FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Ok ok, so we all know selective breeding is mating to things together with certain traits to "aim" for the best possible young, but.. can this be done with fish for size? I know its been done for things like guppy color and what know, and for making seedless fruit.. but size? and have it being fully healthy? Any thoughts? Are "dwarf" platies truly dwarf? OR juss cute babies?

And are all inbreeding fish gonna be bad or is there any possitive result?

Thanks all ^^

certainly i dont believe in dwarf platies, and the only thing i can possibly think of is stunted platies. But again it isnt from genetics, it is due to lack of room to grow.

So i dont believe in dwarf platies.

Now,

selective breeding can be done for sized fishes, look at bettas for a minute. Gaint bettas are bettas that have been bred for size by mixing two bettas with gaint geno. Some gaint bettas have been reported to be around 5-6 inches without the fins. Whereas common bettas are lucky to pass 3 inches.

Inbred fish i believe is generally safe. To a degree.

Also of auctions will sell sibling pairs and im guessing that it is fine to breed them. im not all that sure about inbreeding.

But what about breeding those "dwarf" platies in a big tank, starting with ADULT fish who are jsut a bit smaller, and keep going from there, can't you end up with a breeed on naturally small or "dwarf" palties? Like repeating the geno for size, small over and over again.

chris u da man

You can breed anything for size but it always suffers health issues. It's very hard to get a dwarf or giant that is 100% healthy. In mammals this often shows up as skeletal problems such as easily broken legs or bad joints. I don't have as much experience with it in fish but it seems organs and respiratory function are frequently affected. I don't think I can name a fish species with a selective bred body shape that is even as healthy(much less healthier) than the original wild version. Breeding for health should be your first concern. Specific colors and body type or size should always come 2nd if it's taken into consideration at all. I purposely avoid all fish that are bred for a specific size or shape and often even specific colors due to their poorer health and unnatural look.

Im having an "I agree with sham " day

Hes right, as long as there is some propensity in the genes you can make fish pretty much any size and colour, but untested for efficiency and longevity, such sports ends up sick, weedy, organ failures etc abound. A lot of us wish professionals would stop doing it, let alone newbies start doing it.

A dwarf platy is completely possibly, but in the long run , before encouraging such development you have to look at why youre doing it, and if any desire for fish shape or colour you have is worth the potential weakness, sickness and suffering such ideals can put onto a whole race of fish. Its just not worth it, and the people who do it on average dont give a fart about fish.

ive seen a few people who breed celestials and pearlscales etc, at the odd show, and looking once at a whole gathering of them, it struck me immediately how emotionally deficient most of them were. The fish had become objects and not living things to them. Poor end of the human race in my opinion.

A little colour is one thing, and even that has cancer risks, but changing a fish's morphology and physical build leads only to health complications, some truly painful, disfiguring and damaging to the health of a species as a whole. Some of these traits you just dont want at a high strength in any genepool. Never seen a selective breeder do any good, its just faffing about for vanity. Governments are coming to realise this with increasing clarity, and many countries are considering curbing the worst excesses of the selective breeder by banning certain strains, like pearlscales, celestials, and balloon fish.

More power to em. Id love to see it stopped. I mean seriously look at the thousands of species of fish, in just about every colour and pattern you could ever desire, all of which are fit and strong. When does it become logical to look at a fish and think " hmmm, id really like to see that fish in say, black, and it doesnt matter that i'll give it cancer by doing that." Especially when theres a naturally evolved,, black species in perfect health in the tank right next to it?

Humans can be very short-sighted, and really dont care as long as its not them sufferring. Fault of the race i'm afraid.

I might seem extreme in this view to some, but then when you really look at it, am I extreme, or just really clear?After all, whats the bloody point?

One person thinks its cool to have a platy with a mickey mouse ears pattern on its butt, and then theres me looking at the same fish thinking " ...That really is very crap, and likely to affect its health, what utter nitwit thought that would be a good idea?". Then theres breeders who have to make everything albino, which is quite possibly the most boring and passe thing to do to an animal ever. I have never seen an albino fish where the normal version wasnt ten times prettier. More expensive? They should be giving em away as feeders, right alongside the balloon variants of anything. Every time I see one of those I know im looking at a partially handicapped fish. Gives me no joy whatsoever. Theres just no need for it.
...and people are always so enthusiastic about them too ie: "Look at this just GREAT balloon molly ive bought". Damn thing looks like a fat bloke having a heart attack while running on a treadmill every time it swims. I'd be ashamed to own one! Then a year or a few months later they come back "its not very well". Suprise , suprise.

Hey, its an opinion

Jesus git Hold your horses... whats wrong with breeding for color? Color will most likely not effect the organs and well being of a fish, where as a complete metamorphasis(sp) on body shape, whcih will then effect organs the heart and muscle mass and shape, but i dont understand how color, like in the "mickey mouse" platy will change? Arent sunset, mickey mouse, and green palties all in the same health most of the time?

Alot of fish(and other animals) bred for certain colors and in particular diluted colors have health issues. At best weaker immune systems. Certain colors genes can also cause what are called lethals. Animals that die of serious health complications such as improper function of the intestines due to recieving 2 of a particular color gene. A color gene is not completely isolated. It can have an effect on health and some color genes only come paired with other genes. The simplest being sex linked traits where only males or only females can recieve a certain color. More complicated these gene connections can lead to physical issues.

Actually there's a study out there somewhere(lost my copy) done on gerbils that found certain colors affected the amount of certain chemicals found in the brain. This challenges the thinking that color has no impact on personality or health of the animal since it did slightly altered brain function. However in mammals at least this slight impact was found to be far less than environmental conditions and other genetics so overall color was still found to be unimportant when choosing a gerbil for a pet. It does show though that color cannot completely be ruled out when dealing with genetic health and disposition of an animal.

Lastly you have to take into account when people breed for color they tend to ignore health or at least place it below their desire for a specific color. That leads to a weaker strain of animals just due to poor selective breeding practices. Which is why I said to put health of the animal first and color or body type at least 2nd. Most people fail to do that and we have all sorts of animals with certain color strains that are weaker than others from the simple problem of purposely not culling weaker animals from breeding programs in order to preserve a certain color gene.

lol ham, its a shocker aint it?

In particular when you mess with colour you mess with the way melanin pigments are put down. In a fish that naturally has no red or black pigment occuring with intensity, when that tendancy is enhanced cancer risk goes up in that tissue, often to the tune of increading cancer risk over two years to over 400 times the normal. Assuming dalmation mollies and sunset platys dont die of other disease complications before the age of three, cancer becomes the primary cause of death over organ failure, which compared to the natural cancer rate in wild fish is horrendous, being that wild fish usually die of cancer in less than one percent of specimens. Add to that the melanin is radically increased near the caudal peduncle which is a major area of accelerated cellular regrowth, and that again increases the chances of errors in cellular reproduction, basically cancer again. Starts off as small granulomas and them goes systemic and malignant. Cancer does actually depend on colour pigments in fish. Reds and blacks are more likely to produce cancer cells than any other.


Now showing at a fish shop near you .

... *cancels plan for breeding new cool platies* this is indeed a shocker! but arent nearly 100% of fish in trade been selectively bred? the only animals i can think if are color-less inverts and mosquito fish.. both have no color... Thanks for the thoughts and replys guys, its nice to have a place where INTELLIGENT people can answer questions ^^ thanks again guys

Wild fish don't lack color. Many of the fish sold in stores are the original wild color. You could spend a lifetime just trying to keep and successfully breed all the naturally colorful fish that exist. Which is why some people are rather against breeding color morphs and other mutations. For example nearly all tetras are their original wild color, blue rams, and a fish I recently linked to because of it's impressive color: http://www.tjorvar.is/html/licorice_gourami.html. Those colors are found naturally and not specifically bred. Although people will tend to breed more colorful specimens oftentimes the most brightly colored end up being the original wild caught fish.

Livebearers are more of an exception and most of the livebearers are so tankbred they probably lack many of the original wild genes. In the process though people have bred hardy versions by proper selective breeding and more sensitive versions by only selecting for color. Even amongst the same color you can find a huge difference depending on the breeder they came from. Not all colors impact health in a noticeably bad way either. It's just you can't always(or even frequently) tell what new colors are going to do. Then when you do have a new color or have succeeded in refining an existing color you need to make sure you still breed for health. Otherwise even if the color doesn't impact the fish badly the health will still be weak.

You will find many cases where different people have very differing opinion on the hardiness of certain tankbred fish because people have been either successfully practicing selective breeding or doing it poorly for so long that you have very different strains. Neon tetras for example are sometimes said to be weak due to poor breeding practices but you'll also come across the person who thinks neons are the hardiest thing alive because they happened to get a good strain from a good breeder.

Indeed . I have over 300 fish, and all but eight are wild colour. But then I have a lot of colourful fish, cichlids of many types , rainbows, tetras, even the catfish you couldnt call colourful are usually detailed in their patternation and in their own way more exquisite than any bright orange fish. Its a bit like art appreciation , sculpture or anything else, there are fish that appeal to people with different complexities of aesthetic appreciation, and in my opinion nature has the more skilled hand than any selective breeder. Theres something about the intrinsic longevity of an aesthetic produced by nature that makes most selectively bred efforts look amateurish, clumsy, even foolish. Thats why brightly coloured fish appeal to kids, which is a shame in a way, becuuse the kids will go for the fish that is probably the least healthy as a consequence. Its about instant impact, and that always sells to kids, just as when a lungfish or catfish in a zoo gets ignored by a hundred screaming kids running past because they want to go and see the showy fish. Wait for that little quiet kid who stops and watches mesmerised by the intricacy, sees more than the colour, sees the form, the personality, and the mood of and about the fish. Theyre the ones who makes the best fishkeepers.

Its all in the appreciation, and often appreciation comes with respect.

Very well written git, and 300 fish? O_O And sham i didnt know that about livebeares, and that licorice gourami is spectacular! ive never seen on in rl!

I am not a big fan of harming any animal just so we can have a "groovier shaped/colored/looking" fish that will sell well. One of the LFS I frequent (as infrequntly as possible) has dyed (different from breeding, but just as deplorable) mollies. They are white fish, with colored dots,s tripes and hearts on them. It ticks me off. So, I only buy there when I have scoured all other options....

Those type of thoughtless acts make me sick. That includes runing the health of a species for a special bred trait. I believe we ought to breed for health first, last and always. Groovy has no place in breeding unless is can be achieved after health.

danm straight scott and ummm.. groovier?

A "fake fish" that makes me sick is the GloFish AKA The Zebra Daino that got-dipped-in-vairious-colors-of-highlighter-ink. I don't know wether i want to feel sorry for the fish or strangle the person who thought of that. or both


~Morgan~

I don't see a big problem with glofish. I'll probably never have a desire to keep them but they are not dipped, dyed, or repeatedly tortured. They put a flourescent gene from marine critters into fish eggs. It is now passed down when they are bred so they never have to do it again. To get more glofish you breed them together just like with regular danios. Current glofish do not seem to suffer any bad effects. I suppose it just depends on whether your against doing any such research on fish but the glofish do not constantly suffer for color like dyed fish. They can live a normal life.

i know they aren't dipped or dyed (just what they look like), i just don't like that they had to mess with the fish, even if it doesn't hurt it, and couldnt let it be a normal daino.
I guess the point im trying to make is, i dont see why they had to change a perfectly nice fish like a daino, and change its color to Pink to make it more appealing to people. Changing the color (to me) just makes it all a money deal with the fish...


~Morgan~

The glofish is neither dipped nor dyed. It is a genetic manipulation that places the cDNA for a fluorescent protein isolated from jellyfish under the control of a genetic element (layterm) that is expressed in the dermis of the fish (and maybe somewhere else as well). The fish are perfectly fine, healthy, etc. Fluorescent dyes are used for genetic studies to track the expression of a gene of interest within an organsm (in a nutshell), no harm to the animals involved here.
It is a matter of taste if you want this fish. The zebra danio is one of the animal models that is used for genetic studies (others are mice, fruitflies, worms, etc)

Actually they made it pink to show off pollution and for scientific study. It got sold for tanks 2nd and some of the profit made on them still goes back into the research. So they aren't even colored just to appeal to buyers. It had a purpose.

all im saying is that i wouldnt buy the fish myself. thats it.


~Morgan~