Commons, Mirrors & Leathers

[muskrat]

It's not something I'd given a great deal of thought to really, but
I was very surprised when I found out.

I had assumed that a mummy common and a daddy common 'did their stuff'
and a shedload of little commons were the result. Likewise for
mirrors and leathers.

But apparently not.

At the bottom of the page on this link http://www.slf.uk.net/prices.html
there is a picture of 2 fish; a common and a partially scaled or
possibly linear mirror. The accompanying blurb says that "The two
fish in the picture were both hatched on the same day from the same
parents"

As the site is a premier fish farm, one assumes they know what they
are talking about.

I expect a lot of you already knew this. (I didn't [])

Go on, admit it if this is news to you too!

 

[phil-k]

Awwhhh aren't them little tench cute. [:I]

 

[BARRYBLOKE]

Musky before Saturday mate if you can take Hamish to Bitterwell and take some floating pond pellet with you and you will see the biggest gangbang in the history of the universe Mucker.
Its just a free for all of any carp in the place and that includes any mirror,leather,common,ghostie,koi or crucian even that can still raise a smile as they have been spawning for weeks.
Female of any of the above goes in and lays her eggs. Males of all of the above follow her and fire all over them.
Its that selective Mucker.

 

[darrengeorge]

I didnt know that!

 

[Simon R]

If you have a pond purely stocked with King Carp (ie mirrors, leathers and commons - not koi or ghosties) I'm fairly sure that after a few generations the offspring will be 99% commons.

I might not have the wording quite right (a few years since I read about this) but mirrors and leathers have a recessive gene, since they were originally selectively bred from common carp as food fish back in the middle-ages. Left to their own devices a mixed stocking of carp will become all commons.
Having said that it'll probably take a while - carp are a fairly long lived fish so you might have to wait a hundred years or so[]

Simon

 

[newies_maggots]

never knew that....

cool site aswell

 

[Ady]

Yeah, Mirrors were selectively bred for food because they required little scaling by the women [] Leather's were really sought after!

Used that site before when i was checking out how much fish cost, decent prices on that site too, love the sound of those extra fast growing Carp at the bottom.