| good discussion, id like to know what peoples thoughts are on what a male brings to the party so to speak in terms of what it gives genetically.
i think thats what your getting at tomc.
i know that some plant breeders have this type of theory but i didnt know it went that way in fish. thats new to me, id be surpised if we are missing the point here though.
i guess somewhere along the line someone found females to be more desirable for their body and they bred using and chose in keeping within that ideal and not strayed into looking for males.. afterall it is harder to compete with the guy down the road showing off a female when the female gives the better shape overall.
want show-want girl.. then after that its simply girl all the way i reckon.
i know i used to unconsiously sell mostly my females first because they look fuller in the belly and as a result healthier. it just turned out in the end that what was left in a cage was mostly male before i noticed what i was doing, i try and stop myself now. i can sell anything of good colours anyway and i wonder if i really want to drive the market anymore than it drives me.
batch females? hmmm.. yep they do that for food fish, in trout i think, triploidy springs to mind also, ive thought of something similar once before when i was considering growing fat belly fantail feeders but then i realised that maybe theyd need more food and result in less per pond or slower to reach suitable market size. i pulled out of that one pretty quick cause id soon lose but for koi maybe theres a point, in japan do they cull out the males?
like fair enough to want a healthy looking fish, healthy looking fish are likely to have healthy looking young in the same conditions too but this "bigger is better" is total bullshit if you ask me, maybe around the urinal it works but theres no way any of the big dumb fish i see are as good a looking specimen as what sits in the mid range of the population.
why so? id say its because there just arent much to choose from amongst the real big ones. take a look at a bell curve and think about it, it is gonna take a long while for there to be a real steady high standard amongst huge sizes for that reason.
anyone reckon that the hugest fish are as pretty to the eye?
like dont you look at the big GC and think well you only won cause your big?
theyre more likely to have more faults overlooked are they not?
wont they be bred from oneday because they are who they are?
is this a concern? or is the market place and peoples wants varied enough for it to have no ill effects. im seeing a lot of emphasis placed on "big".
select breed, select breed, eventually yeah youll get em nice but itll sure take much more time and i wonder what for?. why do we want to go that way?
atleast with size i find things have evolved to a size for a reason..and grace comes into it too.. and we have to ask ourselves if we are selectively breeding for mainly jumbo sizes what are we losing out on in our future pool.
select size, size, size.. then its a case of oh no! wheres our colour and grace gone among others, intelligence, tolerance to water quality, low disolved OXYGEN?
believe it or not but ive seen it before.
im not just talking about taking a genetic and having it fully expressed through the environment and ending up with a big fish,even though i do think we are taking it too far there too. it seems like a wholly grail and we will go mad to reach it.
im mainly talking about choosing the abnormal huge genetic and breeding it and searching through its biggest offspring whilst over looking some basics.
its like "whos got the biggest fish and pond space for one fish?" i ask why are we being driven by this? or is it just me noticing this and everyone else doesent want the biggest fish?
im not seeing the point of it really. |