My Jaguar/Dovii creation.

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Thanks to GS for adding some common sense to this discussion. Just for the record I am not a hybrid hater, I have kept several hybrids over the years, including flowerhorn, and including a female KKP that I currently own.

That said, EVERYTHING that GS stated is a simple matter of fact. There is no argument, there is no debate, think what you want, but anyone that has been in this hobby for any amount of time knows that a BP is a BP, and flowerhorn, is a flowerhorn. BUT, when you start crossing species such as in this thread, all bets are off. All it takes is one ignorant person to pass on offspring from these fish as (whatever) and the result can be years of hobbyists unknowingly passing on mutt fish, as something as they are not.

I'm all for hybrids that are obvious hybrids, even to entry level hobbyists.

I'm 100% against passing off fry from breedings such as this.

In fact, I am 100% against anyone breeding the same species, but from different geological locations - which is another form of hybridization, and with it carries the potential for losing various traits found in one species, but not the other. Even within the same body of water species can and often do vary, genetically, as well as morphologically, due to different feeding strategies etc.

A classic example of what I am referring to.

https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...ellus-a-potential-case-of-f1-midevils.439705/

Anyone that actually takes the time to read that, and then factor in what GS was saying, should get where this is going. This isn't being an asshat, this is being a realist, from someone who has seen this exact thing F this hobby up to a point where if one can't trace provenance back to a collection location in the wild, then you really don't know what you have. For a serious hobbyist, that's a pretty big problem.

The problem with random hybridization of a random pair of non related species of fish is this as GS stated, some offspring will look "special" (maybe?) some will be genetic duds that should be culled, others will look exactly like one of the parent fish. It's that latter group that often times end up in circulation, only later in future breedings rearing their hybrid origins. A real piss off for anyone that thought they had spent 6-12 months growing out a pure (whatever), or worse, bred the fish for years before they realized that at least one of their breeder parents wasn't pure. I have seen this happen too, from a guy who knew what he was doing. Hundreds if not thousands of fry released to other hobbyists, all genetic mutts. It made him sick.

It's not that this can happen, it has happened, probably millions of times over the past 3 or 4 decades.

These types of hybrids should never be distributed.
 
One other problem I see with hybridization, and line breeding, is most humans are just thinking about color, or shape when it comes to fish, and not what's inside.
Sometimes concentration on color may have a sacrifice in other areas such as immunity, or that over millennia certain species have developed traits that allow it to live in certen conditions, like temp or water quality tolerance, or resist certain bacteria from those conditions. Anytime you change something on the outside you may also be changing the commensal colonies of animals living within a species.
We have only to look at the less than robust health conditions of EBJDs, compared to its normal cousins to see that the concentration on color, leaves us with a generally sub par and disease prone JD, that looks really good, but may not last a month.
If you take a species from Mexico, that has cold resistance genes and cross with another from Panama without cold tolerance, or if the Panamanian species can resist bacteria from warm water commensal bacteria that the northern species cannot, you may be producing a bright fancy fish that drops dead under the least bit of change.
In nature managuensis are often found living in turbid, warm conditions, dove normally in clear, cooler waters (sometimes in Lake Arenal Costa Rica in water temps in the mid 60s.

On another side I have stopped buying fish at LFSs altogether, mostly because I could not trust them to know what they were selling, and its not just their fault, if Joe Blow down the street has 500 fry to get rid of, and tells the store the ones that look like dovii are, but not really dovii, and the percentage the look much like manguens are managuense but not....well
 
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I disagree but agree at the same time, let me elaborate. I disagree because hybrids can be cool and all, but I agree with what you guys are saying because not everybody will be able to properly label them as hybrids and pass them off as something else. I'd love to have a cool hybrid fish, IF I knew it was a hybrid. Because of the ignorance and dishonesty, I can understand and agree where you are coming from. For this case, I would say that it's ok to distribute them (Ideally YOU sell them online or something as hybrids), but tell the seller they are hybrids, again, problem is they might forget it and sell it as a pure bred or something. Hope that makes sense.
 
Duane also makes a very good point, and many times the result of selective breeding, and/or inbreeding, is indeed a genetically weak fish. IME most designer fish fall into this category, the latest flavor of discus from Asia, or the vast majority of flowerhorn, that again are lucky to live to 5 yrs. There is a reason why my Hexamita/Spironucleus sticky in the FH section has over 95,000 hits.
 
Duane also makes a very good point, and many times the result of selective breeding, and/or inbreeding, is indeed a genetically weak fish. IME most designer fish fall into this category, the latest flavor of discus from Asia, or the vast majority of flowerhorn, that again are lucky to live to 5 yrs. There is a reason why my Hexamita/Spironucleus sticky in the FH section has over 95,000 hits.
Agreed with that, they often are very susceptible to certain disease and/or can pass on traits that are not desirable
 
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