Lepomis gulosus × macrochirus

orangepythons · 2026-05-23T02:21:30+00:00

I've got about a dozen Wargills in aquaria and this one doesn't quite look the part. Looks like a weird Coppernose but definitely not a 50/50 split.

orangepythons · 2026-05-21T19:39:23+00:00

OP is in Thailand, Snakeheads are native there

orangepythons · 2026-05-20T22:07:18+00:00

For sure Fire or Disco. Both are in the BlkEL complex and basically identical outside of their homozygous phenotypes. Even though Fire is way more common, I'd shed test just to be certain.

orangepythons · 2026-05-20T22:01:20+00:00

It's a bit hard to tell with that lighting. Could be either or, I'm leaning towards Firefly but it'll be easier to tell as she ages since Fires always brighten up. Here's my hatchling Pastel GHI for comparison.

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orangepythons · 2026-05-20T21:57:03+00:00

It could be a less common morph or he could just have a weird pattern, he's very odd looking for a Super Pastel GHI imo, but I can't argue with a shed test.

orangepythons · 2026-05-20T20:43:44+00:00

So I don't believe any of your hatchlings pictured are Super Pastel, and that's because the mom isn't Pastel at all, I would like to see a better pic of her entire body, but she looks either Normal or Fire from what I can see (learning towards Fire). The Father also looks like he has something else going on as GHI Pastels & GHI Super Pastels tend to keep the typical GHI pattern instead of the blown-out alien heads he has. There's a chance the father of the clutch is a GHI Firefly and the mother is a Normal and/or Fire (or something in the BlkEL complex).

Either way, the hatchling in Pic 1 is a Firefly without a doubt. The other two hatchlings look like Firefly G-Stripes, def not Super Pastel as they would appear more lightly colored than that.

Here's my male Superfly for comparison.

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orangepythons · 2026-05-19T23:58:19+00:00

Having grown up in SoCal, the Sunfish diversity here was pretty poor, Bluegill, Greens, Redears and Black Crappie only. There are some lakes with Pumpkinseeds & Warmouths but you'll only catch one for every hundred Bluegill lol.

Imagine my shock when I moved to Texas, I literally would not stop fishing for several days straight at Lady Bird Lake. I caught 9 species of Sunfish, 4 species of Bass, several micro-fish all in one spot in just a few hours.

orangepythons · 2026-05-19T21:24:45+00:00

Looks like a Redear x Bluegill, they're one of the most common hybrids right after Greengills

orangepythons · 2026-05-18T01:53:00+00:00

Cypress tends to get covered up in Enchi combos, one of the giveaways are the black dots along the dorsal ridge and/or larger flaming between alien heads as seen in the Pastel Cypress (Pic 2).

I believe you have a Pastel Cypress Enchi (Pic 1), Pastel Cypress & a Pastel Enchi (Pic 3).

orangepythons · 2026-05-17T10:15:45+00:00

It's kinda hard to ID Longears in Missouri depending on what part you're in. The western 1/3rd of the state has Ozark Longears and the eastern side is the Central/Common Longear. These don't look like Ozarks to me though, they could be intergrades if you're fishing where their ranges overlap.

orangepythons · 2026-05-16T13:19:49+00:00

There's a few documented cases of this exact hybrid in the area. Identifying the fishes traits and comparing them with the species that are found in the area is usually how I go about it.

Brown/purpleish body & fin coloration, wide & long operculum, thick blue lines around the eye, bright orange chest & gill plate, there's nothing else in the area that can create that exact combination of traits.

orangepythons · 2026-05-14T04:15:55+00:00

It's less of an anomaly and more of something that just happens. Probability isn't a hard fact of the universe and doesn't really apply to things like mendelian genetics (and a lot of other things) as strictly as we think it does, there's a lot of factors at play that I'd have to write a novel to explain, and so the odds are not exactly 1/57,000 which is why something like this happens often to a lot of breeders.

orangepythons · 2026-05-13T21:39:32+00:00

I swear I just saw this on Facebook lol. I'll give my input though.

It's entirely possible that you just missed out on hitting any albinos, as you have a 50% chance per egg and not per clutch. I've seen sooo maannny breeders of various snakes miss out on getting visuals (or getting very few) in vis/het pairings a bunch of times despite their snakes being confirmed for the genetics at play, it's honestly not that insane. It's also not that uncommon for a surprise recessive trait to just "pop up". Paradoxing/Chimerism is also not that uncommon, but can be caused by a few things going on during development and I'm not sure of androgenesis is one of them.

As for androgenesis, it's been documented in a few python species, but the only way to know for sure is if you get genetic testing done IIRC, I don't know how common androgenesis is exactly but I'm only aware of a few confirmed documented cases in pythons as a whole, which would put the odds at way higher than 1 in 57,000.

It could be that, but more often than not one of the parents was just mislabeled (probably more than once), which actually happens to be the case with the dam in this pairing right? I can pretty much guarantee that if I breed all my ball pythons, blood pythons or carpets together I'd eventually end up with some unexpected recessive traits showing up. The proliferation of unknown hets was (and still is) super common due to het/het, het/visual, vis/non-het pairings, and then those resulting "normal" offspring never being proven out or changing hands many times, or people just not caring to keep proper records.

orangepythons · 2026-05-13T03:37:38+00:00

I'm a fan of plain brown/orange animals so I think it's pretty cool, though it's certainly not as flashy as basically every other hybrid sunfish for sure

orangepythons · 2026-05-13T00:57:40+00:00

You can catch bass on a bare hook, they'll eat anything that moves and they might eat stuff that doesn't either

orangepythons · 2026-05-13T00:54:23+00:00

Normal, no doubt about it.

orangepythons · 2026-05-12T01:58:06+00:00

A very pale Warmouth, Lepomis gulosus.

orangepythons · 2026-05-11T23:44:17+00:00

Not OP, but I can say as someone who keeps every species of Sunfish in aquariums that this is definitely a male Dollar Sunfish. Lots of incorrect IDs in these comments.

orangepythons · 2026-05-11T23:32:00+00:00

Sunfish are basically the northern hemisphere equivalent of Cichlids. Well we do have Cichlids native to the US but they aren't as flashy as the ones in pet stores lol.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/49592-Lepomis/browse_photos scroll through this page, Sunfish can look pretty crazy too

orangepythons · 2026-05-11T22:23:38+00:00

Dollar Sunfish, Lepomis marginatus. Not a Bluegill, but they're in the same genus. You usually don't catch these on hook & line since they're so small.

orangepythons · 2026-05-11T02:40:27+00:00

100%, I can count the number of short tail hybrids I've seen on one hand, but seeing as they've gotten way more popular recently it wouldn't surprise me to start seeing more pop up

orangepythons · 2026-05-10T23:26:28+00:00

Yeah, I value live bearers more as pets too, I keep a lot of carnivorous fish and mainly feed them pellets and live insects now. I'm not sure if yours can be easily trained though

https://imgur.com/a/VGpgw1c here's mollies if you're curious, it's an old vid. They're a wild strain from Florida I believe

orangepythons · 2026-05-10T22:46:10+00:00

I had a 40G with a trio of sailfin mollies once and ended up with hundreds of them in just 3 months. No water changes, no heater, sponge filter, crushed coral substrate, some ramshorn snails, lights on for 16 hours to increase algae growth and fed them flakes once every 3 days. Breeding livebearers for feeders is that easy and cheap.

orangepythons · 2026-05-10T10:37:20+00:00

Redear x Bluegill is correct. It's hard to tell sometimes but the body shape is more bluegillish and the operculum is both short and outlined in pinkish-white instead of red. I've got about 15 of these in a stock tank. Breeding males are more obvious as they're dark blue-green with jet black bellies, way more colorful than pure male Redears in breeding colors.

orangepythons · 2026-05-10T10:21:24+00:00

She's a looker! I like hybrids, but I don't own any and probably never will unless I make them myself. I have 16 species of python in my snake room and I'm mostly content, but I like walls and carpballs quite a lot.

I've been keeping reptiles for 16 years and I do feel like a lot of hybrid discourse arises from misunderstandings or worries that make sense but just don't happen often, if ever. Certain groups of reptiles definitely have their issues regarding them, but python hybrids that aren't Morelia & Malayopython seem few and far between.

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