Re: f1 spawning

[Frauley/Elson <fraulels@minet.ca>]

Vern Wensley wrote:
> 
> Has anyone encountered this problem,f1 fish are harder to spawn.I was
> talking to David Soares and we got talking about this.He said that some of
> his wild fish will spawn quite easy and then when the fry are old enough
> they are very difficult or impossible to get a spawn out of them.I have had
> this happen with my uaupesi.

Vern, 
While Gavid Gomberg's suggestion may be true, I'd like to see more
discussion of how people have gotten around this. There are some
interesting possibilities, but the bottom line is I think most people
who've bred a lot of apistos have seen this.
With killies, one problem has been population crosses, especially as it
has turned out that 'populations' that appear the same to us can be
different species once DNA work has been done on them, and what we think
are aquarium strains can be aquarium-hobby hybrids. It's not an X-files
fishbreeding conspiracy theory, just a documented killie problem that
could affect indiscriminantly collected wild fish.
I doubt this phenomenon would be as widespread as this common problem
is. 
In the short term, I think this is an argument for Breeder's Award
Programs to give more weight to second, and beyond, breedings of fish. 
I'd also like to see how closely this problem correlates with
specialization among the difficult fish. Generalist, or ancestral forms
seem easier to keep going than highly specialized beasts like uapesi,
and I've often wondered if there was more to their specialization than
adaptation to specific water conditions. Replicating their water
conditions takes work, but seems to be do-able, but are there other
specialized needs we're missing?
I suppose I'm just thinking online, but it would interest me, and
hopefully others, to hear where people have had these difficulties.
Away from apistos, Pelvicachromis humilis was my great failure, and I've
long been intrigued by how few males in spawnings of Pelvicachromis
taeniatus Moliwe develop into ready breeders. A lot of dwarf cichlid
males spend their lives dimly swimming past desperate females. Maybe
wild males with no territorial/spawning drive get driven out of
desirable habitats, and effectively culled. It's a thought.
-Gary


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