Breeding With Relative Fish?

[kaylawuzhere]

Can fish breed with parents/brothers/sister without have "deformed" or sick fry?

 

[OldMan47]

Mine do it all the time. The problem that happens with inbreeding is that the occasional negative gene gets reinforced and cause an offspring that is deformed or in some way has a health problem. The important thing is how you deal with it. If you remove the defective fish so that it cannot breed, you have actually removed that gene from the gene pool to a slight degree. If you always cull any defective genes, the offspring become better with each generation.
Now let's look at what happens when people breed with others that are too close. The defectives produced are not culled. Many of us are too soft hearted to remove their ability to breed further. What that means is we almost encourage the gene pool to become degraded. As I said in the very first part, what is important is how you deal with that defective. The royal families of Europe have provided us ample examples of what happens when defectives are encouraged to breed.
Back to fish specifically now. As long as you cull any defectives, allowing parents to breed with their offspring or brothers and sisters to breed is the fastest way to develop any new trait that we find desirable. If you cannot do the culling, it would be best to avoid any such breeding.

 

[sgreen]

personally i am against culling anything. if you seem to get "defective" offspring you could give them to someone who doest intend to breed them.

 

[BettaCrazy7]

personally i am against culling anything. if you seem to get "defective" offspring you could give them to someone who doest intend to breed them.

Culling doesn't always mean killing the defective fish. It's simply just not allowing the fish to produce offspring.

 

[OldMan47]

Culling is culling sgreen. Whether you do it by killing the defective fish, by isolating into all male and all female populations or by selling all the males or all the females to someone who will not allow breeding. The end result is the same. The genes do not get passed along.

 

[heygetsmart]

I am in school intending to become a biotechnician, we deal with genetics to a degree. Oldman47 proves a very very valid point.. Remove the bad, to prevent the bad, or prevent the bad from becoming worse. Cleansing the gene pool as Sir Charles Darwin states. Also with culling, think of it as survival of the fittest, you wouldn't want a weak male to breed with a weak female, take into consideration congenial birth defects that may not be visual in said specimen at the time.. but is creeping its way through the specimen's body(internal organs). I've recently realized that when I had one of my friends give me some of his guppy fry. All of them came from the same parents, bred with eachother.. And in the long run no defects pertaining to appearance but what had happened was that they were very weak. I only have 1 adult guppy and a few fry out of the 60+ fry/adults he gave me.

 

[fish48]

[/quote]i breed all my fish with parents/brothers/sister with no problems.
it is so easy to blame it on genetics when most of the problems are just down to the fish keeper not under standing the conditions and requirements
that there fish needs.

 

[heygetsmart]

I know first hand that genetics is a factor to throwing a GOOD/viable/healthy spawn. The principles of genetics are the same in all living organisms whether it be vegetables, humans or even fish. You CAN breed out a bad gene to a degree as oldman47 mentioned, but you can never completely breed them until they are a new strain and the genetic code transforms(completely). My family has been breeding guppies and bettas for over 21 years so we can tell the difference between the good and the bad.. Meaning we can tell when culling is needed. Too much inbreeding can cause spinal defects, and weakened organ function. Two very undesirable traits. And with the matter of the "fish breeder" not properly caring for the fish themselves- That may have a very minimal varying effect on the fish... but not enough so to cause such major problems as susceptibility to diseases, physical mutations, and weakened organs. So... Yes.. Technically you can breed them with eachother- but they could carry a recessive gene that may cause genetic mutations. It is very risky but I know a few of the best guppy breeders that have bred out a negative recessive trait in their guppies to produce TRUE offspring, that will reproduce with eachother. But if you aren't okay with culling, i say buy a livebearer or two to add some variety in your strain and everything will be A.O.K.