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Designer Fish
Monday, August 1, 2011 8:59 PM
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Spawning off of another conversation, I would be interested to hear what people define as 'designer' fish?
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Re:Designer Fish
Monday, August 1, 2011 9:43 PM
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I think it's just breeding in traits that the breeder wants in order to sell them for a higher price. Examples. Picasso Platinum Onyx. On another hand you can say it's designer if you mix a perc and an ocellaris.
RLTW 180 Gallon Mixed Reef Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 3:01 PM
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IMO a "designer" fish normally clowns, are usually a colour or pattern variant that makes them distinctly different from the norm. These are usually selectively bred from a small number of pairs, the latest being the picasso clarkii. That and of course the cross breds such as Mocha, Photon etc.
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 3:39 PM
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Certainly open to interpretation. CORAL, one of the first places where the term may have come about (going way back to an article Wittenrich wrote if not further), defined it in this issue as: "Animals whose appearance has been altered by man in some way to make them comply more closely with his sense of aesthetics. Methods include selective breeding and using food dyes to color animals like sea anemones and stony corals". I'd like to just throw out the mention of dyeing, tattooing, and mechanical manipulation as simply inhumane treatment to an animal. I'd throw in with this category such attempts as environmental manipulation or chemical applications that seek to alter the appearance. None of these affect the genetic basis of the animal. "Selective Breeding" is perhaps too broad a term, because even when breeding in a captive population for preservation concerns, there is HUMAN selection occuring of mates. However, CORAL's definition handles this, in so much as it subdefines this as selective breeding with aesthetics as the goal, not species preservation as the goal. To some extent, I can accept that caveot, as even cichlid breeders will select the most robust, most colorful males to be the parents of their next offspring, EVEN if they are producing and trying to preserve the natural form. So I'd argue that another way to paraphrase the definition is this: "Designer" fish are those forms that do not normally occur in nature. Instead, the form has originated in captivity either spontaneously or with direct intent (i.e. intentional hybridization), and has required man's intervention, man's selective breeding, to establish and maintain the new form, or to coax out new traits through compressed, artificial evolution in the form of selective breeding. "Man" is the "designer", not the natural processes of evolution.
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 3:52 PM
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How about naturally occuring hybrids then Matt? Would be interested to know how these would be classified and do you think they should then be "bred on"? Rare yes, im thinking the unclassified not neccassarily Thiellei or Leuc.
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 4:07 PM
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 Originally Posted by Duck How about naturally occuring hybrids then Matt? Would be interested to know how these would be classified and do you think they should then be "bred on"?
Rare yes, im thinking the unclassified not neccassarily Thiellei or Leuc.
I've said many times over I'd love to breed the naturally occuring hybrid of Paracentropyge venustus X . P. multifasciata. That hybrid is part of the natural biodiversity and thus, has a place in "preservation". But here's the rub on that - you can't preserve that hybrid without preserving the parental species  THAT is the very fundamental reason that natural biodiversity (more importantly normal geographic forms / species) should take priority over hybrids...you can always make hybrids LATER if you've preserved the raw materials. But that's not what the question was about. It was about how we define "designer" animals Matt
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 4:17 PM
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But surely that's the point. "Designer" is a subjective term, whilst it can be defined as "man made", whats a designer to some is an abomination to others. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. All fish were once wild caught, it's what we do to them that makes them designer. Wether they were hybrid or not, they can still be "designer". Cant' They?
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 6:03 PM
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Originally Posted by Duck But surely that's the point. "Designer" is a subjective term, whilst it can be defined as "man made", whats a designer to some is an abomination to others. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Indeed, in terms of "Designer", that's the crux of the definition, aesthetic. Visual. At the expense of other things. "Designer", in the CORAL definition, does include things ike injecting glassfish with flourescent dyes, or using genetic modification techniques in a lab to put coral florescence genes into freshwater angelfish. It also includes less obvious, less egregious examples, like long finned Danios or Sunset Platies or Delta Tail Guppies or Half Moon Bettas. The freshwater world is REPLETE with "Designer" fish.
Originally Posted by All fish were once wild caught No, only wild caught fish were wild caught.
Originally Posted by it's what we do to them that makes them designer. Wether they were hybrid or not, they can still be "designer". Cant' They? Indeed "designer" encompasses both man-made hybrids and non-hybrid selectively breed groups and any combination thereof. I never stated otherwise. Matt
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Re:Designer Fish
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 9:27 PM
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So then the suggestion from what I am reading is that designer fish are not necessarily a bad thing. Would everyone agree with that statement? (not looking to distinguish sub levels...the question as a whole..is the question)
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Re:Designer Fish
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 9:47 PM
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Originally Posted by Caesra So then the suggestion from what I am reading is that designer fish are not necessarily a bad thing. (not looking to distinguish sub levels...the question as a whole..is the question)
Not being willing to look at the "sub levels" is not realistic, even I acknowledge the "shades of gray". It also depends again based a lot on how you care to define "designer" - afterall my pursuit of the Lightning Maroon is BOTH an aesthetic pursuit and one of conservation. I made conservation the priority, which is where a lot of people were disconnected from the project goals (and became critical of my methods and pacing) because for them, preservation of the aesthetic by whatever means possible, as fast as possible, was the priority over any conservation goals. So, am I creating 'designer fish' or breeding for conservation? In truth, the answer is BOTH. So on that level, yes, I could almost agree that 'designer fish' are not "necessarily" a bad thing. HOWEVER. Your very question's wording precludes the shades of gray by eliminating "sublevels", but then again throws those shades right back in when you say "not necessarily a bad thing". Highly confusing, and somewhat of a rhetorical trick. You are trying to lump truly damaging fish in with fish that may not have such dramatic impact. You're arguably trying to lump things together that should not be. You're doing so that by lumping the bad with the not-so-bad, the only way to answer the question is to make the truly "bad" into "not so bad" or even "OK". You can't have shades of gray in one portion of the question while eliminating them in another). It's an extremely poor question that precludes any practical answer. To paraphrase your actual question, you're saying "So can we agree that criminals are not necessarily bad (not looking to distinguish between litterbugs and ax murders here)?" Do you see that no matter how you answer this question, reality is out the window? So I'm now going to formulate my answer on the black and white version of what you're asking about, because for me you can't have a "gray" response unless the question itself allows for the "gray" parameters. For the "black and white", "all or nothing" view, I will formulate my answer on the cost/benefit ratio as I perceive it to be based on my experiences and my opinions of what the overall breeding community's priorities should be. Based on THOSE qualifications, my answer is: My answer - No, I cannot agree. In a black and white, all or nothing set of choices, designer fish are not a good thing in my opinion. If I was forced to choose to either have designers or to not have 'designers', I would chose to not have them. The risks and costs are not justified by the new versions of things we've already done hundreds of times over. 'Designer Fish' distract from more critical goals. Matt
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Re:Designer Fish
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 9:54 PM
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I think it is essential that one start at the top and work their way down to find where the questions are. There are way too many conversations out there where everyone lumps everything together and makes a discussion impossible. The quesiton at it's most rudimentarly level is...are designer fish ok? at least as suggested in this context. Yes there are sub levels, and yes, those sublevels should be questions at their level, but not in the context of an overall question. To start from the bottom, or worse yet, as often is the conversation (all levels) no real conversation can ever really exist because everyone is talking 'apples and oranges'. So as a simple question...are designer fish an ok thing? Based on the responses I see above (including yours) I would suggest the answer is yes, but at the sub-level you can break down each of the individual thoughts. Allowing you to have a real discussion on each part of the sub level. I will give an example....(and please take this as an example...and not as some open conversation for philisophical debate) Is murder ok? Of course the answer to most is no... but then you break down the question to is capital punishment ok? is war time death ok? is shooting an unarmed man ok? You have the capacity to start breaking down the question....everything above indicates to me that most agree that designer fish are ok....but maybe not the questions that fall below it. Matt, I totally understand your point, and that is the very context of the question, do you view the question is exclusive or inclusive. Again a view of the individual and they way they assess things. There are a great many factors that effect the way we evaluate things and I have yet to see a conversation around this topic that digs into the actual questions. We all perceive things the way we carry the world in our minds and it sometimes makes it very difficult to understand the responses of each other. So it is my hope to break down a few questions as simple as we can ask them. I am 100% certain that every level of question I ask will be met with the same 'world view' that you just presented. But I am truely interested in seeing how each questions and corresponding sub question gets answered.
<message edited by Caesra on Wednesday, August 3, 2011 10:12 PM>
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 10:27 AM
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Originally Posted by Caesra So as a simple question...are designer fish an ok thing?
Based on the responses I see above (including yours) I would suggest the answer is yes, but at the sub-level you can break down each of the individual thoughts. Allowing you to have a real discussion on each part of the sub level. Ah, but you also see three different definitions of what a designer fish even is, and you're inferring opinions that neither Duck or rgrking were asked to express when they gave their definitions. So really, the only opinion expressed on whether "designer" fish are OK, or not, would be mine. And I was pretty abundantly clear - in the simplified, black and white concept of the question, if I am forced to oversimplify the true nature of things, then designer fish are "not" OK.
Originally Posted by Caesra I will give an example....(and please take this as an example...and not as some open conversation for philisophical debate)
Is murder ok?
Of course the answer to most is no...
but then you break down the question to
is capital punishment ok?
is war time death ok?
is shooting an unarmed man ok? But that's the opposite of how you approached this topic. To use your metaphor, you asked for a definition of murder and you got 3 different definitions, some of which acknowledged the fact that murder may have various incarnations, and what one person might call murder another person might call justice. Next, you throw out the gray shades of murder to frame it as a black and white issue, the base issue of murder and ask, "ignoring the various incarnations, is murder perhaps sometimes OK?" You ask that it be looked at in black and white terms and yet condoned in gray terms? From that, you got one answer. The answer was - if we cannot look at the various conditions that may or may not be murder, if your question defines murder as one simple concept, then all the shades of murder must be classed simply as murder. Then I can hardly condone murder as your question defines it and thus no, murder is not OK. And from all that, you derive that the overall group opinion is that murder is OK?! (eg. "Based on the responses I see above (including yours) I would suggest the answer is yes") I'm having a hard time dealing with the lack of logic that's driving this line of thinking. It really makes me think that you're just going down your own line of thinking, comprehending only portions that seem to indicate the outcome that you perhaps hope for. I say that, because how else does a single final no vote turn into a group yes vote?
Originally Posted by Caesra Matt, I totally understand your point, and that is the very context of the question, do you view the question is exclusive or inclusive. Please elaborate.
Originally Posted by Caesra Again a view of the individual and they way they assess things. There are a great many factors that effect the way we evaluate things and I have yet to see a conversation around this topic that digs into the actual questions. We all perceive things the way we carry the world in our minds and it sometimes makes it very difficult to understand the responses of each other. This seems a bit rhetorical and slightly confusing - my takeaway is simply this - we all have different points of view, and our different points of view make it difficult to see the point of view of another. Is that the jist here?
Originally Posted by Caesra So it is my hope to break down a few questions as simple as we can ask them. I am 100% certain that every level of question I ask will be met with the same 'world view' that you just presented. Please explain the "world view" that you feel I've presented.
Originally Posted by Caesra But I am truely interested in seeing how each questions and corresponding sub question gets answered. But what does that mean exactly? If you simply mean you'd like more opinions, great. However, if you hope that by examining the gray areas you can come up with a final, definitive endorsement for all designer fishes (i.e. using the logic of your metaphor - if murder isn't OK then capital punishment isn't OK, or if capital punishment is OK then murder is OK on the whole), you're really chasing a fantasy. Early on, I probably said that "Designer Fish" were 100% bad, that's probably the extent to which I explained my stance on the matter. That may have framed it as black and white, and the younger Matt probably looked at it largely in that way. Of course, I'm older, "wiser"?, and well, I do acknowledge that this is not simply a black and white issue, but overall, I still believe that based on the generalized and semi-mis-informed views of general hobbyists, what are generally thought of as designer fish bring more costs than value to the table. No matter what I would like to see happen, people ARE going to pursue them, and thus, why my next talk is already taking shape on being a responsible fish breeder whether pursuing one line of breeding or another.
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 10:52 AM
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No disrespect intended, but I am not going to respond to your responses... I posted this thread because I am curious and just the handful of responses above spawned several additional questions in my mind and I am interested in reading more... I am not attempting to black and white anything...very rarely is anything in life black and white.
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 10:56 AM
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Let me ask this then. If designers were also breeding in good characteristics of a species and breeding out the bad parts, as in how easily they get diseases, birth defects, how fast it grows, would the designer be ok then? I see both sides. I like the color in the designers, but if it hurts the species by breeding the strength out of them then I say no.
RLTW 180 Gallon Mixed Reef Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 11:21 AM
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Originally Posted by rgrking Let me ask this then. If designers were also breeding in good characteristics of a species and breeding out the bad parts, as in how easily they get diseases, birth defects, how fast it grows, would the designer be ok then? Same line of thinking that I was critical on for the above - you can't tie the two together and get an answer that makes sense. The one goal of breeding does not condone nor condemn, nor redeem the other. I will throw out this interesting side note - from a conservation minded standpoint, the very act of breeding in captivity at all is considered to have some deleterious effects in the first place. I.e. breeding for faster growth, or disease resistance not found in the wild population - when reintroduced to the wild, such a fish would be fundamentally more competitive than it used to be. Is that a good or bad thing? Well, it's good for the captive population, and perhaps increased vigorous traits might be REQUIRED to reestablish a species that was compromised to the point of collapse in the first place. I.e. I'm thinking of isolated populations of wolves where inbreeding occurs, so game management actually has to come in and introduce unrelated animals to keep the local geographic population from undergoing genetic collapse. So, I think that in captive propagation from a conservation standpoint, there is again simply a priority that trumps the other issues. I.e. to have a slightly altered captive-based population is better than to have none at all.
Originally Posted by rgrking I see both sides. I like the color in the designers, but if it hurts the species by breeding the strength out of them then I say no.
The general thinking is that pursuit of designers does come at other costs. I'd say that good breeding practices can prevent that. Again, referring to the ACK and how some breeders use their understanding of genetics to avoid congenital, hereditary problems through careful selective breeding, while other breeders run puppy mills that turn out dogs of perhaps very questionable quality. I'll further say that, in my very generalized experience, the types of hobbyist-level breeders, the "amateur" breeder if you will, is not thinking about the long-term consequences when pursuing designer-type breeding. Part of that stems from the profit motive (short term gain) and part of that stems from being mis or uninformed, but mostly, when I ran into people who were implementing questionable breeding practices at the non-professional level, they were really doing it for personal gain (monetary or other), and weren't terribly concerned about anything else. And heck yeah, I was terribly excited when I discovered the Albino Zebra Obliquidens in our hatchery over a decade ago. And now that's a fish you can find, with some patience and persistence. But that fish falls into a category of "designer" fish that don't seem to present the same types of problems that others do. I should probably set up some sort of "designer ranking" - heck I'm going to do that right now.
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 11:37 AM
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However you ask the question it is still subjective as the definition means different things to different people. The question is at such a high level and unspecific, I think it is inevitable you will get debate on even "what is a designer fish" from asking the question "are designer fish ok" from such an informed group. Matt's view IMO is very conservation minded and concerned with maintaining genetic bloodlines. No bad thing. I don't think it is possible to get an easy yes, no concensus on such a question IMO.
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 11:47 AM
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Originally Posted by Duck Matt's view IMO is very conservation minded and concerned with maintaining genetic bloodlines. No bad thing. In fact, I'd argue the top priority viewpoint because IF we put conservation first, BOTH the conservation minded breeder, and the ornamental/designer-minded breeder, benefit. How? Simple. The more species we preserve, the more we preserve our natural biodiversity (a win for conservation-minded breeding) AND the more "raw materials" we preserve for the long term pursuit of designer breeding (including intentional hybridization). The flipside scenario, everyone loses. That's why, in the "black and white" framing of "are designer fish sometimes OK", I can't answer any way other than no, because to say "yes" is to greenlight a damaging set of priorities. Even the albino, one of the most fundamental genetic mutations that occurs with some degree of regularity and is highly understood, does present problems IF it were to get muddled into a conservation minded breeder's operation. The damage is less than other things, but still, there is damage. A lot of this damage can be prevented, but given the current status of how we handle livestock ID in the chain of custody, and given that the majority of hobbyists still can't really tell the difference between A. percula and A. ocellaris, breeders really have to step it up and recognize what we're collectively up against. It is very tough to set aside short term goals to have the big picture in mind, but that's what I believe we all have to do.
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Re:Designer Fish
Thursday, August 4, 2011 11:58 AM
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I would have to agree. The better we control and document importation through to the end user, the better placed we will be to ensure, geographical bloodlines are continued. Therefore designer fish will be far less of a threat to conservation and endangered species.
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 1:21 PM
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Originally Posted by mPedersen 'Designer Fish' distract from more critical goals.
Some might argue that designer fish finance more critical goals. Jeff
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Re:Designer Fish
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 1:31 PM
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I'm kinda with you on that Jeff. They certainly can help to offset the expenses of researching less cost effective species in the short term.
Chad Penney - MBI Council Agis quod Adis
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