Danger_Chicken;3691987; said:Hopefully they'll stay pure. By far the best looking jag in my opinion. I'd like a pictorial guide on all the jag location varients.
That would be awesome, Michael. Same for all of the Hericthys location varients.
Here's what Felipe has on his site to show the different Gymnogeophagus varients across Uruguay: http://www.aqvaterra.com/map_rhabdotus.php
Not perfect but really brings things from abstract to reality (for me at least)...
"Pure" strains stay "pure" through breeding only fish with provenance back to a particular collection location. Not "I saw this jag in a LFS and it has some blue so it's a Honduran Jag"... or "I think that's what the guy at the auction told me", etc.
I agree with the comments regarding the value of F2, F3, F4, etc. fish. For whatever reason, people have it in their minds that any fish that are anything but wild or F1 wild are inbred crap. If people are culling weak and deformed fish, it takes many generations of inbreeding before congenital abnormalities become a problem.
As an example, as Felipe's map above shows, just about every small pond in Uruguay has a "different" substrate spawning Gynogeo, mouthbrooding Gymnogeo and chanchito (Australoheros). The fish become "different" probably through isolation from other populations...and probably originally were introduced during a 100-year type flood situation when a larger body of water crested its banks and then receded...leaving a population of fish in a pond to evolve specifically to that pond (in isolation). While I'm sure it happens (and those fish are predated or die), this isolated group of fish I'm sure is a heck of a lot more "inbred" than a couple of generations. Lot's of genetic abnormalities? Nope.
Matt