# breeding 2 fish from same parents, ok or not??



## swamptrout (Jul 2, 2007)

Is it possible for a brother and sister fish to breed?

want to get a couple EBJD's from a local guy who breed's them but they are obviously from the same parents. is this a good idea??

I know it is not a good idea in humans wanted to know if it is the same with fish??

sorry if this is a crappy question


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## MalawiLover (Sep 12, 2006)

It depends on what your intentions are for the out come. Breeding siblings, half0- siblings and parent offspring are common practices in line breeding when the desired outcome is to intensify a certain trait. You just have to practice good husbandry. Any fry that do not meet your standard or show any sign of poor gene expression must be culled.

The reason it is illegal in humans is that it has the possibility of concentrating bad genes and since we can't cull our children, it prevents possible issues.


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## swamptrout (Jul 2, 2007)

not interested in breeding, actually hoping for 2 or more females but if i happen to get males and females that pair up then i am ok with that if it prevents them from killing each other.

how many JD's can i have in a standard 180gal tank. what would happen if i ended up with a couple pairs, would they co exist long term ??


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## Toby_H (Apr 15, 2005)

If a fish has a weak liver which will cause the fish to die an early death, although it will survive to early adulthoodâ€¦

And that fish is given the chance to breed when it is newly sexually matureâ€¦ then itâ€™s children are likely to either have this same disorder, or it will have the disorder in a recessive mannerâ€¦

So if itâ€™s offspring are spawned togetherâ€¦ the grandchildren of the bad liver fish are going to have the same disorderâ€¦ and will therefore die an early deathâ€¦

You canâ€™t look at a baby fish and tell it has a bad liverâ€¦ so it is impossible to cull out all the bad things that result from inbreedingâ€¦

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If your looking for two fish to keep as a pair and have no intension of distributing the offspring, then I donâ€™t think it would matter if they are brother & sister or notâ€¦ but if they are, please donâ€™t distribute the offspringâ€¦

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To date it is commonly accepted that two Blue Dempseys will not produce offspring that can survive. To my knowledge only a couple of us have tried (myself included) and only one person has claimed to have a small amount survive, and they were all deformed.

It is commonly believed that the Blue Dempseys are weaker than the standard Jack Dempseys because of such heavy inbreeding when the morph was first discovered. In my opinion and my opinion only, further contributing to inbreeding this fish is a very bad idea.

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Iâ€™m personally very highly against inbreeding fish, many people are not or are to a lesser degree. Inbreeding causes problems in every species of animal ever researched, just less in fish than in most. But in my opinion if your going to breed a fish that is not at least as high of quality as itâ€™s parentsâ€¦ donâ€™t breed them. Or more accurately, donâ€™t distribute them.

Thereâ€™s nothing wrong for a hobbyist to keep a spawning pair regardless of the â€œqualityâ€


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## MalawiLover (Sep 12, 2006)

Carefully controlled line breeding has been used in almost every domesticated animal we have around now. If a species has "breeds" those breedes were developed by linebreeding (which is accomplished by both in breeding and out breeding. Careful breeders will follow multiple generation of offspring through out the entire lives of the animal. If it is found that a certain pairing has an unusually high number of mortalities or defects, that whole line is discontinued and it descendants are removed from brood stock. The problems we see today in many of the breeds is not due to the inbreeding process, but is instead solely related to the improper choice of breeding stock.

You can get just as many funky defects show up by breeding totally unrelated animals if their background and ancestor stock are not known either.

Wild stock is stronger due to the survival of the fittest. Once man interupts natural selection if we allow the less fit to continue we are the cause of the future defect. Only the very healthiest, most perfect (to the standard of that species or breed) should be allowed to reproduce.


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## TheFishGuy (Apr 21, 2005)

When I keep fry from a spawn I keep them together and they "self cull" leaving only a handfull of the fittest. It's the closest to natural selection I can come up with in a glass box situation.

But I rarely sell any of my fry.


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## swamptrout (Jul 2, 2007)

Haha. Thanks guys yeah a bit deeper an answer then what i was after. wasn't intending on breeding and definitely will not be distributing.

Background - EBJD's are extremely rare in Australia, if lucky i will find one and even then if i did i could pay up to $200 for a juvie (not that i would fork out that much for one). A guy near me can get them and will offload them for around $30 mark.

At this price i would get 5 or 6 for a (180gal) species tank and grow them out where i would pick the good fish (whether thats because i have females only or a pair I dont really care as long as there is harmony) anyway I assume these will almost certainly be from the same brood.

My concern is that if there were both males and females (highly likely) that they could pair up.

At the end of the day if there was breeding then the fry would just end being feeders for my oscar and GT. :drooling: :drooling: :drooling:


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## dwarfpike (Jan 22, 2008)

I thought I read somewhere that two EBJD's aren't fertile ... hence the cost of them since you have to breed them back into a reg. JD and then those carrying the genes are breed to another EBJD to get a small portion of the fry as EBJD???


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## swamptrout (Jul 2, 2007)

well if they are not fertile then it is even better for me. I dont have to feel guilty about them reproducing.


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## AU Chief (Jun 20, 2007)

Actually, I a great majority of EBJD's are male. So the odds of having a female are lower than with other fish. If you buy that many, I would make sure I had immediate ways to rehome them, whether that be in other tanks, or other places, in the event that agressions takes a turn for the worse. I have never seen any aggression on the part of any of the EBJD's I've had. though I started out with 3(like has been stated they are a bit weaker) and I now only have one of the 3 fry I started out with, none of the deaths were aggression related, and they all lived peacfully with their tankmates. That being said, I'm not sure how they react to their own species at adult stages.

The bottom line is, as long as you don't have any regular JD's you shouldn't have to worry about fry, since EBJDxEBJD doesn't produce viable fry.


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## swamptrout (Jul 2, 2007)

I was going to pull the regular JD listed in my signature and throw it in with the EBJD in a JD species tank.

Will rethink before doing anything.


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