Why Is It The 'done Thing' To Breed Sibling Pairs?

[Curiosity101]

Now apart from the obvious point that you like the colouration and finnage of the male (or female) and therefore want to breed them to have the same offspring...

Is it just me that thinks that this is very very wrong.
Last time I checked, inbreeding of any animals was bad practice. It lowers the gene pool, giving weaker offspring, more likely for deformities to occur, etc etc.

What exactly is so wrong with finding two of similar standards and colouration from completely different breeders? Or am I missing some sort of point here...

 

[Tonym]

It cant be good it just makes weaker fish, once hardy species like neon tetras and guppys are now harder to keep due to those sort of practices, theres no point in breeding the best looking fish for it to only live for about a week IMO.

Tony

 

[Curiosity101]

Well no they will live alot longer than a week...

But my point is that so many fantastic colours are consistently bred that there is really no excuse for inbreeding.
I'd have thought most people would be able to find an equivalent AND unrelated female/male to breed their existing fish with.

Like I said though...there may be something I'm missing that the Betta breeders will be able to mention.

 

[Tonym]

I was saying that due to the inbreeding they will have problems that you wont be able to see with eye, that will shorten there lifespan like genetic problems so ive never understood the practice. Like you say there are a lot of nice and different colourations and fin types it should not be necessary.

tony

 

[21rm]

I would definitely agree that inbreeding in any species is bad practice. As ye said, its the things u can't physical see that would be affected, like their lifespan or general health.
Any defects that an individual fish suffers from, its sibling would more than likely have the same disorder, or at least carry a gene for the disorder and so the chance of passing the genes on to their young are really increased. So breeding with non-relatives produces offspring that inherit the good traits
Inbreeding in pedigree dog lines is widely done, and loads of dog breeds suffer from different disorders because of this. In the pedigree dog world the dog dogs are bred for looks, and not for their health so this side the the animals really suffers
eg, pyrennes mountain dogs have very fragile bones when young and so are v. fragile
boxers are prone to epilepsy.

Cavelier king charles spaniel were bred to be small and have a small head, but the dogs brain still remains big,. In this case, the brain gets to big for the skull, and it pushes against the insides of the skull, puttin the dog in so much of pain. There is operations for this, in which they remove a section of the skull to allow the brain to spread, but survival rates of that operation aren't great.

I no i went on a rant there bout dogs, but im just giving example of what inbreedin does.
I seen a programme bout the inbreedin in pedigree dogs, and it made me so angry that some breed are bred like this

 

[Blondie_Kate]

I think its wrong and cant see any possible attraction to it.

My friend shave pedegree dogs and i think its so poor as you can see clearly on its family history thats it inbred!

 

[stevefish21]

Hello

Can I ask how many of you have actually bred bettas and understand the terms F1, F2 etc etc....?

The reason you have such colourful bettas to chose from at your fish shop, is through the breeding of siblings and back breeding to parents etc. Yes, there are bad breeders of bettas that do not care about what betta they breed, or give little thought to the possible outcome, but there are many breeders who put a lot of effort and careful consideration into which betta to breed.
If no one was to use siblings to breed from, they would have to source a suitable replacement, but this opens up other problems. Not least, the breeder will not know the gene history of the fish and therefore will not be able to produce the desired Tailtype, colour or pattern. Careful breeders will only breed a family line to a maximum of F5, which means 5 generations, before introducing an unrelated betta.

Basically, without the breeding of siblings you wouldn't have the choice of patterns such as Butterfly and marble, nor colours like Orange and Purple, nor tailtypes like Halfmoon and Rosetail.

Just a word about dogs, as someone metioned it, not all pedigree dog breeders are this unscrupulous.

 

[Curiosity101]

Thanks for your reply Stevefish...this is exactly why I asked the question and has cleared up quite a few things.

It's not entirely true that if you didn't breed siblings you wouldn't have the choice of tail and colouration that we currently do...
But thinking about I do understand why many good breeders wouldn't want to bring in new unrelated stock more often than they have too.

 

[Tonym]

The F's have nothing to do with inbreeding, if a fish is F1 that means its the offspring of a wild pair of fishes, F2 would be the offspring from F1 and so on it has nothing to do with breeding fish which are related.

 

[xFlx]

x_X oh..I always thought F1 and F2 referred to the first generations of a certain line, with F1 being the 50/50 hybrid of two different types of parents.. didn't have to be wild. But i could be wrong...

 

[xweeqtx]

Not sure about other fish, but definitely in Bettas F1 is referred to the first spawning from one line.

i/e Red Betta Male & Red Betta Female Spawn = F1, F1 male & F1 female spawn = F2

 

[stevefish21]

xweeqtx has it right about betta breeding. F1's would be the first spawn from particular parents. F2's would be the resulting fry from a spawning of the F1's......F3's from F2's etc etc....................

The reason i mentioned about the F numbers is to show that considerate breeders will only go to F5, and thats only if they are a strong and healthy line. So F1, F2 etc, has everything to do with inbreeding.

 

[Tonym]

Ive found a article on google which explains the f numbering for hybridizing fish and also line breeding them.

http/www.ohiexchange.com/armke/hybridiza...e_breeding.html

 

[xweeqtx]

Ive found a article on google which explains the f numbering for hybridizing fish and also line breeding them.

<a href="http/www.ohiexchange.com/armke/hybridiza...e_breeding.html" target="_blank">http/www.ohiexchange.com/armke/hybridiza...e_breeding.html</a>

Yes, but you're just talking about fish in general. You don't get wild Betta splendens so therefore it's impossible to have an F0 generation that is wild. F0 for Betta splendens is the start of a line. It's a domesticated species of Betta.

 

[DreyOfAud]

So is inbreeding bad? Will it mess up the fish? I would think that it would be fine, seeing as to how fishes are pretty basic creatures and don't have as many complex genes as compared to the mammals you're talking about.. but that would just be my guess from what I know about fishes and genetics. Don't breeders do this all the time? I would think that you'd HAVE to in order to create all of the varieties, just as stevefish was saying.