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Yesterday I stocked my tank with f-1s from a breeder in my area. I purchased 2 species, metriaclima estherae and metriaclima hajomaylandi. With these two species am I running the risk of crossbreeding, and if so how could I manipulate them from doing this? I am planning to add Yellow labs also. All of the fish are fairly young, only about an Inch.

In my opinion, whenever you mix like genuses of Mbuna in the tank, there is a risk of crossbreeding. I've had m.callainos and estherea crossbreed in a tank even though both species had a mix of males and females. I've even heard of Mbunas from different genuses crossbreed. I've known of a labeotropheus fuelleborni crossbreeding with pseudotropheus socolofi; but that was in a relatively small tank with a total of 5 fish. So, it is kind of a crap shoot. If given the chance, a dominant male will breed with available female stock, first with his own species, but he'll take what he can get. Though there is no guarantee, the best thing is to have different genuses, and pick species within different genuses that have differing coloration or patterns. ie. yellow and blues, stripes and solids, etc.

May I ask why you are worried about crossbreeding ? Is it because you don't want to have sterile fish on your hands ?

Just curious.

Sponge

Crossbreeding fish will give you bad stock, usually unhealthy or disorientated fish, and a hybrid. It's also harder to market crossbred fry.

I am worried about crossbreeding for the previously stated reasons. I purchased f1 fish with hopes of breeding quality fish for my LFS, where I happen to work. I do not want to provide my work with low quality hybrids which will generally weaken the strains as a whole. As people buy these hybrids and breed them this trend will continue which is damaging to the species. If the dominant male will breed with every willing female perhaps I could focus on this species only and leave any other pregnant females to give brith and let the fry attempt to survive on their own the natural way...kind of harsh but perhaps necessary. I would then strip only the females of the same species of the dominant male and raise these fry for sale to my work.

Any fry produced by these two fish wouldnt be sterile.
Good on you leetomlin14 for asking the question.
I wouldnt mix these two together because there is a chance of cross breeding. You might be able to keep them together and not have them breed together, but at the end of the day you will never know.

I look at it this way. If I was buying a Porsche, I wouldn't want a VW engine pushing it. The customer should be reasonably certain that the fish he's buying are what the store is claiming them to be. That's my main problem with hybrids.

BTW, I'd bet money that those two together will produce hybrid fry. Too closely related.

poor hybrids