Now back to this thread. I was looking at this from the angle of the young
pup just getting into the hobby and learning the fish , a neophyte if you
will (which is what I am). We don't have years of experiance, or even in
some cases good color photos. I will be getting the Atlas, but as far as
Sahul fishes go it sucks. Some of us don't have access to older good
photos. I also suspect some of us newbies haven't even seen a wild caught
fish, F1, yes, but not wild in all their glory. Allong these lines I am
still willing to see about setting up a web page for Pseudomugils as long
as I can get the picts and info. This way more of us can have access to
the "good" photos especially for those fish that have several distinct
populations (signifer, gertrudae, etc).
MTF
>I have enjoyed looking back at this thread which to me is the essence of
>the reason why associations like ANGFA, IRG and RSG were formed in the
>first place. We came aware of the existence of these "Jewels of Sahul"
>because of beautiful colour photos of theses fish. Those photos depicted
>wild types
>and looking as good as they do when they are feeling good e.g. spawning,
>Everybody knows that rainbowfish show a wide range of colours and
>brightness that varies between idividuals, local populations, subspecies
>etc as well as the contentment and mood of the individual fish.
>
>No matter how careful we are with our selection of breeders for the next
>generation every time we breed them in the limited numbers ( from the
>limited numbers of breeders that we use each time) we lose some of the
>genetic diversity of that gene pool.Even when we select for wild-type
>appearance we have no guarantee that the metabolic "fitness" of the line we
>are producing is as good as the original stock and we don't have a reliable
>easy way of measuring this except in a superficial way by the vigour,
>fertility and longevity of the line we are producing.
>
>I guess what I am trying to say is that I agree generally with Cary that we
>should try to stick to the wild type as our model for appearance but please
>try to check those 3 metabolic parameters regularly. I know that husbandry
>techniques play a major part in this but there's not much point to a line
>that looks right but dies out because of poor fertility.
>
>What can we do in terms of practical advice to breeders? Breed from your
>oldest generation for as long as you can ( since each has most likely got
>potentially more genetic diversity than the next) but try to group spawn
>with as close to equal numbers of each sex as possible ( since the genetic
>contribution from each parent is equal) to avoid ending up with a
>strain/line that has too strong a genetic component derived from our
>practice of using only one male and several females.
>
Mach Fukada, Webmaster
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