Food for Thought

I think manufactured fish are a bad thing for the hobby, we should be looking at improving existing species instead of messing with "crosses x hybrids" I was looking at a site recently with a Redtail Catfish crossed with a Tiger Shovelnose. Both beautiful fish in their own right ..so why cross them?

i'm not a fan of rams unless they are absolute crackers...
i think in most cases hybrids and crossbreeding are are a very irrisponsible thing to be doing with very little regard for the hobby, members of the hobby and fish themselves!!... this is why wild caught are best, because of reckless breeding and inbreeding!!

Ovine short-finned Angel-fish.......wow! One of my favourites.

It's amazing how nature has come up with such lovely cutie fish.....they almost look man-made.

i think it's important to remember in discussions like these that unless your fish come directly from the wild (which entails other ethical issues as well), no fish in the hobby is NOT man-made and therefore none are truly natural. the only real question is, how unnatural are we happy with allowing those fish to be? a question that is right up there with how "how long is a piece of string?" for clarity.

I agree with LemonJelly on this one. I don't think there is a black or White answer to this topic.

Everyone has their personal limit of what is acceptable, I am myself am not a fan of either hybrids or situations where fish are physicly impared/suffering by/from mutations such as balloon versions. It is of course a matter for discussion what physicly impared means, another grey area. I keep some albino versions of fish, I am sure it can be argued that these are suffering from sensitivity to light for instance.

I do believe that there is a place for massproduced fish as I do not think it would be possible to exchange every goldfish/fancy guppy/koi/fancy betta etc. with their wild counterparts and if so would not the wild populations take a big hit?

Even dedicated hobbyists will probably produce fish defecting from wild "normality". When choosing among wild fish as breeding stock, are we not looking for certain traits such as colour, finnage, aggression etc., how can we be sure that these are the traits that will be most successful reproducing in the wild and reflect the wild population?

At the end of the day it is up to us as fishkeepers, if we stop buying hybrids and balloon versions so will the production of these fish.


My 20 cent,

Melander

A number of the fish that we have had for many many years are totally man-made.....goldfish, siamese fighters, guppy strains being the key examples of that.

There is a recent history and a past history to fish keeping; I wonder if our future of fish keeping should be going down too far a road that the very distant history left us.

For the past 40 years I've been working on developing strains of siamese fighter.....so I am guilty of "doing God's work" (whatever that is).

However, I have always believe there is a limit when selecting mutants or hybridising fish that I do not believe I should cross.

If I had started keeping siamese fighters when only wild were available, then I doubt I would have hybridised the species.

In the case of the Ram above, that would be a line that I would not go into if I had a spawning with that mutation.

Going back to our list of goldfish, guppies and siamese fighters, those fish have been a key pivot in fish keeping history.
If we took the wild versions then they are either very bland or would have difficulty surviving in most conditions offered to them (wild Bettas can be no fun to acclimatise).

When looking at the 'ethics' behind different mutants, there are differences. Goldfish (fancy), siamese fighters and guppies have become part of serious groups dedicated to them.

But, I feel that balloon mollies, the new parrot cichlid (not the proper original parrot cichlids) and the Ram above have more of a consumer novelty appeal than say a ranchu or veiltail goldfish that simply says "temporary disposable fish" written across it.
I didn't ask what the price was on these Rams; I am still taken back by the high prices we have seen on fish like 'parrot cichlids'......yet another indication of a disposable novelty aimed at a temporary market.

I actually saw these Rams in the flesh, and they look very cute. They also looked, surprisingly, in better health than many of the other crap Rams you see around.
But.....not my cuppa tea

ian

i think manufactured fish are fine, as long as they stay in the home aquarium and not reintroduced to the wild.

I have an absolute abhorrence of 'manufactured fish', and I know that the common goldfish was 'manufactured' back in the day, when people didn't know any better, we can't change the past, but in the long run, we have to respect 'Mother Nature', she's being doing it a lot a longer than us!!!

its a case of one mans meat is another mans poison, yes i detest man made fish such as parrotfish (not the true kind) and these balloon mollies etc, but still i can enjoy other man made strains such as guppies.. note i said strains to me breeding fish to a specific colour strain is not as mortal a sin as mutating them to these ballon shapes for example, i must say i dislike longfin varieties of fish such as plecos danios etc where to me the fins have been bred to obscene lengths but some people love them and on the odd occassion i can see why but i still wouldnt buy them.

i also strongly object to people who deliberately cross breed species such as texas cichlids with other ca cichlids, why do this.... really.... ok if people accicentally cross species such as 2 species of lets say apistos that they have in a biotope well it may happen in the wild unlikely as it is as they have plenty of their own species to mate with but it can happen, this i mind less as it is accidental but please dont sell on the fish to others it could ruin a specific species of fish if true breeders got their hands on crossed fry which may show only the dominant genes.

I really try to get only true fish preferably wild or f1 to breed them, and anyway i think the wild or close to wild species are much nicer even if less colourful than their line bred counterparts, but i sometimes buy those too

well thats my 2 cents although with the current climate its probably only worth 0.05cent
Seamus