sibling bettas

[tony92]

ive noticed alot of breeders sell pairs of bettas, but they sell a sibling (spawn sister) with them. is it ok to breed them together?

 

[clover]

yes its fine to breed them together

 

[shrks1fan]

You can breed siblings several generations deep without serious problems (if the line was healthy to begin with), but after a few generations you really want to bring in new blood or at least cross lines or you will start to run into serious problems. I have found though that breeding siblings, the fry grow much slower and don't get as large usually, so for this reason I am no longer breeding siblings unless I have a REAL good reason. By breeding siblings, it allows you to really work on bringing out a trait of that line, which is why it is done so much. But there are pro's and con's to it.

Linda

 

[tekknocolor]

I would have to agree with Linda. One main difference between humans and fish are the amount of fry/babies they produce. If there is a disorder that runs through the line, it may not be prevalent in all of the fry - thus allowing you to pick and choose which would be alright to spawn. Unfortunately inbreeding might also result in the propagation of harmful or less desirable recessive alleles. Inbreeding is often done to single out specific traits or characteristics that you may want in your line. There is an alternative to inbreeding called line breeding.

 

[Texaswoman]

Not only do you really breed in the traits you want if you linebreed/inbreed, but you also really set in the bad ones too. Definately don't breed 2 bettas that have the same fault that you don't want. You will never get rid of it. Also, crossing 2 bettas with different backgrounds could crop up alot of new problems unseen in the pair or new genetics not observed as well. There is a much bigger gene pool when spawning a pair of unrelated bettas. Line breeding is good, but you don't do as heavy inbreeding all the time such as brother/sister crosses or mom/son or dad/daughter. These are the most inbreed crosses. You can do this okay, but not every time all the time. Relatives are good to cross which is basically line breeding. My grandmother went around the world doing seminars on creating a bloodline which explains linebreeding in detail. She is a world famous dog breeder, but the theory applies to all animals and breeding them.