I can't answer for Duane, I am sure he will defend his position.
But it comes down to opinion and preference. Some aquarists (myself included) prefer that fish exhibit their natural appearance and behavior. Often these aquarists prefer to setup their aquariums as biotopes specific to certain watersheds or even specific bodies of water.
Some purists also strongly dislike fancy line bred varieties that for all intents and purposes of this discussion wouldn't appear in nature (veil tails, calico/marbled, some of the short bodied, etc). To the natural purist these fish are no different than neon injected tetras and dyed barbs. They are seen as an abomination.
With that being said, many people who prefer natural appearance are tolerant of albinism and partial albinism (leucism and xanthism for example) as examples of animals of all different orders exhibit these colorations in the wild, albeit they are often short lived due to predation.
One would like to think that there is room for people from both sides of this debate in the hobby. One main point of dissension occurs when a hybrids are passed/sold as something they are not. A lot of work and effort goes into the import and captive breeding WC and F1 fish, just like alot of work goes into creating new and interesting hybrids.
TL ; DR: different strokes for different folks
I mean I can understand liking a fish for what it is naturally, and not liking GMO/dyed fish. But to go as far as other things people have said, like "kill them as eggs" or "feed them off to other fish, they shouldn't be alive." is kinda... it doesn't seem right. The animal is alive, and it doesn't care what it is as long as it's alive. The fish doesn't care if its a hybrid, and to say that they should be killed just because they are a mix of 2 species is kind wrong to me.
Almost all my animals are hybrids or bred to be the way they are. I have a BP, mickey mouse platies, a koi halfmoon betta, leopard geckos of various morphs and an amelanistic fat tailed gecko. (not sure if that counts but he's still a morph...)
The only wild caught/natural fish I have are my rio esmeraldas gold acara (yes she's wild caught, she was caught in a lagoon near the rio esmeralda.), my red eye tetras, and my common pleco.
If it's 2 species that you have and you're creating a hybrid that you know the parents of, as long as you keep record of the parents/lineage then you can't really call it an unknown mutt.
as for convicts in the hobby being mutts, to me anything sold as
a.nigrofasicatum, whether a mutt or not I still see it as an
a.nigrofasicatum. if you want the purest of pure, or want something of a different regional variant, find someone like Jeff Rapps or catch the fish yourself.
come to think of it I can understand not liking hybrids. I can understand calling them abominations, (but not to the extent of dyed/tattooed fish, those are just terrible.) I mean look at my profile pic, my BP is kinda weird looking but I still love the 8 year old, big fat orange thing that I raised from a 2 inches and a few months old. But still, things like wanting them dead just because they are hybrids seems very wrong to me.
