Bleeding Hearts are a breeding form of the platy (Xiphophorus maculatus), which was developed in the 1940s by the famous geneticist Myron Gordon. This breeding form is a cross between a wild platy form, namely the “Ruby-throat”, which occurs in the Rio Jamapa (Gordon collected his original strain near Veracruz) and in the Rio Papaloapan in Mexico, and a pure white breeding form, the so-called “Ghost-Platy”.
The current strains still have a lot in common with the early Bleeding Hearts. There is, for example, the sexual dichromatism. The males of the Bleeding Hearts are considerably more intensely colored than the females, alpha males are almost completely red. And Bleeding Hearts still have blue eyes, like their ancestors. But there are also differences to earlier times. In the early strains, the females were pure white. Nowadays, the females of the Bleeding Hearts also have red markings. Today, Bleeding Hearts are almost always bred with a Mickey Mouse tail pattern ( = moon complete), which was not the case in the past.
For our customers: the Platy Bleeding Heart Mickey Mouse has code 443623 on our stocklist. Please note that we only supply the wholesale trade.
Text & photos: Frank Schäfer
