Hybrids

[Guyb93]

Ok I know hybrids are frowned upon by purists in the hobby but it’s a thing and has been done for years with other animals like dogs for example the cockapoo a cocker spaniel and poodle mix , it’s just accepted as a breed of dog now
So could hybrid fish be a good thing for the hobby is some respects , today I watched a YouTube video on green terror hybrids mixed with electric blue acara, at the size in the video they look like green terror but smaller , guessing because of the eba , question is could breeding fish like this together replace one of the originals , say you want a green terror but don’t want to risk the aggression or tank is a little too small .... introduce the hybrid , after a few selective breeds you could re create the green terror to be smaller say 7-8 inches and less aggressive but keep i stunning looks , I know many would say nope it’s not a real fish don’t want one but in reality it would be far more keepable than the original

 

[Essjay]

Cockerpoos are not hybrids as cocker spaniels and poodles are the same species. They are cross breeds. It's like breeding a red guppy with a yellow guppy or a gold ram with an electric blue ram.

Mules are hybrids, the offspring of a male donkey and female horse - two different species. This is the same as breeding different species of fish.

There are already several hybrid fish in the hobby

A list of Commonly seen Hybrids in your LFS

Common Blood Parrot. As for these fish being Hybrids the real truth about how these fish are made is still not known. Alot of people still like to belive that they a cross breed between a Red Devil and a Green Severum but yet this is a myth and there is nothing to support it, you can see for...

www.fishforums.net

But you will notice that the description of the Hybrid forum cautions members against 'flaming and bashing' of members who keep hybrid fish - many people regard hybrid fish as wrong.

 

[Uberhoust]

This discussion would be ideal for the controversial ideas thread. There are three major ways of changing or guiding an organism to have characteristics you want:

1. Selective breeding - selecting individuals that have the characteristics you want to use as the parents in following generations. The selection is from variation in a single species. Electric Blue Rams rams would fall into this category.
2. Hybridization - Taking two species, or other hybrids, that are close to each other genetically and breeding them together. The offspring may or may not be able to reproduce. There is a cichlid that falls into this group, the Flowerhorn, which I believe can reproduce, another example is a mule, which is sterile.
3. Genetic manipulation - Directly altering the genetic makeup of the organism. This is how the current Glow Fish are being created, by splicing in genes from jellyfish. There is no way these creatures could develop without human intervention.

The list might not be complete but the further down the list you go the more you will find purists don't like what is happening. The biggest concern for most people are what happens if the organism gets into the natural environment. The other concern is what does the change do to the organism, ie does it suffer because of the change.

As long as we are careful not to release our charges into the environment, ie. let them go, then a lot of the argument about creating them is mute. That said people do release their creatures into the environment, just the other day I found an article about dwarf shrimp in the Rhine, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0075951118300288. I think release of any miss-placed organism into the natural environment would be a bigger issue.

 

[Guyb93]

Cockerpoos are not hybrids as cocker spaniels and poodles are the same species. They are cross breeds. It's like breeding a red guppy with a yellow guppy or a gold ram with an electric blue ram.

Mules are hybrids, the offspring of a male donkey and female horse - two different species. This is the same as breeding different species of fish.

There are already several hybrid fish in the hobby

A list of Commonly seen Hybrids in your LFS

Common Blood Parrot. As for these fish being Hybrids the real truth about how these fish are made is still not known. Alot of people still like to belive that they a cross breed between a Red Devil and a Green Severum but yet this is a myth and there is nothing to support it, you can see for...

www.fishforums.net

But you will notice that the description of the Hybrid forum cautions members against 'flaming and bashing' of members who keep hybrid fish - many people regard hybrid fish as wrong.

Ok poor example with the cockapoo but grizzly and polar bear have hybrid off spring tht are fertile and naturally occur , could hybrids not just become the way with the right genetical breeding and modifications

 

[Essjay]

Yes, grizzly/polar bear is a better example. They are the most closely related of all the bear species. But from what I can gather, all the hybrid bears found so far have been the offpring of 1 female polar bear and 2 different male grizzlies; their offspring then mated with pure grizzlies.

I think what most fish keepers object to is that normally fish only breed with their own or very closely related species. They only breed with a different species when they are kept on their own with that other species. They don't hybridise in the wild, only when we give them no other option.
This is what many fish keepers object to - deliberately creating a situation which would never occur in the wild just to create a non-natural fish.

Your example about breeding non-aggressive green terrors is usually done by selectively breeding the most unaggressive male and unaggressive female and hoping that their offspring inherit the unaggressiveness from both parents. The reverse has been done with bettas. They have been deliberately bred for aggressiveness for centuries for use as fighting fish.

 

[Guyb93]

Yes, grizzly/polar bear is a better example. They are the most closely related of all the bear species. But from what I can gather, all the hybrid bears found so far have been the offpring of 1 female polar bear and 2 different male grizzlies; their offspring then mated with pure grizzlies.

I think what most fish keepers object to is that normally fish only breed with their own or very closely related species. They only breed with a different species when they are kept on their own with that other species. They don't hybridise in the wild, only when we give them no other option.
This is what many fish keepers object to - deliberately creating a situation which would never occur in the wild just to create a non-natural fish.

Your example about breeding non-aggressive green terrors is usually done by selectively breeding the most unaggressive male and unaggressive female and hoping that their offspring inherit the unaggressiveness from both parents. The reverse has been done with bettas. They have been deliberately bred for aggressiveness for centuries for use as fighting fish.

Yeah fair point selective breeding is tried and tested but can take 100s of years lol I’m a dreamer who likes to think a little Frankenstein magic could solve things , and that intresting about the bears I saw something a while back on YouTube about them and how they could possible change the grizzly species permanently if interbreeding keeps happing or genetically create a new bear had no idea that they all came from one female polar bear

 

[Essjay]

they all came from one female polar bear

That may or may not be true, it was one article I read......

(PDF) Recent Hybridization between a Polar Bear and Grizzly Bears in the Canadian Arctic

PDF | Grizzly bears have recently become more common on the Arctic Islands in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, concurrently with a period of... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

 

[Colin_T]

The polar bears and grizzly bears are only hybridising because of global warming melting the arctic ice and forcing the polar bears onto land so they have to mingle with grizzlies. And why are the ice caps melting, because of man. So the polar bear x grizzly bear is occurring because of man screwing up the environment.

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The big issue with hybrids is when they are fertile and resemble one of their parents. Then they often get mixed up with pure species and you suddenly have hybrids breeding with pure species.

This is a huge issue with rainbowfish from Australia and New Guinea because the hybrid offspring are just about always fertile. The jerks in Indonesia, China, and other places are always stuffing around trying to make new fish for the market. They crossed Melanotaenia boesemani with Glossolepis incisus to produce a fertile hybrid, which most people consider ugly. They have done it to heaps of other rainbowfish too. If you buy Australian rainbowfish that are bred in American fish farms, they are probably hybrids.

We even see hybrid rainbowfish here in Australia. Many years ago I was breeding rainbowfish and wanted some new bloodlines. I found a nice young male fish and was told it was G. incisus. It certainly looked like one and I bred it with my females and produced a heap of young that got sold. About 6 months later, the young male developed a huge anal fin. G. incisus only has a small anal fin and the fish was a hybrid between G. incisus and G. wanamensis. I then had to contact all the shops I sold fish to, and the guys in fish club, and tell them not to breed the fish they got from me because they were hybrids. I got a bad reputation from that all because some jerk decided to cross a couple of rainbows and didn't tell the store they sold the fish to.

This is why I don't like hybrids. Because people don't tell you they are hybrids and they can destroy pure bloodlines and years of work.

We have problems in Australia trying to get pure coloured Gouldian finches (and other finches and parrots) because everything sold in shops is now carrying genes for the colour mutations. The colour mutations are true species of finches or parrots but if you don't want the mutations and want the original colour forms, you can't get them. Or if you do buy "true colour forms", they regularly throw out young that are mutations. Some of the colour mutations are nice but some are just plain ugly and if you are trying to breed pure colour forms for research or photography, you can't do it anymore. This problem is made worse by the fact Gouldian finches don't show adult colouration until they are about 1 year old. So you might breed a couple of birds and have a bunch of young. You expect the young to be the same colour as their parents but 12 months later when they moult, they look nothing like their parents.

As mentioned previously in this thread, if the hybrids/ mutations get out into wild populations, it can screw up the entire species. And whilst most good pet keepers won't deliberately release things into the wild, there are plenty of other morons out there that do. And some of those morons are in charge of countries or states. Governments have released their share of non endemic species into the wild with really bad consequences and they haven't been able to rectify the problem.

Humans should not be playing God and creating new species. People are not smart enough to wield that power even though they think they are.