Curipera discus how to improve the strain

[nevsfish]

Hi I was after the options of experienced breeders to what to do .i have a breeding pair of Forrest curipera that breed true no albinos.my question is that I want to improve the strain but do not know how to any opinions would be appreciated .maybe cross with something .the fish in my avatar is the female of the pair .regards lawrence

[nc0gnet0]

Hmm,

Best place to start would be to show us pictures (bigger than the one in your avatar please) of the fish in which you are working with. Then you need to realize that the word "improvement" is going to vary amongst all those that reply, as much of it has to do with personal preference in regards to color and pattern. Size and shape should however be much closer at a consensus.

Another thing you need to realize is these "Forrest" curipera, were not bred by Forrest, but by one the several breeders in which he procurs fish from. As to the origins of these "curipera" it really is hard to say how many generations removed from wild lineage they really are, and for all intensive purposes you will be working with and producing a domestic strain.

I have not seen a pair of Forrest Curipera conclusively produce any "albino" fry as you have mentioned, although I have heard a few state they believe they had some albino offspring in fresh batches of wigglers. While it is indeed possible, I highly supsect that these reported "albino" fry were in fact golden fry (the two can be hard to tell apart at fry stage), and I have demonstrated with my pair that they were in fact golden intermediates. This does not mean all Forrest "curipera" are golden intermediates, but does show us that these fish have been used as part of one breeders domestic breeding program.

The fact that your pair breeds "true" does not mean that both parents are free of the golden gene (or albino for that matter) just that both of them do not have it.

So, to get back to your original question, what is your goal? What do you wish for your finished product to look like?


-Rick

[nevsfish]

8113281133male first pic, female second pic .i have 3 wild cuipeua maybe i could breed the wild cuipeua to the domestics to streanghen the strain as i want to keep the strain strong to breed from as in australia these discus are quite rare.

[ewelch]

Sorry I can't help with your question , still trying to learn but those are amazing fish !

[nc0gnet0]

Personally, if it were me, I would line breed to increase the depth of red and maybe work on size a little bit. At any rate, nice fish! Would be interesting to see what John and Rod might have to add.


-Rick

[nevsfish]

what do you mean by line breed ,sorry i dont know much about genetics in discus still learning yes i would like to improve size and the red colour would like it to be redder

[Rod]

Hi I was after the options of experienced breeders to what to do .i have a breeding pair of Forrest curipera that breed true no albinos.my question is that I want to improve the strain but do not know how to any opinions would be appreciated .maybe cross with something .the fish in my avatar is the female of the pair .regards lawrence

Hi Lawrence,

Depends on your goal with breeding. If you want to maintain as much wild variation as possible, then you should out breed. But i think this is very limiting. Wilds vary greatly in quality, they are a highly variable species and outbreeding will reflect that with lots of so so looking discus. And it is probably unrealistic for any great length of time anyway as it would take many pairs of wilds to expect to be able to preserve natural variation within a type.

Better i think is to line breed as rick suggests. It is a form of inbreeding, but there are many ways to do that. From a genes view, inbreeding lines up alleles. This causes like traits to become more common in the breed. This is a double edged sword however. While certain attractive traits will become common, so will other traits that may not be desirable. But this is possibly the easiest way to improve the overall appearance.

A few suggestions on what not to breed. A discus is a combination of many traits, and i would breed only the best that you have. Ruthlessly reject any with flaws, any flaw. Lets say you produce a fish with exceptional red color, twice as good as any other yet bred. But this fish has an orange eye, or is misssing a few hard rays on the dorsal, or some other minor irritation, then this fish is a reject. Do not convince yourself it is worth breeding from. If it is poor in one way, ALWAYS reject it for the one with perfect form. the color will come, and when it does it will be on a perfect fish. Just my opinion.

[nevsfish]

hey rod thanks for the reply i think i will give line breeding a go. i like the wild look of these discus and might try to get some better shape and colour by doing so.when we talked awhile back you mentioned that you had some curipera have you been successful in breeding them . regards lawrence

[Rod]

I gave the pair to a local breeder Lawrence, but i have not heard if he was successful or not!

[John_Nicholson]

Been at the deer lease so getting in this late....

Anyway Rick and Rod have done a great job on answering the question. The only thing I can add is to really do this correctly it will normally take a lot tanks and a lot of fish before you can find enough "foundation" stock to really get started. My suggestion is to simlpy concentrate on producing high quality fry and let everything else handle itself.

-john

[marinum]

Hi,
what are the characteristics for good Discus? Shape, color, size, etc? I'm interested in the discussion, I have 11 small discus this breeder http://www.easydiskus.de/cuipeua-royal.html that I am raising and I would like to start breeding a nice and simple

[Tazalanche]

what are the characteristics for good Discus? Shape, Shape, Shape, Shape, Shape, and something else...



what was it...



oh yeah...


Shape. :)