Going to try something for giggles

I'm just about ready to get my breeding system up - so why not try to shoot for the moon and go with some fish that resemble each other and might interbreed? 
 
Feb 15th the fun starts! 
 
(And no, not clowns

like what?  

Why Not? Because if you do it, the result will likely be something that vaguely resembles both parents, and can be confused for either, thus having the potential to be misidentified and sold as a pure species and not a hybrid. Hybrids between disparate species pose far fewer problems.

Here's an example.  Which is going to be problematic and which isn't?
Centropyge flavissima X Centropyge heraldi
Centropyge flavissima X Centropyge eibli

Since I don't know what you're planning, I can't comment further yet.... 
 
 

 
OK, I'll take a stab at Matt's question.  The first cross will be just a yellow fish, maybe with some blue and black spots like either parent and maybe not.  Very confusing and it would initially appear to be a muddy cross without significant new color or patterns.   The second is a gold mine of a hybrid already occurring in nature often called a tigerpyge.  But I'm ignorant of whether it is sterile or whether even more amazing things can be done when be backcrossed to it's parents.  
 
Matt, I understand your point.  But sometimes the first generation of a muddy cross might still result in an amazing future advancement when more recessive traits come to light.  But generally I agree with you that the first cross doesn't seem like it would do anything but muddy the water.
 
Does this mean there's a chance Arc Katana is going to mess with pelagics?  That's where the real fun is.

I have no clue what Arc Katana is going to pursue, but Dave W. you're very correct in what those two proposed hybrids is likely to make.

That said, the "discovery of recessives" has nothing to do with hybridization...in fact, hybridization would most certainly present at least an initial step backwards given that two different species are contributing the genes....so things are going to be more disparate than similar. It is line breeding and back crossing where you'll find recessives, but you do so at the expense of sacrificing genetic diversity and thus, genetic fitness. In short, you run the risk of stumbling upon a recessive gene that perhaps is detrimental too...which is why periodic outcrossing is important, and thus, why access to wild broodstock maintains important (because they represent what is generally considered to be the ideal randomized set of genes, and thus, should help restore genetic diversity where it is lost).

Matt, you know a lot more about fish than I do, I can just draw from years of flower hybridizing which may be different from fish.  Some flower crosses display hybrid vigor greater than either parent, many are sterile.  
 
You are probably correct that discovery of recessives has little to do with hybridization in fish (see my first sentence, above).  But with flowers, I thought the mixing of genes caused a lot of expression of recessive traits.  Maybe I'm wrong and maybe fish are just different, at least at the levels we are working at.  Many flowers have been crossed hundreds of times at multiple ploidy levels and the process is much different.  
 
Which means that Arc Katana must make the wildest angelfish crosses known to science to see who is right.  No pressure.  Has anyone told him this?

 
 
I'll make sure to read the memo

moved

 
Have you gone forward with this?
 
Coral Mag recently had an interesting article on the C.ebli hybrids.

Jake
We are all in this together