Best practices?

[SparKy697]

When it comes to breeding fish, what is normally considered distant enough in relation for mating?

I can see how a pair of fish can mate even though they have the same parents, but I assume like in most species this is not desirable. How much effort is needed to control this?

[black hills tj]

hmm..i've never succesfuly bred any fish, but i'd say...let it run its course until you see deformities.

[bs6749]

I don't think it matters until many generations later. My pairs of GBR's are siblings (F6) and the fish have no deformaties from what I can tell, and for the most part IMO, they look better than 95% of the GBR's that I have seen anywhere. They have a bright gold belly (one of the F0 generation was a wild yellow Colombian) and show more orange, and more color than most GBR's. Supposedly they will get long fins and elongated bodies after many generations of siblings mating. They will also lose color and be less healthy as well. This should be something to look for when buying new stock if you are interested in breeding.

You really can't do anything about controling siblings from pairing short of housing them in separate tanks. I don't know exactly how distant the relation should be but ideally, the more distant the better.