Charlie Durand wrote:
> Ok, I may have used the wrong term but aren't "color morphs" the result of
> in-breeding more anything else?
> That's how they get all the different "strains" of Discus afterall.
> How come we're not complaining about the inbreeding?
In-breeding is not by itself a bad technique, although it is an easy to
abuse technique. The biggest danger of in-breeding is the possibility of
introducing genetically predisposed disorders (think about the problems
some types of purebred dogs or cats have), usually caused by having too
little genetic diversity. In the hands of a talented breeder who knows how
to maintain genetic diversity and cull out fry with abnormalities,
in-breeding is a perfectly fine tool to fix a color line.
Also remember that some color morphs with fish are really rather easy to
maintain genetic diversity when it's simple dominant/recessive gene(s)
that control the color differences. Think pink and normal convicts. Pink
is recessive to normal. If you want to introduce some genetic diversity,
breed a pink to a few normals. This will yield fry that look normal, but
carry the pink gene, called heterzygous in genetic terms (homozygous would
have only one type of the gene, all pink or all normal in this case). Then
cross the heterozygous fry back to a pink for approximately 50% pink fry
yield, to heterozygous fry from the other batches for 25% pink fry or to
another set of normals for some additional heterozygous fry (although this
will yield homozygous normal fry as well, so while this has the most
diversity by not breeding back to the original line, it's also the most
tedious because there's no way to tell who has the pink gene and who
doesn't other than by breeding).
>> Stay informed about: Jack Dempsey color changes??????? 
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