Apistogramma sp 'Kelleri'

[Dzo]

Ok rage man sorry if you feel insulted but here is my answer.

I have never sold any fish or any object related to Aquariums in 20 years (since started this hobby and bread my first cichlids) . But in numerous ocasions the offspring or breading pairs of my fish ware taken as a gift to friends and starting aquarists.
So I freely mention money which is btw most often the goal for many people. Since you are comercial breader/seller it is only normal for me to think of you in the same way I think of all comercial/sellers. Not so fine sorry.

In the begining since I was young I made mistakes reckless, ignorant with inbreading... I remember those inbread fish very weak and sick. Soon I found out why and realised the mistake. I cant undo it but I can make sure I don't make same again, and maybe warn or educate people about it.

I have studied at nature and math coledge so I am pretty much informed about genetics ... And inbreading definatly results in bad ofspring ...more or less... it is like with the betting all in percentage but in the end the house wins
It is very nice that you will get the second pair... I hope that there will be more import without damaging the population in nature so the genetic pool in aquariums will be large enough.

Mentioning of the relatives in this case was only in widening the aspect of view. I didn't mean to insult. On the other hand don't be so sure that we will never meet, world is a small place. I don't know about your job but I have been trough two wars, trained some "arts" and still do... yet I hope to stay friend

 

[ed seeley]

Going against sane and reason just to achieve temporary goal led to many disasters in history... just take a look what your country did with cows just a few years ago, BSE... was that progress?

What is the relevance of this to your point? BSE is a prion-based disease caused by feeding infected animal material to another animal - it has nothing at all to do with inbreeding and was inadvertently caused by a dubious, but theoretically sound idea to boost the protein level of the cow feed. If they hadn't used sheep infected with scrapey then it seems likely that BSE wouldn't have happened.

Would you make offspring with your sister to achieve anything? If not then why do you make your fish do it?

Comparing humans to fish is just nonsense. They are vastly different species with huge differences in their genetics.

Inbreeding depression in fish can sometimes be an issue but, with rigorous culling and care, fish can be very highly inbred and acutally be perfectly healthy. Breeding fish brother to sister will not produce deformed fish unless there are genetic problems with the parental stock IME. Then outcrossing can help but that simply hides the mutations behind the heterozygosity of the offspring - they are still there and will resurface in future generations. If you cull them from an inbred population it can remove them from the gene pool completely. If you want to read and learn correctly about the potential issues with inbreeding, outcrossing and other relevant issues I can recommend some books that will improve your knowledge further as I think you may have recieved a very simplified view of the issues from your studying so far.

Finally I've had fish from Ste and also sent him fish and I know his practises are excellent as are the fish he produces.

 

[Tom C]

... And inbreading definatly results in bad ofspring ...more or less...

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again"
Alexander Pope

It's amazing that the nature so often has secrets that surprise us when revealed, isn't it :

In Current Biology, Volume 17, Issue 3, 225-229, 6 February 2007
there is a report:
"Active Inbreeding in a Cichlid Fish and Its Adaptive Significance" by
Timo Thünken, Theo C.M. Bakker, Sebastian A. Baldauf and Harald Kullmann
Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Ecology, University of Bonn

The abstract:
"Levels of inbreeding are highly variable in natural populations [1,2]. Inbreeding can be due to random factors (like population size), limited dispersal, or active mate choice for relatives [3]. Because of inbreeding depression [4], mating with kin is often avoided [5], although sometimes intermediately related individuals are preferred (optimal outbreeding [6,7]). However, theory predicts that the advantages of mating with close kin can override the effects of inbreeding depression [8,9,10,11,12], but in the animal kingdom, empirical evidence for this is scarce. Here we show that both sexes of Pelvicachromis taeniatus, an African cichlid with biparental brood care, prefer mating with unfamiliar close kin over nonkin, suggesting inclusive fitness advantages for inbreeding individuals. Biparental care requires synchronous behavior among parents. Since parental care is costly [13], there is a conflict between parents over care [12,14], which can reduce offspring fitness [15]. Relatedness is expected to enhance cooperation among individuals [16]. The comparison of the parental behavior of in- and outbreeding pairs showed that related parents were more cooperative and invested more than unrelated parents. Since we found no evidence for inbreeding depression, our results suggest that in P. taeniatus, inbreeding is an advantageous strategy".
(The highlighting is done by me)

The report could be read here.
.

 

[ste12000]

Ed, Tom, thank you for showing some kind of support, the sad thing is that it should not be needed, i initially started the thread and in the opening post clearly stated that the purpose of the thread was to gather together people who were keeping and breeding this interesting species, i even mentioned that at some point we are going to need fresh blood and the thread would be a good place to turn to find other hobbiests breeding the same fish..

A good thread ruined by someone who by his own admission was young, reckless and ignorant when producing bad fish many years ago!!! And then has the nerve to suggest that i may be as reckless or nieve!!!

 

[Hudson Ensz]

I probably shouldnt reply to this thread because I have no information or experience to offer but, MODS!!! Can you not split this topic???
I will venture to say this. Illinformed opinions are not neccessarilly a bad thing (I am sure I have a lot of them) but Dzo is going about it at a completely wrong angle and is resorting to such extremes that it is almost laughable. Dzo if you must start another thread be mature about it (but please dont), this thread is ruined!
Ste... In my opinion your answers were very well grounded and good job for not resorting to insults.
Wow, why did I write this?

 

[Mike Wise]

Contrary to popular opinion, we 'old guys' can learn somethings from our teen members!:wink:

 

[MonteSS]

To get back on topic....

I bought a wild pair about a year ago. Sold to me as Jutai, but learned here they are Kelleri.

He didnt like her from the start and chases her away. I had them alone in a 24" 26g tank. That didnt work out so I moved them to the 75g SA community. There she can stay away from him. She has never had even a hint of yellow. Male comes out a bit and displays at his reflexion when the room lights are out.

PH is 7.2
temp is 76*f

I am not neccesarily looking to breed them but it would be nice if they got along better and paired up.

Here is what I believe is the female
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3qAHuYUhBw

And the male
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXNwW7aGPPE

Thanks...Bill

 

[Mark]

That's a normal male and a normal female so that's not the problem. We have had some pairing problems too so maybe the two do not like each other. It happens with other species too.

Mark

 

[ste12000]

My original pair have spawned twice successfully, the first yeiled 9 fry(All male) the second 12 but only 3 survived, my good friend Andrew wood cleared all his Apistos out of his fishroom several weeks ago and i managed to aquire his pair of wild kelleri, these are actually smaller than my first pair but recently spawned and it became apparant that she had a huge spawn(for a mouthbrooding Apisto) shes had a mouthfull of fry all week and on the few occassions she spat the fry into the corner of the cave i reckoned that there were maybe 30 or 40 fry, she spat the fry today and they became freeswimming, i took a picture and counted the fry and am delighted to report that there are 60 fry in this brood!!

 

[blueblue]

I bred mine in a bare-bottom tank. This species behaves exactly like A. barlowi (sp. maulbruter). I also observe the semi-mouthbrood behavior of the female.

 

[ste12000]

Just a quick update to this thread.. Around 2 months ago i lost all 5 of my adult fish over the space of 5-6 weeks, nothing wrong with the tanks or fish just simply old age, the fish were very large fully grown adults when we received them in April 2010 and they did well to survive a year in captivity before old age caught up with them.

All of my fry have been males so far so i was slightly worried that i would loose all my stock and have to drop out of A.sp'kelleri's' maintainance in the UK..

Luckily i had a F1 female given to me by a good friend and paired her up with my own best F1 male.. The pair spawned last week and today i got my first F1 spawn and F2 babies, i counted 47 so thats a quite a good spawn for a first time mouthbrooder.

Quite pleased that im back in the game and continue to maintain this species in the UK.. All i need now is more females! preferably unrelated.

 

[Fats]

Hi Ste,sorry to hear about your adults mate. Mine are currently with another brood and still trying to get some females. I do have 2 batches not including the latest one since i dropped the temperature in the tank that are to young to sex yet hopefully they wont be all males again. Good luck with your new pair Ste.

Ian

 

[Apistomaster]

Many hobbyist breeders greatly under estimate how low the chances are of inbreeding beginning with a single pair of wild fish has to damage an aquarium strain. Many very popular old favorite species of aquarium fish began from such beginnings. In most cases if the fish is at all popular they will be out crossed with new stock long before any inbreeding depression can occur.
In selective breeding for certain color types it has long been common practice to inbreed to fix color or fin shapes and to out cross and create a parallel line to practice line breeding over a longer period. There certainly would be no dizzying numbers of color strains of domestic Discus or Fancy Guppies if this were not so.
Nor the color varieties of Apistogramma agassizi and A. cacatuoides to name a few.

I am an old time Apistogramma fan but I am still not used to the discovery of two species of primitive mouth brooding Apistogramma species.