There is also a much smaller gene pool of rays in the hobby than there are of the fish that were hybridized to make a flowerhorn. There is a danger with such a limited genepool of someday losing pure bloodlines in the hobby, or losing track of what is a true bloodline. With fish like flowerhorns, there is no risk of flowerhorn hybrids causing a lack of pure, for instance, midas cichlids, and thus eradicating the pure midas cichlid in the hobby. However, with rays, if hybridization occurred in this part of the world as it does in others, we could soon find that we have little to no pure bloodlines left, which, in conjunction with the habitat loss and pollution that are already causing problems in the wild, could (conceivably, in the long term future) cause the loss of the entire species. Some of us may see this as melodramatic, but in my opinion, it's best to be safe, and refrain from hybridizing species whose pure lines have not yet been so strongly established in captive breeding programs. Just my two cents.
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