the face for them to find it.... and yep, Frank should chime in too...he's raising some.....

[Frank The Plumber]

They are blind. Photo sensitive to light. If you hit the correct amount per each spawn you will have better luck. I have Albino Pb, Albino smokey Pb, albino blush, Albino blue pb clown, Albino koi.
Each batch a different tolerance to light.

[Mugwump]

Frank, have you tried 'green water' yet? I know Pete has great success with it, and by it's nature the light would be dimmer.

[Jdmcfast]

So are you saying that too much light could actually cause them to die? Do you feed vinegar eels also Frank?

[Jdmcfast]

And how do you figure out their light tolerance

[Mugwump]

So are you saying that too much light could actually cause them to die? Do you feed vinegar eels also Frank?

Too much light and they can't find the food...they're light sensitive.....some can see better than others,survivors, while some are blind as a bat....adjust the light down to accomodate that....

[Frank The Plumber]

BBS. Their vision is compromised. It is as if they are flash blinded. If you were to google albinism and it's affects on a human you would have a better idea of how to apply this. Generally if you get a flash burn your eyes sensitize to light, you can not look at or into light and you have sensitivity. At lower light emission levels you will notice that your eyes can cope. Albinism affects the nerve that connects the eye to the brain, it can vary as to how affected the nerve is by albinism. A test on a batch would be to place light above the tank see how the fish react to it. You want to shield them from a lot of light. They will then get off of the bottom.

[Jdmcfast]

I am finally getting some albino fry too survive. Only getting about 10% survive but they look good and are tough as nails. I'm getting 25% wild Peruvian PB albino silver's and albino PB smokies.

[BillT]

People have kept albino zebrafish in albs for a long time.

They are usually considered light sensitive because the pigment around the eye ball is reduced or gone. As the photoreceptor cells in the retina are activated, their photoreceptor molecules eventually get degraded and are shed from the cell. When the pigment around the eyeball is reduced the retina is flooded with more light than it was made to take and the photoreceptor cells shed more photoreceptor cell loses it receptor molecules and becomes insensitive to light. The photoreceptor cell may also die. Normally the photoreceptor cell will make more photoreceptor molecules to keep up with the normal rate of their degradation.

In addition, the camera like function of the eye of an albino is compromised because light is not only entering the eye through the lens (so that it can form an image on the retina), but also through the side of the eye (which would be like unfocused white noise) which would wash out the neural signal of the image on the retina. This would be like using a camera with a light leak (not through the lens), which usually swamps the real image from the lens.

Another issue is what other mutations are in combination with the albino mutation. Albino by itself removes melanin and related pigments (black and brown). Another important component in the eye's optical camera is the silvery iridescent reflecting pigment which also is involved in keeping the light not going through the lens out of the eye ball. This kind of pigment is removed by different mutations in different genes, but they are often combined with albino (in zebrafish and perhaps in other fish).

There have been several approaches to raising albino zebrafish:
1) Many people keep them on the lowest shelf of a rack because the light is dimmer and therefore considered less likely to burn out their photoreceptors. This would keep the photoreceptor working but zebrafish being visual predators will have less light to visualize their prey.

2) Some people keep them on the top row. The idea is that they have more light to see their prey. However, they should be getting their retinas burned out more. On the other hand, this may have been in rooms with a low level of light (5-30 footcandles of light at the top of the tank).

3) Another approach that makes sense to me is to keep the fish in a dark tank, at low light levels without much direct light. However there should be some direct light to illuminate prey items (which should show up well against a dark visual background). This may be like the green water thing Mugwump mentioned.

4) A different approach is to completely flood the babies with live foods continuously. In this way the babies will bump into a food item even if it came see it visually.

[Mugwump]

I am finally getting some albino fry too survive. Only getting about 10% survive but they look good and are tough as nails. I'm getting 25% wild Peruvian PB albino silver's and albino PB smokies.

That's great, Josh....now grow em up and get some pics....

[Jdmcfast]

I did eventually learn about the light sensitivity, I have had good luck using the Marina breeder boxs they provide a smaller area so that it is easier for then to find food, yet provide constant new water rotation from the 20g it is hanging on. They also hang out of the tank so they are not directly under the lights. I have a dozen or more that are dime size and slightly larger and they are absolutely gorgeous but have proven to be a real PIA to get pics of lol

Josh

[Frank The Plumber]

I can add a bit more. One of the variants I am working towards is an albino Pb/+ Pearlscale veil angel. A very freaking intolerant sob of a phenotype. I do mean sob too as this is what is done a lot raising their fry.

Looking at some of the points that Bill has addressed  will add this.

I have found that exposure to light emissions during eye development it the single most critical thing to consider. More important than how much light the eye is exposed to when it is fully functional is the amount that it is exposed to during development phase. I now consider the eye to be the most critical item on an albinid form. With proper eye growth almost all other issues can be resolved. If we examine an egg and embryo development we see that the eye is forming prior to hatch. Of all organs the eye is the most prominent on a larval fish. If we consider this we come to a conclusion that the eye is almost immediately prone upon the laying of the egg. I am sure that within mere hours the critical cellular composition of the eye is under way. I now lower the light emissions at the time of removing the spawn from the parent fish. I place the slate in subdued lighting until around week 3. I find that the eye is able to be more functional by doing this. This increases my keepers in albino spawns a lot. The more keepers the greater the diversity. This drives progress. In some forms such as blush types it increases the keepers 20 fold.

[BillT]

Makes sense to me Frank.
They don't need much light until they are hunting prey, which is when they are swimming around (if they are zebrafish).
They probably should have a bit though, because activity in the developing nervous system is thought to drive the formation of the proper connections between the neurons.

Here are some zebrafish time points which might be comparable with angels:
development: time after fertilization at 28.5˚C (about 83˚F)

0 hours:            fertilization
~12 hours         eye field established in largely homogenous looking embryo
18 hours           embryo much more developed, eye obvious in scope
24 hours           eye pigmentation (black) obvious in proper light, neurons (including photoreceptors) developing in the retina
Eventually reflecting pigment develops and makes the eye really obvious. Don't know exactly when.
~36-42 hours    first connections from the retina to the brain
~60-72 hours    hatching
~72-96 hours    swim bladder develops, fish floats up in the water, starts hunting prey (requiring vision).


The order of these events should be the same in other fish, but the times may be mushed together (in time) or spread out in fish that take different lengths of time to go through development.