Breed Standards...

[JasonC]

So hearing a lot of dialogue about culling spawns at points in their growout process, and also about people finding "quality stock", I was wondering... is there a written breed (or species i guess) standard anywhere?

Just thinking that organizations like the AKC will publish what they consider to be the minimum standard of a breeds appearance and physiology, so was wondering if anyone does the same for fish?

If not, how do you all make judgements on what a "quality specimen" is, or who to cull out of a spawn (beyond the deformed)?

 

[bs6749]

There is no short answer to all of this. For the most part, when I look for future breeders I pick out fish with the best shape, color pattern, color intensity, finnage, and health that I can find. Others may look for breeders that produce the largest spawns, the highest fertility, the best parenting attributes, etc. It all depends on what your goal is as a hobbyist/breeder.

 

[JasonC]

So then it sounds like fish breeding is nowhere near as regimented as dog breeding where a "pedigreed animal" must follow a specific set of guidelines... such as coloration, density of spotting, bone structure, etc?

When dealing with a new-to-you species, how do you determine that what you are buying is quality stock beyond looking for the obvious defomation, missing fins/eyes, etc?

 

[bs6749]

I'd first find out as much information about the species as I could. Maybe there would be a species specific forum with many experts. Other times, such as when dealing with something like African cichlids, rather than finding a species specific forum with experts on a particular fish you might find experts on similar groups of species. I'd obtain as much information as possible about what I wanted to breed before making any decisions. Listen to what the experts have to say and offer and then make decisions based on that information. Some fish are mass bred and high quality can be hard to obtain, such as GBR's that I work with. There are lots of poor quality GBR's out there that are the result of mass breeding and then there are better strains that are produced from local breeders and hobbyists. There are even better yet strains that show much more color and have better finnage and shape than the locally bred ones. Often they have wild blood in them not too far back and this can help when obtaining good breeding stock. However, a wild can be "worse" than a locally bred one...it depends on the individual fish quite often.