Crossing breeding gardneri and australe? Albino Gardneri

[TyroneGenade]

No, Wright you are not unreasonable. But on the same not Loh is not unreasonable in wanting to breed his short-body AUS. It would certainly be very interesting from a genetics point of view. Is this one allele? Is it dominant or recessive? Do you have several alleles? How many do you need to get a mutant fish? Loh's fish is invaluable from a scientific point of view. While it may be undesirable to your and Jian Yang's aesthetic senses it may not be undesirable to Loh's. I personally would not want the fish as something to ogle over but I have a penchant for genetics and I find this mutation interesting. I've bred 100s of AUS and never seen anything like it. It is new to me and what ever genetic abberation is at work it is of value. If Loh could breed a pure line I would probably pay to acquire eggs of it. But i certainly wouldn't put it in killie shows as 1) it won't do well so what's the point and 2) we already struggle to maintain the species and strains we have, why add another?

That AUS does have spectacular fins though! Wow!

Keep well

[hwchoy]

I agree, just as I support glo-fish (Danio rerio implanted with jellyfish genes) for research but not for sales as pets.

[timebomb]

Is that unreasonable?

No, it's not. Not quite to the point but not unreasonable either. Thanks, Wright but you didn't answer my question. I can understand and agree on Jianyang's and your stand on hybrids but what I have isn't a hybrid.

I asked that you all take a look at the discussions in KillieTalk Digest because I sense a change in attitudes and not because I support the breeding of hybrids. I've always thought the very word "hybrid" is absolutely taboo in KillieTalk but the fact that some hobbyists supported it kind of shocked me.

I think we're going to have a problem. You all gave good reasons why we shouldn't breed and distribute hybrids around but so far, I haven't heard one convincing argument that doing the same for a short-body Killifish can in any way harm the hobby. Actually, Ronnie came up with a good reason why I shouldn't breed the short-body australe when he spoke of giving up on Killies. But perhaps, I should say "good way" instead of "good reason" because it will stop me from breeding the australe if I know that will cause him to lose heart. It isn't a good reason but a good way, if you know what I mean.

Let's try it again once more, without becoming emotional.

Loh shouldn't breed his short-body australe nor distribute its kind around because..........(please fill in as many reasons as you can).

Loh K L

[nonamethefish]

because.....

tank space would be better spent maintaining true species/populations rather than a mutant for curiosity in the hobby?

Or...because its possible that people would unintentionally cross this short bodied to normal fish and people who don't want them would end up with them in the batches of fry as culls?

But then...what do we consider a mutant?--another can of worms...or perhaps vial of fruitflies

However, I'd say that scientifically speaking this fish is indeed worthwhile to fool around with as far as genetics are concerned.

[timebomb]

because.....

tank space would be better spent maintaining true species/populations rather than a mutant for curiosity in the hobby?

Tank space isn't a good reason. One can easily acquire more tanks or prioritise space.

Or...because its possible that people would unintentionally cross this short bodied to normal fish and people who don't want them would end up with them in the batches of fry as culls?

The short body is quite apparent so there's little possibility of unintentional breeding.

But then...what do we consider a mutant?--another can of worms...or perhaps vial of fruitflies

I think we shouldn't be afraid of opening cans or worms or vials of fruitflies if we are sincere in understanding more and understanding better

Loh K L

[whuntley]

I generally agree with you, KL, and think you have every right to experiment with the apparently-mutated stubby AUS.

I have a horror of such fish getting out into circulation, because I know a lot of folks actually like Orandas and similar cripples. I, personally, do not, but that doesn't mean you need to subordinate your interests to mine.

I think we need a high level of openness in this area, and to be sure anyone getting such fish knows exactly what they are getting. I fear that will lead to "Balloon AUS" and other weirdnesses, but it isn't my choice. Keep building your species list, and avoid too much divergence for now, is my advice.

Free advice is always worth every penny.

Wright

[RonWill]

Loh shouldn't breed his short-body australe nor distribute its kind around because..........

Crude as it comes... as founding member of the first local killie forum, you're looked upon as the corner-stone and beacon by many of us. What you say and do, especially to those impressionable killie-newbies, will affect the hobby and more likely beyond your control. That should be reason enough. Get them off on the right track[1], guide them and the rewards will come.

2nd unrefined reason:
You're busy enough as is, to even maintain what you have, let alone the newly received austrolebias (whatever became of them??). If you really have that much free time, I need help with my tanks

...but so far, I haven't heard one convincing argument that doing the same for a short-body Killifish can in any way harm the hobby

I liken your position to this awkard analogy;
Many think nothing of a common man who patronize the brothel but it is unbecoming when a pastor is caught with his pants down.

No, you never laid claim to the pedestal or as 'Mr Know-It-All', but as one whom many have come to respect, there are issues that need discipline.

To experiment with your little 'stubby', in your tanks and for your pleasure, is a personal decision. To then hand this fish over to a killie-newbie (and she's collecting eggs!), is something I cannot accept. I'm not blaming Esther, for she knows not what she's doing, but your good self for lack of foresight. The 'harm to the hobby' will come and is subtle.

The argument on KillieTalk, if you observe closely, is coming from 2 groups;
Kyle[2] and some are from the 'casual side of things' who just appreciate nice fishes. Nothing wrong with it provided that's where distribution stop.

Dr Cooper, Goldstein, Watters, et al, are the 'hardcore' who'd strive for lineage preservation (and I believe in that) for future distribution. Why else would they have bothered to collect, study and introduce them to the niche hobby.

I don't believe that mindsets are set in stone and cannot be changed. I was also wrong to disbelieve that this forum can thrive without Singlish and SMS garbage but with education and persistence, I know it is possible but still, a mean feat for an individual. Your position should be beside me (even though I don't wear skirt). Your role should be in line with mine, if we are to see meaningful growth of the forum[3].

Newbies don't understand why we're so anal about 'population corruption' or 'collection codes'? I beg to differ. In private, I've devoted time to 'convert' those, who refused to have killies in their tanks, to learn and nuture a deeper appreciation of conservation, and I can proudly include Kho and Kenny amongst my 'newbies', whom I hope one day, will become serious killie-keepers.

[1] I'm willing to contribute a few pairs of AUS EBT 96-27 to your breeding effort and redistribution.

[2] IIRC, Kyle is a killie-newbie and I've responed to his GAR ID-request on AKA's forum and I know he is amongst us. He may be new to killies but not necessary new to fish keeping and his views are in line with most casual hobbyist, much like Gary's... "where's the harm", they think, "a fish is still a fish".

[3] http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/fi...ie_journey.htm
It was a personal page I started but probably won't be updated. Henceforth, the journey continue from here.

BTW, Tyrone, this thread deserves to be in Killie Arena.

[timebomb]

Wright, you being the Chief Bloviator, your views are of paramount importance to me Seriously, you don't know what a relief it is for me to read what you just wrote.

I share your concern about this getting out of hand, that it will eventually lead to all sorts of mutated Killies appearing in the market. Fret not. The short body australe and his offspring won't be distributed to anyone. I won't sell it to Tyrone even if he offers me a princely sum for it

I hope this discussion has led to a new perspective, that anything out of the ordinary isn't necessarily bad. To guide the hobby along its proper course, we have to be able to come up with good guidelines. Guidelines cannot stand up to scrutiny and challenges if we don't have good reasons. It's of no use saying things like there are already hundreds of species or that people are financially motivated when they breed hybrids. We need to come up with good moral and ecological reasons. If we can't, hobbyists who breed hybrids will resent what we do and if that happens, you can bet they will go out of the way to flood the market with hybridised fish. As I've said before, it's only human to experiment. There's a Victor Frankenstein in all of us In order to keep him from creating monsters, we have to be able to come up with convincing arguments.

Loh K L

[nonamethefish]

On the other hand...what are the reasons for hybrids/selectively bred abnormal fish? I'am not a hybridiser or a Luo-Han fanatic so here's my best guess....

(1) Curiosity or course....wonder what will happen if I cross a blue gularis with a gold gardneri...would I get gardneri color and sjoestedti finnage...?
(2) The search for the perfect killifish/fish. Aquarists wish to try to improve species by selecting and hybridizing species in hopes of spectacular color pattern, size, whatever. This and 1# can also be applied to selective breeding. IMO their is a muddy line between selectively breeding for good color/vitality for the general health of the fish and breeding for a certain strain or color traits etc. You can do the latter unintentionally too.
(3) Scientific reasons such as for taxonomy. I'm pretty sure most everyone is fine with this providing results are destroyed.
(4) Money: Not to point fingers or accuse all people who make hybrids but the creating of the perfect fish would then become a possible money revenue. We all know flowerhorns go for often ridiculous prices.
(5) The opportunity: Ok, confess guys, if you were raising a species in which albinos were not previously known and spot an albino in a batch of fry what are you going to do? Are you going to cull it? Perhaps you start to see the dollar sign(#4)
(6) Personal preference/customs of the hobby niche: Some people just enjoy fish with long fins, doub tails etc. or otherwise the challenge of creating and maintaining beautiful strains. This in many other parts of the hobby has been widely accepted.
(7) Authority or right....aquarist wishes to excercise priviledge or ability to manipulate the fish?

And reasons for maintaining
(1) Again, personal preference. Some people just appreciate fish as they came from the wild and the natural beauty they possess.

(2) Do not want to risk infertility: Keeping populations/species seperate helps prevent sterile fish.

(3) Conservation: Related to number 2...if we keep species and populations pure we are more likely to have them in the future.
(4) hobby niche: In the killifish hobby it is in general frowned upon to make hybrids and many people don't even want fish lacking collection codes(other end of the extreme). Therefore, most killifish fanatics will end up "purebreed" hobbyists.

Any more for either side? Just trying to get a good view here

~Joseph

[timebomb]

Crude as it comes... as founding member of the first local killie forum, you're looked upon as the corner-stone and beacon by many of us. What you say and do, especially to those impressionable killie-newbies, will affect the hobby and more likely beyond your control.

Well, I guess that's a really good reason although I have never seen myself as a corner-stone or beacon But Ronnie, that reason applies only to me so it makes little sense to others.

You're busy enough as is, to even maintain what you have, let alone the newly received austrolebias (whatever became of them??). If you really have that much free time, I need help with my tanks

I'm still keeping a close watch on the Austrolebias eggs but darn it, they're not even eyed-up yet. I don't have much free time, that's true but I like to have a few species going in my tanks. I keep the Aphyosemion australes and Nothobranchius rachovii because these are the species the newbies look for when they write me for Killies.

I might have been a corrupting influence on some but I like to think we're open-minded enough to let the newbies ask sensitive questions and hear their views. I like to think too that nothing is taboo on Killies.com.

Loh K L

[timebomb]

Any more for either side? Just trying to get a good view here

What about this, Joseph? We all love playing God

Loh K L

[nonamethefish]

LOL Timebomb: Thats quite true.

I have noticed that people don't seem to really want albino killifish(and much less hybrid killies). I remember observing the Aus. nigripinnis albino auction on aquabid which apparently no one bid on(No offense to anyone who happens to like them) and kind of though that for a fish that is famed for being "like stars in a summer night" albinos just didn't seem fitting.

Going back a few pages...Dealing with all the infertility issues of hybrids wouldn't it would be hard to truly mass market to the public as feared? Unless the results are truly electrifying most people won't know the difference.

[hwchoy]

just to gently remind that select breeding of a strain or variety is entirely different from hybridising. I'm sure most of us knows that just sometimes we forgot the distinction during the debate.

[timebomb]

just to gently remind that select breeding of a strain or variety is entirely different from hybridising. I'm sure most of us knows that just sometimes we forgot the distinction during the debate.

Thanks for the reminder, Choy but I think we're all aware of that. The agreement on hybrids is unanimous. Hybrids are undesirable; we shouldn't cross-breed unless we know exactly what we're doing and the offspring should never be distributed.

The line becomes a bit thin when it comes to mutants. I would say it isn't wrong to breed them but the possibility of the market being flooded with all sorts of mutants is very real. In fact, observing what has happened to the Tetras, Mollies and Platies, the original would be lost after a while. I bet the young guys here don't even know that the original Zebra Danoi and Black Tetra do not come with long fins but these are what you find in the fish shop these days. And who can remember what the original Black Molly looks like? Come to think of it, is a Black Molly a mutant actually? Isn't the original colour red or orange?

Loh K L

[hwchoy]

a similar topic came up in a shrimp forum. I mentioned I have several kinds of shrimps hybridising in my tank and I gave them the name "Jaguar" shrimp. The guys were keen to obtain some but as per my standing philosophy, no distribution of any hybrids.

similarly, many people cannot distinguish hybrid shrimps vs selectively bred strains such as Crystal Red.

[timebomb]

Going back a few pages...Dealing with all the infertility issues of hybrids wouldn't it would be hard to truly mass market to the public as feared? Unless the results are truly electrifying most people won't know the difference.

I don't understand what you mean by not knowing the difference but we have seen what happened with the FlowerHorns so we know it's not difficult to mass market a hybrid fish. The FlowerHorn craze was one where no one could foresee how crazy it can become. People who have never kept fish in their lives were buying them by the dozens and they were suckered into spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to possess the fish. It did a lot of good for the fish shop owners who were going through a trying period (Asian financial crises fallout) but it did nothing for the hobby in general. There was no attempt to educate the crowds but the marketing, the drive to push the LuoHans to the masses was incessant. The aftermath of the LuoHan craze is one where we now find many of them in the local streams and ponds. Singapore isn't economically dependant on agriculture or this will be a national disaster.

I do believe the fallout when the Luohan craze died and the general aversion to it by the more "enlightened" hobbyists have led to the present view that any fish which isn't pure is bad. We all went overboard when we started to condemn short-body fishes and uncoded Killies.

We need a new perspective.

Loh K L

[nonamethefish]

I don't know much about cichlids...but I think one thing that made Luo-Han so volatile is that they were still fertile and could thus be backcrossed and crossed again to make all kinds of different looking fish. Killie hybrids for the most part run into fertility problems or egg development problems somewhere down the line which would prevent people from going insane in exactly that fashion.

I remember reading on killietalk archives when someone mentioned that many times aquarium strain fish are often more hardy and colorful than location fish. He used Aus. nigripinnis, SJO, and a few others as examples. I find it sad that currently in the F&E listing that aquarium strain N. foerschi needs some pretty extreme help to keep a foothold in the hobby. I wonder if this thinking goes further we might lose, say, Fp. scheeli since this fish doesn't seem to have any locations.

[stormhawk]

Hi KL,

The Black Molly we have in the hobby now is a mutation of the regular Poecilia sphenops or what we otherwise term as a "longkang" or drain molly. These are the ones that are silvery in colour and rather drab so to speak. Bred in the millions for the feeder fish industry.

This species has also been crossed with the other mollies to create the lyretail form, which incidentally, exists in the wild naturally in some individuals.

Hi Choy, yes I understand that selectively breeding for a colour type or finnage type is totally different from hybridising but there have been times where similar and related species were used in the selective breeding process. This was to infuse a requirement like a certain type of finnage or colour pattern that the other species possessed. When this type of "selective breeding" by means of infusing genes from related species, the line between "selective breeding" and hybridising becomes blur.

Aquarium strain fish are naturally hardier than their coded cousins because they have a combination of genes that makes them variable in tolerance to current conditions in an aquarium. That in a way makes them stronger but dilutes the differences between some populations. However, this hardiness can come at a cost for us who actually keep them. When you obtain an aquarium strain, you will not know how they were raised, how they were obtained and whether they were bred follow intraspecific methods without outcrossing or hybridising to other related species.

In farms they require fast growing fish to meet the demands of the market. If the fish are fed with growth hormones to enhance their growth and also fed colour enhancers excessively, their fertility is severely impaired. Furthermore, fish fed with growth enhancers grow incredibly larger than their normal-growth cousins and only serves to project an awkward increase in size, not normally seen even in wild fish.

Aquarium strain species can also carry with them "genetic baggage" which does not manifest itself until the next generation and so forth are produced from such species. Say for example these are normal looking fish but were bred from parents that may or may not have a crooked spine. The resulting offspring may not show this trait but their descendents may. This effectively ensures that the line is more or less consigned to producing deformed individuals in the near future and this is what I mean by "genetic baggage".

As for selectively bred strains, not all of these fish are that popular or remain popular for a long time so to speak. Where are the moss-green tiger barbs? Where are the albino tiger barbs? I've not seen these for sale for a long long time. The hype died and so the demand for these fish died. Last I checked people were selling normal tiger barbs as feeder fish. How sad the status of a wonderful species has fallen. I for one would not like to see killifish in such a predicament as the tiger barbs have become.

The short-bodied australe may be a cute little fella now but in time other hobbyists, and not just killie hobbyists, may start calling it a "freak of nature". Let's not let that poor fella and his descendents be labelled as such. Experimentation is fine with me just as long as the proper controls are applied.

If there was really a form of australe that is different from the other strains and still look good, here's a picture of an australe "Lineatus" from killi.net.



Picture copyright - Charlie Drew, 2001

This is probably a xanthic form bred from the red/orange strain. I wonder where it went.

[penumbra]

I have mixed feeling with regard to cross-breeding. I had always admired the dedication of conservist in the modern world where the value of money surpass the value of moral. They are however also the bloackage for progress and development.

Hybrids were pretty common these days. Even if you guys managed to convert the 'lost' today and bagged an uncountable number of success story in conserving. I could foresee the killifish becoming just like the discus.

I agree that research should be done but definitely not through any trial and error by the curious. Could you GM (gene modified) these fish to become more hardy (temp & ph tolerance and such) without tilting the balance of their natural habitat eco-system? Simply put, leave it to the qualified.

You guys should get a grant or something. The cause are noble and I salute you. By the way, I am sad to hear that I am not young anymore.

I bet the young guys here don't even know that the original Zebra Danoi and Black Tetra do not come with long fins but these are what you find in the fish shop these days.

[stormhawk]

Actually, there's no need to modify their genes in the first place.

Some fish adapt to a new environment much better than we humans can. Sometimes we give less credit to the fish than they're due for.

Getting a grant needs alot of reasoning behind it. Its not possible to ask for outside sponsorship since most killifish, with the exception of Aplocheilus panchax, are not native to Singapore.

Young as I am I still know the looks of the original types of the zebra danio and black skirt tetra, aka Brachydanio rerio and Gymnocorymbus ternetzi respectively. They were among the first fish I had but not exactly the most popular in my list.

I do have a long-finned danio at home but that fella is a tankmate for my brother's tortoise. Probably going to be sushi for the tortoise anyway.