Hybrid Peacock Question

All peacocks (and mbunas) are hybrids, or at least have to be assumed to be, unless you know for an absolute fact that they are wild caught or offspring from known wild caughts.

Depending on how you define a species, they are not different species in the first place. If they can make fertile offspring, they are actually the same species.

Well most Peacocks today are Hybrids and there are very few true Forms of Peacocks that you would see from the Great Rift Lakes, some are beautiful and some are down right ugly as for a batch of Hybrid offspring you will get most of them as just ok fish and a few that will be awesome so it will be a wait and see issue to see what you will get.. Good luck on the fish and i hope you get some nice looking fish..

One of my all time favorite fish was a Tanganyika Hybrid he was an awesome fish with a great personality and i will miss him gracing my tank..

reptileguy2727 said:

All peacocks (and mbunas) are hybrids, or at least have to be assumed to be, unless you know for an absolute fact that they are wild caught or offspring from known wild caughts.

Depending on how you define a species, they are not different species in the first place. If they can make fertile offspring, they are actually the same species.

Click to expand...

Wow that is totally not true. Any respectable breeder will not sell hybrids. I have several F1 mbuna. Now I can understand the statement when it comes to pet store mbuna and peacocks. But not when it comes to get fish from hobbyists and well known dealers. I wouldn't call any fish from Dave's rare fish hybrids.

Plus just because a species can breed and create fertile offspring does not mean it's the same species. Rift lake cichlids all have similar ancestors and are very closely related because evolution happened so quickly. A species is a species, especially if it is scientifically described like many rift lake species.

Now to the OP. There are many hybrids that are very nice looking. I have a saulosi/msobo cross that is quite nice looking. Nothing wrong with keeping a nice looking hybrid. The problem starts when they are passed off as pure species or distributed at all.

If you read the second half of that sentence you would see I covered that. Either way, most people don't go through breeders, they go through shops. And most shops sell 'assorted cichlids' that need to be assumed to be hybrids.

That is assuming they are accurate descriptions of species. There is not one accepted definition of a species. Depending on which definition is used, it is in fact one species of the offspring are fertile. These 'species' are so closely related that it is more likely that scientists jumped the gun in declaring every color variation and minor geographic separation as a different species. Speciation is a long process that requires many steps, all adding up to enough differences to truly make two populations in to two different species. These populations are partially through that process, bot not completely, hence the massive interbreeding.

They are healthy, colorful fish. This is exactly what people want. It is no different than the store buying them from a fish farm.