Pingu Strain

Pingu Strain

© Alan S. Bias

Permission granted for nonprofit reproduction or duplication of photos and text with proper credit for learning purposes only.

One of the small active strains I picked up from Don Sauers in the early mid 1980's were Pingus.  By this time interest in the phenotype had fallen to near non-existent in IFGA circles.  They failed to meet standards for any IFGA classes.  Don and I could not seem to put a conforming swordtail on them.  We managed lower swords of various configurations & length, but all lacked a defined "clear caudal" required by IFGA.  I tried a couple times in "AOC" if I remember correctly at an Annual Show to the amusement of several senior judges.





ca. 1985 Pingu Strain (XNi YMw pkpk)

 This strain was maintained in my fishroom for nearly a decade in two phenotypes.  The first had more typical yellow color finnage, carried on the "X" with small lower swords.  We just could not get the right combination of color & sword genetics with our limited knowledge at the time. The second was very bright pink in body,  almost iridescent, and the "pink" color bled into the finnage.  In the photo above you can see not only the original "pink" spot at the base of the peduncle, but also the 1/2 body pattern colored iridescent pink.  Males also had silver shoulders with black edges scales on the topline and behind the shoulders, especially those with yellow finnage.  In either case I think the basic genetics of either phenotype was still XNi Y pkpk. 


Sometime around 1990 I sent a large box of guppies to Derek Lambert in the UK.  It included a selection of all my Swordtails, a few delta lines, and the Pingus.  I was told years later by a breeder in the UK that descendants of Pingus from this shipment were sent to Asia and may have formed a basis for many of the pink strains available today.  Nice to think that knowledgeable breeders not under the confines of a rigid solid color class system found so many uses for the genotype.  Striving for solid color fish is an admireable goal, too bad it often comes with the loss of many gene complexes from a lack of knowledge when they are viewed as a flaw in ones program.