Strip or not ?

My Victoria cichlid is holding once again
Last time the fry went missing nearly straight away after being born
I don't know if she was holding many but my question is should I let nature take its way or should I I strip her
Just incase the fry get eating again. I am terrible with names but here is a photo.

I just let my cichlids spit and let nature take its course...if they survive, well and good. If not, at least I haven't put the mother through a lot of undue stress.
For me, stripping the fish is cruel, but that's just my opinion !

paddyc1 wrote:

I just let my cichlids spit and let nature take its course...if they survive, well and good. If not, at least I haven't put the mother through a lot of undue stress.
For me, stripping the fish is cruel, but that's just my opinion !

I am like you I like for nature to take course I never had fry from this cichlid
and I love to get some I know they breed like rabbits so I know I get them at some stage.

I would also say that stripping seems to cause the offspring to lose their parental instincts - so that within a couple of generations, your fish are crap parents.

They'll learn themselves as parents and you'll get enough fry without handstripping . . .

Jim wrote:

I would also say that stripping seems to cause the offspring to lose their parental instincts - so that within a couple of generations, your fish are crap parents.

They'll learn themselves as parents and you'll get enough fry without handstripping . . .

I have more work to do on my setup and I need to add more females to pair up with my males
I got a really nice f1 Haplochromis sp.44 male so if I could get two adult females I be very happy

Chances are, you'll find something stressed her and that's why the fry didn't survive....
With that in mind, maybe segregation might be an option next time.... let her do what she will this time! Don't move her atm, don't change her surroundings too much either!
Move slowly around her tank and just be gentle

sp44 are a really beautiful fish - 2 females is about right - the male can be pretty hard on them.

Good luck with the project - I might be interested in some offspring when you have them breeding!!

Jim wrote:

sp44 are a really beautiful fish - 2 females is about right - the male can be pretty hard on them.

Good luck with the project - I might be interested in some offspring when you have them breeding!!

the vict are really nice colour and something different
I seen one great fight two males fighting over territory
it was like looking at two cross dogs with there mouth open wide
My main aim is to breed cichlids that people don't have and ones that everyone will want
lol easier said than done when you are on a very tight budget and another baby on the way.

You increase your chance of more fry surviving if you strip her but if you do this to early when egg yolk still attached you will need an incubator or tumbler which can be made quite easily, otherwise they will die. Check out vids on you tube on how to make one & best way to strip her. Gravel cleaner tube, mesh & air pump is all you need. It does have it's advantages also because the female doesn't loose as much weight & recovers quicker, if you have her separated she can regain her position without to much grief. I used to leave the female in a small tank on her own & let her release them herself but she would eat about half of them herself before i could take her out as they where usually released during the night.

Don't strip.

ian

It's down to personal choice really what you do with the fish under the circumstances. As this is meant to be a site promoting knowledge from experience & letting some one make up their own mind instead of making abrupt comments like 'don't strip' without any explanation is quite ignorant in my opinion.

Stripped a few fish before and I didn't like doing it anymore than the female enjoyed me doing it

Try getting a piece of clear perplex drill a few a few holes for circulation and divide one of your tanks into two sections. Few rocks or fake plants in the females side and happy days let her spit.

All the best
Stan

We do not need the hard work of people who attempt to breed high quality lines of fish undermined by yet another method to needlessly perpetuate an unatural selection of alleles that will ultimately tend towards producing deleterious phenotypic lines.

There is no conservatory need to strip eggs/fry from these fish.....and even that would be as a very last resort.

There are no benefits from stripping....it only has negatives: why support unnecessary negative acts (OK....so some may feel free to recommend negative acts against fish)

Are people suggesting that deleterious phenotype expressions is what we want in the hobby?
Surely we want to get away from crap.....stripping is supporting a tendency towards crap.

ian

she is now holding so 3rd time lucky I have a tank divided in two
hopefully she feel more comfortable this time and I will get some fry.
Has anyone a small tank for sale I like something that fit tidy on a counter top
maybe 40 to 50 L

Not for Sale, But I have a 60l you can Borrow

igmillichip wrote:

We do not need the hard work of people who attempt to breed high quality lines of fish undermined by yet another method to needlessly perpetuate an unatural selection of alleles that will ultimately tend towards producing deleterious phenotypic lines.

There is no conservatory need to strip eggs/fry from these fish.....and even that would be as a very last resort.

There are no benefits from stripping....it only has negatives: why support unnecessary negative acts (OK....so some may feel free to recommend negative acts against fish)

Are people suggesting that deleterious phenotype expressions is what we want in the hobby?
Surely we want to get away from crap.....stripping is supporting a tendency towards crap.

ian

Hi Ian. Can you explain more please? Why would stripping result in deleterious phenotypic expressions? Maybe I've totally misunderstood the whole concept - is it removing the young from their mother? If this is the case, genetically the fry, stripped or not from the parent, will be the same. In this instance then it is only environmental elements that will affect phenotypic expression of such fry. If my understanding is correct, you put much more more weight in nurture rather than nature? Are you therefore suggesting that the stripped fry are genetically disadvantaged compared to non stripped fish due to the absence of parent with the phenotypes of such fish being sub optimal as a result? Stripping will not influence allelic variance within a sub population or at least the presence of certain genotypes. It may influence gene expression but I don't see why this would be the case.

Forgive me if I've picked you up incorrectly but this doesn't make any sense to me.....cheers. Brian

It is not that stripping will "result", but would skew the "tendency towards".
(See my posts on in-breeding and line-breeding regarding an increased tendency towards an outcome as opposed to resulting in an outcome.)

Inheritence of traits is not as simple as that taught using a Punnet square as we know.
Self genes, non-biological environment and genes in other species work on the inheritence or expression of alleles.

In this particular case, it is not just selecting young from a parent who may have a pre-disposition for poor young care (that being possibly inheritable) but the fact of weakening a weaning system of young animals (not to mention any stress placed on the parent). Stripping fry simply breaks the natural development/weaning period of the young.

As far as I know there have been no study on heritability of egg holding in all species of rift cichlid (I certainly have not covered all species anyway in my works), let alone the expressivity or penetrance of such traits (if genetic).
If the mother is poor parent by virtue of alleles, then by selecting young from such a mother will increase the size of that gene pool and decrease the variability within the overall gene pool. It is not just the immediate generation we are concerned with, but future generations.
Given that there would be questions around the % heritability, the nurture factor will donate experience to the fry to carry forward.
There is also non-nurture ontogenic processes that are dependant upon the environment.

We know from animals that have had a tremdous amount of study on the ontogenic development that non-genetic environments can a have profound influence on transient and lasting traits being expressed in individuals.
In, say, lambs: the development of the gut (or weaning) is not time dependant but dependant upon the environmental supply of food (ie when and what food is supplied to the lamb). We similar things in humans (both after birth and pe-birth) whereby the supply of certain foods either drives or halts a certain developmental ontogeny.
Interfering with the natural timing of these changes in environment can have lasting effects that can compromise the strength of the individual (or even the life-expectancy).

When I first starting getting and breeding rift valley cichlids from the lakes, very people were keeping them let alone breeding them. I was once a key supplier of captive bred rift cichlids to the trade in the Midlands in the 70s.....and made good money as a youngster
I cannot, though, remember which species was the first I stripped in the 70s but I do remember clearly stripping Tropheus as few people had them and the price was very high (ie a "good one" for breeding).
The lines I kept for many years from the stripped fish simply got duffer and duffer; whereas the ones kept from allowing "natural" (as far as a fish tank can be) selection from the original wild parents were still good right into the 80s and 90s.

We see the rift cichlids in general (as seen in shops) going down hill over the years.
Apart from rift valley cichlids I bred mysefl, I have only ever kept wild caught ones.......so many I am at a big disadvantage in that I have seen the true fish and know what to compare offspring against (if I had only known the low quality muts I so often see today then I would probably be happy with them muts).
Call that cynical or not.....but that is the way it is.

ps. on this I originally only wanted to answer (Yes vs No) the thread question and not to go into too much detail on ontogeny.
My advice on this will always be "do not strip" (unless there is a veterinarian reason to save the parent's life).

ian

I for one am very glad you did go into this detail!
Very informative Thank You

You mentioned an article you did in the past on breeding where can I find this?

Very very informative. A nice read, thanks ian

I wouldn't strip either for many reasons already stated above. I am a firm believer that if the female (or in some cases male) doesn't have the natural instinct to care for their fry then they shouldn't be bred. We may need to try in a few different environments to find this out but if we continue to needlessly strip then we won't know what we are actually breeding. When you think about it, our actions and decisions as breeders determine the quality of fish in the future of the hobby, I know thats true only to an extent but with that in mind we will only try do what we feel to be right.
Just my 2cents folks

@Redster..... I did a talk on line-breeding Siamese fighters about 15 months ago at the ITFS and went into detail on that there.
I think I only posted the slides from my talk on this forum as opposed to any text.

But there have been a number of posts where in-breeding or line-breeding is discussed as being a cause of poor quality fish. My opinion on that is that in-breeding or line-breeding does not cause poor quality fish but that poor control and not taking note of genetic problems can increase the chance of in-bred problems.

Good quality and well controlled line-breeding can actually be used to breed out poor genetics and select some nice traits (but it is hard work).

ian