Back To The Wild

Lately there is a trend to go back to the wild with discus.
I don't know the purpose for this.
What are these people trying to achieve?
What ever the reasons, good luck to you.
But have you ever wonder:
1. Why don't they don't cross a race horses with a wild horse to "Hope" for a faster cross?
2. Why don't they cross a gray hound with the wolf and "Hope" for a faster cross?
3. Why don't they cross a blood hound to a jackal and "Hope" for a better nose dog?
4. Why don't they cross a rhode island red to a wild chicken and "Hope" for a meatier bird.
5. Why don't they cross fancy bettas with the wild and "Hope" for a newer type?
6. Why don't they cross fancy goldfish with a carp and "Hope" for a newer type?

I could go on and on with more questions for not crossing with the wild type.
The experts don't go backwards but instead they inbreed.
So why is breeding discus different than breeding anything else.
I apologize if I have offended anyone and ruined your dreams, but people needs to rationalize this method a bit more.

What's your take on this?

I imagine if you went to a community of people where for generations brothers & sisters, fathers & daughters, mothers & sons had been bearing children it would be a good thing to bring in outsiders to strengthen the gene pool.

Dave

[Michael]

To add more genes to the line, so they could do more inbreeding without expressing unwanted genes.

I truly like the way wild fish look...more so than alot of the "newer" type strains.... other people must feel the same way, or they wouldn't buy wilds...
If you keep inbreeding and inbreeding and inbreeding, before you know it you've just got a crappy fish that is exhibiting more bad traits than good...breeding domestic with wilds might be two steps back initially, but it could allow you to take three steps forward...
some of your comparisons are just not logical:comparing a wolf to a grey hound, is like comparing a bald eagle to a pterodactyl(i'm exagerating for the point)...they're far removed by way too many generations, whereas discus are still generally discus...
and breeders of fancy bettas do outcross to wilds, just like many other breeders of fish...

[gary1218]

Dave C. - LOL ;D

GARY

Geez round head...you almost sound offended at peoples desire to keep and breed wilds.
I agree with David, your comparisons dont hold water for the most part.
reasons for keeping and breeding wilds...
1. freshen a stagnant gene pool.
2. unlock new gene's hiddin in some wilds.
3. develope new strains.
4. Improve existing strains.
5. the sheer beauty of some wilds cant even be compared to some of the butt ugly strains we have today....

Tony

[Aquatic_Design]

Round Head,
You're trying to compare apples and oranges. ???

Some types of discus are so inbred that bringing some wild blood in can sometimes improve the line. It's called outcrossing.
Other people just like the look of the original discus and not all of the man made fancy named discus.

Donna

[Ryan]

I think the method is completely rationalized. The answer is simple. Discus have been inbred, backbred, line bred, etc. for years and years. There is no new blood being introduced.

Angelfish are a good example. Koi angels are gorgeous fish, but it took generations of back-breeding and inbreeding to strengthen that gorgeous orange/red color. Somewhere along the line they lost a lot of the more positive angelfish traits, such as parent-raising fry. Also, many koi angels have weak spawns with high cull rates because the genes were in miserable shape. Remember, I am not talking about all koi angels, but it's true of many. When they were outcrossed to wilds, they not only had much stronger babies because of the new blood, but the F1s also exhibited more characteristic angel behaviors, including parent-raising fry, which seemed to be lost.

Adding wild blood back into fish is not a bad idea. By the way, no one is saying that you cannot breed tank-raised discus with other tank-raised discus. There's nothing wrong with crossing a greyhound to a greyhound, or a race horse to a race horse. However, if you breed that greyhound to one of her puppies, and then you breed one of those puppies back to its grandmother, and then breed one of it's puppies to her older siblings... eventually don't you think you'll run into some problems? This is what has been done to a lot of the discus varieties you see. You have to bring in new genes from somewhere.

[daninthesand]

Roundhead you raise some very valid questions.

Its all about genetics. When we selectively breed fish, dogs , cats or even humans ( ) we try to bring out traits that we as the human judge decide what it is WE like. Nature does this as well, but does it by natural selection. I would hazard a guess that a strain of PB discus that were brightly coloured with no stress bars would certainly die out quickly due to predation in the wild. No camouflage. Basically a fish swimming around with a neon sign on it saying EAT ME.

So we decide that we like orange fish and breed for it by crossing brothers with sisters etc as Dave_C said.

I personally have seen this in human population as well. I worked in Saudi Arabia where the old world ways still exist. Saudis used to travel around in bands and married within their clan. Because of this they married cousins or other even closer relatives. To this day it has caused serious problems. I worked in the Intensive care units and believe me they have a shallow gene pool. We had babies born with heart anomalies that are present maybe 1 in 100,000 in the western world. In Saudi you see them 1 in 1,000 or even less. It all boils down to intermarriage bringing out less desireable traits.

In the case of discus all the inbreeding is bringing out desireable traits but also undesirable ones. For example, the blue diamond, althought it is beautiful in its pure blue colour, it appears it has a tendency toward HITH. Possibly a nutritional uptake deficiency. Who know for sure. Or the PB strains tend to mature faster and hence may possibly inhibit their potential to get very large. All these examples show that inbeeding is not always a good thing.

By introducing some wild blood back into the domestic population, you strengthen the genetic makeup of the fish (sometimes called "hybrid vigour&quotand hopefully can still maintain the desireable characteristics you are looking for.

I too love the look of a qualtiy wild discus. And I also love the domestics. Can you Imagine an all red fish with a single black heckel-like stripe! I think it would be awesome. This could only be achieved by introducing wild with domestic.

I hope you see my point.

Daniel

Heck would'nt it be neat to see this........

[daninthesand]

or this....

[daninthesand]

or even this......!!!!!!

you can get all of those with a good waterproof marker, dan...now go clean that ink off your fish ;D

[daninthesand]

Ha ha ha. I WISH I had a fish that looked like that even without the marker!!!

[Denny]

i'll hold out for the one with 3- x's ;D
denny

[Ryan]

Dan, I see you are one of the select few who owns the elusive "Super Red X Marks The Spot" discus