Parental instinct.

[Marco]

Hi everyone,

Lately I have read in many threads about natural breeding, parenting skills of pairs and the artificial raising of fry.

I'm not starting this thread to get an argument going, just a debate, so please respect everyone's opinion.

I have bred many many Angelfish in my life. I have had F1's breeding, and F2's, and the same with small cichlids like Kribs. On some occasions I have removed eggs and hatched artificially, and other times, with full grow-out tanks, deliberately left the eggs with the parents in the hope that no fry will come of it, just to be surprised by free swimmers a few days later.

Now dont get me wrong, I agree that parent raising brings us 'closer' to nature, and it does have certain advantages. It also however has certain disadvantages. Dirk Bellstedt, I accept that your experience has led you to some conclusions. However, dont you think the whole parenting thing is rather genetic than 'learned'?
I agree that artificial raising has caused bad parenting, but is it not rather from raising fry that are offspring, thus carrying genetics of bad parents. Let me elaborate. In nature, bad parents will never raise fry. Thus that gene defect will die with them. We raise the fry carrying that gene, and thus the problem compounds. A different scenario would be, we remove eggs from good parents, maybe to increase fry survival rates, and they carry good parenting genes and thus will be good parents.

This is how I have experienced things anyway. Problem is, most aquarists will only remove eggs from bad parents, and leave eggs with good parents, and thus the 'artificial' effect gets the blame, whereas bad genes should carry the blame.

We must also accept that many times artificial raising has its place in aquaria. Many times breeders are after specific traits and thus need that from specific fish. Alas, they may be bad parents and thus its overcome by artificial breeding means.

I'm of the opinion though that there is one drawback never mentioned when discussing artificial raising of fry, and that is survival of the fittest.
When parent raising fry, survival rates are normally lower than with artificial raising. This lends to survival of only the strongest, best swimmers and fighters among the hatch. Thus you truly end up with the strongest juvies and natural selection has gotten rid of the weaker fish. Most commercial breeders do it artificially and thus we end up with fish that would not have made it in a natural environment, and then this weak gene is also bred and further compounded by breeders who use these 'weaker' fish (as "weaker" does not nescessarily mean ugly) in their breeding programme. That may/may not be a reason why today we read of Rams dying for no apparent reason, and fish just being unable to 'fight' common ailments previously, years back I mean, not leading to death.

I have noticed this trend in Discus. Today I find Discus, in many ways much easier to keep than 15 years ago. At the same time their resilience towards disease seem to have weakened. Given this could be due to inbreeding, disease resistance etc, but surely 'survival and breeding of the weakest' also contribute.

I did not put this in Prof's forum so all can feel free to add, correct and discus. Sorry for the 10 pager guys!

Rgds

Marco

[mattie]

I don't know if the males in nature are pre-occupied in fighting off other fish to protect the eggs or fry but from what I've observed is that the parent in a close system without other fish always seems to end up fighting amongst each other soon or later and in turn damaged,kill and eat some or most of their own fry.
To overcome this and achieve maximum yields, the easiest is to remove the male after the eggs are laid.
Most of the fish we keep and breed are tank bred themselves and the ones we struggle to breed are are almost always the wilds.

[Gert Combrink]

Marco and mattie.
You both make valid statements and I agree with you. Here are my views:
However "the ones we struggle to breed are are almost always the wilds." is one of the cases, the other are- artificial breeding!
Yes some fish (i.e. Angels), could have bad parental skills, but some could be new pairs and are still learning. Others are repetitively bred artificially, and partially lost the parental skills.
After reading a article in PFK, where they actually play a video of angels breeding, over and over, to a "bad" egg/fry eating pair, the "bad" pair "learn" how to raise fry successfully, within a week!
Not having this equipment (read patience), I have moved a "bad" pair, next to a good pair.
The move gave them time to settle in and watch the pair in the adjacent tank. They watched, and "learned, then behaved good, and I was able to leave the fry with them (to give them rest) until the fry was R2/R5 coin size juvies!
Thanx and Good Luck!
Gert.

[Vis]

I have a pair of angels that I raised from very little. They spawned the other day and after leaving them for 5 days without light and food I still have quite a few fry swimming on a leave.

This is their first spawn so they somehow got it right from the beginning. I got the male from a LPS but I know the female was raised by her parents. So either they got good genes or the females learned from het parents?

Anyway I would like to know waht the percentages in nature are in regards to succesfull-non succesfull spawns.

Gerhard

[Marco]

@Gert Combrinck,Thats very interesting about the video. It obviously proves that 'bad genes' can be rectified with learning. I just wonder to what extend this 'learning' can be developed and exploited, and if similar practise can be used in other applications. mattie, its my experience that the closer we move to 'wild' fish, the better the parenting becomes, but the more difficult actually spawning the fish become. I have a pen pal in USA who struggled extensively to get some wild Discus to spawn, but on their first spawn they raised a huge % of fry.
Of-topic, during the night I suffered a power cut. Was sleeping and obviously unaware of this...woke up this morning with all but one Discus fry dead. Heartbreaking!