Cross breeding.
- Thread starter Lil g
- Start date
Never mind.. The green terror is the female.. Explains why she looked bloated.. Anyways she laid eggs and I have 3 Convicts in the tank and I thought or they are all females... Expect this one they having been fighting for days.. But the eggs are tan.. So idk.. Do Convicts take on male rolls if no male in tank
It is not unusual for cichlids to cross breed, they do it all the time in aquariums, and if the fry survive, produce what are called hybrids. They also can and do sometime cross in nature, but less commonly, and this is where survival of the fittest determines whether they are viable, or not.
There are 2 schools of thought on this, some people love them, and it is how flowerhorns are produced, albeit with different species crosses.
The other school of thought is these hybrids, if left to survive, create a bunch of unidentifiable mutts, and if taken to LFSs are pollutants that are sometimes sold to unsuspecting buyers as one thing or the other (sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes just for the cash), and are thus, a nuisance to those wanting to maintain pure breed cichlids.
And if you watch the amount of threads on this site with unidentifiable cichlids, you can see this is not unusual event.
Often with hybrids about 30% look very similar 1 parent, and 30% the other, and the remaining percent various attributes of both. Often times, about 90% look like drab colorless generic cichlids, much like mutt dogs. In order to find the 10% that may be unusual or attractive, and be of any real worth, you would need to grow an entire spawn to almost adult size, and throughout the growth process cull (destroy) those that don't meet a certain standard, keeping only the best.
This also presupposes that you can see inside the fish, to know whether or not, the inner workings are a healthy combination or not.
There are 2 schools of thought on this, some people love them, and it is how flowerhorns are produced, albeit with different species crosses.
The other school of thought is these hybrids, if left to survive, create a bunch of unidentifiable mutts, and if taken to LFSs are pollutants that are sometimes sold to unsuspecting buyers as one thing or the other (sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes just for the cash), and are thus, a nuisance to those wanting to maintain pure breed cichlids.
And if you watch the amount of threads on this site with unidentifiable cichlids, you can see this is not unusual event.
Often with hybrids about 30% look very similar 1 parent, and 30% the other, and the remaining percent various attributes of both. Often times, about 90% look like drab colorless generic cichlids, much like mutt dogs. In order to find the 10% that may be unusual or attractive, and be of any real worth, you would need to grow an entire spawn to almost adult size, and throughout the growth process cull (destroy) those that don't meet a certain standard, keeping only the best.
This also presupposes that you can see inside the fish, to know whether or not, the inner workings are a healthy combination or not.
