Thanks for the good wishes, everyone! I was so thankful to go to bed last night without the continuing worry about Sceptre running through my dreams.
The first three eggs still look good. The two from yesterday really don’t, but what the heck. The truth is that I don’t know what a viable 433rd day egg should look like, lol. They can stay in incubation until they go obviously bad (which will penalty happen soon, but again what the heck).
This is a common misconception. The livebearers you mention cannot change sex. Older females can masculinise and grow the longer fins and even the semblance of a gonopodium but they are still female. This myth is most prominent in swordtails with older reproductively barren females masculinising and perpetuating this fallacy. Some fishes can change sex but they are, to my knowledge, all salt water fishes or are anadromous at the very least.
I’m not an expert on this, and not claiming to be one. I’m aware that there’s been a lot of research done on the topic of freshwater fish which can change gender. Most of the “changed” individual swordtails do apparently fall into the category of late-developing males who simply appeared to be female until some later point when they developed the outward appearance of being male. Same goes for mollies. (I know there’s much too much evidence for pollution-induced gender alteration but that’s a completely different topic. )
UC-Berkeley has done some research indicating that guppies are among the freshwater fish who can switch gender. There’s a brief article here,
Gender-bending fish - Understanding Evolution. The graphic is interesting.
It’s likely that my students were on the lookout for any morphological changes because they just plain found it interesting. They kept an especially close eye on our tank of locally collected creatures. To my knowledge, Gulf killifish don’t switch things up but the name was enough to fascinate the kids. We had a unit on mangrove swamps. Mangrove killifish do all kinds of wild things, lol. We also collected mollies which appeared to change, but I now see just fall into the swordtails’ pseudo-switch category.
@reddot_reptiles, you’re right and I was wrong on some casual observations. Your reply encouraged me to dig deeper and challenge my info, and I appreciate that. Thanks.
There was a fish in a london zoo ( if i remember correctly) he was one of 3 last remaining of the species, like once they fied they went extinct. All three were males so there was no way to further the species. In the end the male turned female and they were able to succeed in breeding.
Nature is so incredible and there is still so much that we really don’t realize.
Nature knows so much better than us on how to manage. Us humans think we know so much better but we typically end up making things worse.
Even invasive species eventually strike a balance. Nature works out adaptations, some species naturally go extinct and some develop defenses or hunting techniques.
There was an Orca who learned how to put great whites into catatonic immobility and then taught their whole pod on how to hunt them.
Oh, I remember hearing about that zoo fish!! I don’t recall the specifics, but I recall the excitement and the wonder in the voices of the people reporting on it.
Nature is truly astonishing. I never get tired of being surprised by learning something new. I know that sounds trite, but it is quite true.
Sceptre is doing quite well. She had a light meal Saturday. (Friday was a long story, I got little done I’d planned including feeding her.) She doesn’t appear to be showing signs of going blue. I freely admit that I’ve got not a clue when exactly to expect that but I presume it will be soon. She laid the first good egg on 31 May, the last dud on 15 June. I don’t know what her hormones are doing, lol.
The final two eggs she passed went into the discard bin today. Zero signs of development, and shrinking.
Two of the three eggs laid earlier appear to be doing well. Lots of healthy veins and nice embryo shadows in Eggs #1 and #3. The veins in #2 are less visible now. Some irregularities appeared in the shell of #1, but these don’t appear to be bothering its development. Having trouble posting pics, service is iffy for some reason but I’ll keep trying.
I continue to hold hope and positive energy for Septre and her offspring. It will be such a blessing and one of life’s miracles. Im continuing to be in wonder of the world. All life is precious and wonderous.
Amen to that, and thank you!
Nice view of the veins in number 3!
Thank you. There are never any guarantees of course, but #3 looks very promising. It appears to be pretty much like any other egg laid on any regular season. I’m very hopeful that it will hatch. I think #1 also looks hopeful although I had a hard time getting a decent picture. The light behaved differently with the “window” spots and didn’t show the veins as well. I will be totally thrilled if I get a healthy baby from these unusual eggs!
Here’s my weekly update. Egg #1 no longer looks viable. It still feels fairly normal, not hardened and there’s no odor. It’s too opaque to candle at all. I don’t hold out much hope for it but I’m leaving it alone for the time being.
I’m not sure about Egg #2 either. It’s now candling with pretty uniform color. It, too, has a normal texture and lack of odor. So I’m leaving it alone, too.
Egg #3 makes my heart go pitty-pat (to borrow a phrase from a friend). It looks like any normal egg about halfway through gestation. Which is simply amazing!
C’mon three! Hoping that at least one of these little surprises makes it to hatching, cheering all the way for it!
I’m sorry to say that Eggs #1 and #2 didn’t make it. They were both quite opaque and unfortunately odoriferous. Yes, they STANK. I was going to open them up Sunday but life caused delays and by the time I could get to it there was nothing but semi-solid and very foul-smelling goop. (Pretty sure that’s the scientific term for it.)
But Egg #3 still looks great! The picture is from this past weekend. 
C’mon, #3!!! That’s a very healthy looking egg, hopefully you get a special little one out of it.
We are all hoping for this final egg to produce a beautiful baby. 
Thanks, folks. When Sceptre first produced these eggs, I wasn’t expecting any of them to develop. I hoped at least one would, but wasn’t expecting much. As time has passed, I became more hopeful. Now that we’re into the second half of incubation, I am getting as worried as I am hopeful. That does not make sense, and fretting is the ultimate exercise in futility, but there you have it. Being human doesn’t have to make much sense. Lol
I think if we didn’t worry about things i think there would be something wrong with them.
We are all hoping this final egg carries on septeres legacy. It would be awesome if she were to have 1 final baby.
Thank you. It is lovely to hear from people who understand. Sceptre herself is doing just fine. She shed again, and just had her first full- sized adult mouse tonight. She’d had two weanlings before she went blue. I’m really happy that she seems to be her old self again!
