I kind of understand where you are coming from but if "fry" don't fit the standard of what the fish "should" represent they will only cloud the gene pool...not make it better. Not following the "standard profile" is why there is such a problem with low quality fish in the hobby.
Cross breeding?
- Thread starter Psycmeistr
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I put 'standard profile' in parentheses because imo there shouldn't be a standard and really for many fish there's a lot of variation that is accepted. Oscars, for example, comes in all sorts of colors, patterns, etc. and I think that's really good.
Limiting a fish to just one form imo is bad, not because it is a form chosen by one or a few people then spreaded around as the 'standard' and make people feel like they have subpar fish, which may not be so, and therefore removes any potentially awesome morphs from the hobby. If a fish is 'supposed' to be red and a fry came out a bit orange and culled, then that could be a potentially for losing an entirely new awesome color morph. Not to mention that as people tends towards a specific profile any fish, wild caught or otherwise that looks different will be shunned and eventually all individuals of the species will be practically genetically identical, which is bad as if something can target this genetic form specifically then it'll spread rapidly. Possibly, anyways.
Don't see why we should breed for variety - yes there will be plenty of drab/low quality fish produced in the process, but we'd be aiming towards having many morphs of a species, each having it's own attractiveness and can be breed with each other to create different interesting combinations, as opposed to just one combination that eventually can not be differed from and will eventually grow boring.
Also I don't quite get what you mean by 'clouding the gene pool'. Can you explain that please?
Limiting a fish to just one form imo is bad, not because it is a form chosen by one or a few people then spreaded around as the 'standard' and make people feel like they have subpar fish, which may not be so, and therefore removes any potentially awesome morphs from the hobby. If a fish is 'supposed' to be red and a fry came out a bit orange and culled, then that could be a potentially for losing an entirely new awesome color morph. Not to mention that as people tends towards a specific profile any fish, wild caught or otherwise that looks different will be shunned and eventually all individuals of the species will be practically genetically identical, which is bad as if something can target this genetic form specifically then it'll spread rapidly. Possibly, anyways.
Don't see why we should breed for variety - yes there will be plenty of drab/low quality fish produced in the process, but we'd be aiming towards having many morphs of a species, each having it's own attractiveness and can be breed with each other to create different interesting combinations, as opposed to just one combination that eventually can not be differed from and will eventually grow boring.
Also I don't quite get what you mean by 'clouding the gene pool'. Can you explain that please?
if "fry" don't fit the standard of what the fish "should" represent they will only cloud the gene pool...not make it better. Not following the "standard profile" is why there is such a problem with low quality fish in the hobby.
+1 on this
The "Standard Profile" should be how the fish looks/exists in nature...not how MAN thinks it should look. Clouding the gene pool is exactly as it states....low grade/deformed fish should be culled as that is what happens in nature. It's interesting how MAN tries to take nature into his own hands as if he will make it better than it was before he started messing with it. Just my two cents on this issue and we can agree to disagree on this matter instead of turning it into an argument. Good luck to the OP on their spawn.
In the wild there is heaps of variation in different species of fish. Green Texans, for example, has a large range of colors, pearling patterns, sizes and shapes, and even the body form are said to vary. Similarly with Bay Snooks, there's green and red ones. Heaps of people are interested in wild caught Paraneetroplus and wild caught Parachromis species as there's just so much variation in the wild. If a mutation results in a trait that isn't detrimental, it won't be selected against. If a trait is useful, it's selected for and different individuals have different traits in the wild. To say that there there is a 'standard profile' does not make sense in my opinion, because we include all traits a wild caught fish could have, then that's be a pretty huge profile - and in fact it won't be a 'standard' profile anymore. And as we get more wild caugh individuals, we get more variation. Recently a lot of wild caught JDs have a red coloration that is seen by few and far in between, but is getting more common. It is absolutely unknown how many more fish we're gonna catch with traits that we've never seen. So that makes a 'standard profile' a really un-useful option. On top of that, many traits found nowadays - bright coloration for example, are not often found in the wild as that attracts predators and gets selected against. Shall we kill off all these fish then, because they don't fit the drab profile of their wild caught counterpart.
We may view drab fish as low quality fish, but in the wild they'd be the survivors. On the topic of a 'gene pool', it is simply the collection of all genes (and their alleles) of all individuals of a designated group of organisms. You can't pollute it, you can't cloud it, you can't improve it, you can't better it because it is completely neutral. You can expand it by adding more genes (alleles) to it or contract it by removing genes (alleles) from it, but otherwise used correctly the term is only referring to the collection of alleles presented, nothing more, nothing less, simple as that.
If the fish is defective (maybe born with intestines poking out or something and getting infected), I'd agree to culling, but not if it's a simple variation in the body color or shape or size or pattern or stuff like that.
In-/line-selective breeding is man taking nature in its own hands. Meh even just keeping fish is taking it in out own hands. We decide the fate of the fish we keep, decide what lives and what dies, very well killing a predator just because it fed on our favourite fish.
If that's not taking nature in out own hands, I don't know what is.
In short, wild individuals exhibit a lot of variation anyways, and are not always what we refer to with a 'standard profile'. We mess aroun with nature so much anyways already, so can't really say breeding these fish with new traits is any different from anything else, in terms of playing with nature. Finally, the genepool simply refers to the sets of alleles present, nothing more nothing less. Imo shouldn't refer to with 'polluting' or 'clouding' or 'bettering' or the likes.
This is my two cents. I do hope that anyone reading this gets something out of it, but hey everyone has their own opinions.
Let's agree to disagree I guess.
We may view drab fish as low quality fish, but in the wild they'd be the survivors. On the topic of a 'gene pool', it is simply the collection of all genes (and their alleles) of all individuals of a designated group of organisms. You can't pollute it, you can't cloud it, you can't improve it, you can't better it because it is completely neutral. You can expand it by adding more genes (alleles) to it or contract it by removing genes (alleles) from it, but otherwise used correctly the term is only referring to the collection of alleles presented, nothing more, nothing less, simple as that.
If the fish is defective (maybe born with intestines poking out or something and getting infected), I'd agree to culling, but not if it's a simple variation in the body color or shape or size or pattern or stuff like that.
In-/line-selective breeding is man taking nature in its own hands. Meh even just keeping fish is taking it in out own hands. We decide the fate of the fish we keep, decide what lives and what dies, very well killing a predator just because it fed on our favourite fish.
If that's not taking nature in out own hands, I don't know what is.
In short, wild individuals exhibit a lot of variation anyways, and are not always what we refer to with a 'standard profile'. We mess aroun with nature so much anyways already, so can't really say breeding these fish with new traits is any different from anything else, in terms of playing with nature. Finally, the genepool simply refers to the sets of alleles present, nothing more nothing less. Imo shouldn't refer to with 'polluting' or 'clouding' or 'bettering' or the likes.
This is my two cents. I do hope that anyone reading this gets something out of it, but hey everyone has their own opinions.
Let's agree to disagree I guess.
