so I was having a convo with someone earlier today about inbreeding of fish, he seems to think that it never happens, when I have had it happen a few times with my fish. his response was that you should take them out of the tank before they mature. and yea if you are intending on breeding on a large scale you should find a pair with different roots. I kept a handful of nice fry in my display with the parents because I wanted to increase the number of that fish in the tank. nature happens, they make babies. I'm not out here trying to mass produce fish to sell. so my question to you is am I the only one who has kept fry from previous spawns with their parents?
do you keep your fry?
- Thread starter jamntoast
- Start date
When I used to breed dragon blood peacocks, I would keep the best 3 looking males for backup breeding in the future. The rest ends up for sale or trade.
I have a tendency to buy low numbers of fish and breed them if I want numbers. For example, I have 5 lacortei tetra's, and now have about 50 young fry growing up. So eventually I will have a planted tank with all of them. I might breed them a few more times to have fish for trade at club events or for my friends. I usually do this with rainbowfish also since they are so stinking expensive and take forever to grow. It can take a long time, but is a cool way to have a big display. I could never afford to buy 50 plus tetra's (usually around 5 or 6 bucks a piece) but I can breed them.
Inbreeding is very common in fish that is easiest breeders. Common livebearers (guppies, platies and mollies), convicts and cherry shrimps tends to not eat their own offspring very much and survivors got to reproduce with either siblings or one of the parents.
yea, that's how i see it. the person i was talking to was making it seem like it was a mistake i was making, and the whole time I'm thinking "man, tetras literally just spawn in a cloud with all their relatives, no idea whos sperm and egg is getting together". I'm glad that I'm not alone. it doesn't seem weird at all to me. guy was a know it all
There is a killfish (fundulopanchax spoorenbergi) that was collected many years ago (60's) and every current one in the hobby is related to the original few pairs that were collected. They do not exist in the wild anymore. They are fine, produce good numbers of fry, look good no abnormalities. People who think they know everything (took genetics in school) tend to harp on breeding. Most fish you find in a fish store are all tough customers that can be bred to each other over and over. They are strong genetically. That is just my 2 cents. If it is so fragile that inbreeding one or two generations cause problems, then it won't be in the hobby and is not worth it anyway.
I must add to that many goodeid species are extinct in the wild and lot of captive bred goodeids are inbred but still going strong.
