MMB

Mixed Morph Breeding

So as many of you know, Metriaclima estherae comes in so many forms; OB, blueberry OB, Regular, Cherry, Albino, etc. What are your thoughts on keeping multiple morphs together and knowing full well they will spawn together? I think it's produce some cool fry that wouldn't be considered hybrids.

The only problem I see is differentiating the fry. Once they are born it will be hard to tell exactly what kind they are so you'd have to wait a little while to see what they are before you sell them. Unless you have for example, all the ob are female and all the regular ones are male, then you dont have to wait for the fry to grow up to tell what they are.

No I mean I thought it'd be cool to have mixed morph fish. Like a blueberry OB breeds with a Cherry red, wouldn't that be cool?


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I see, yah that would be cool. I'd be curious to see how they turn out.

Me, too. I'd like to see regular OB and Blueberry OB cross. Anyone else have thoughts on this?


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A couple of thoughts:

Back in the day, nearly all zebra-ish mbuna were "Pseudotropheus zebra"...they're now a variety of different species... or geographic variants of a species... but all "different". Whether they're technically hybrids or not (today) matters less, in my mind at least, as to whether they're wild-type fish (which they won't be).

There are no shortage of random mbuna of questionable provenance out there today. Same with peacocks and lots of other cichlids. Interesting colors or not (and most of the offspring will not be interesting), they'll be of little value (although I've seen stranger things at local auctions than bags of random mbuna going for $25)...

If you're going to focus on developing a strain of fancy fish, be systematic about it. For example, Charles Clapsaddle has developed a variety of fancy peacock (and livebearer) variants methodically (not randomly).

Matt

zackcrack00 said:

Mixed Morph Breeding

So as many of you know, Metriaclima estherae comes in so many forms; OB, blueberry OB, Regular, Cherry, Albino, etc. What are your thoughts on keeping multiple morphs together and knowing full well they will spawn together? I think it's produce some cool fry that wouldn't be considered hybrids.

Click to expand...

This makes sense. I want to see if I can get orange and blue spots onto blue fish, not blue spots onto light blue fish or black spots on orange fish.


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