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as some of you know, i'm a frontosa guy.
alot of us don't mix generation in the same tank, or at least with breeding.
so, i keep my frontosa breeders pure at F0/WC, no F1 or anything later than WC.
alot of us don't mix, or if we do it is like this...
WC male, and F1 females.
but usually most of the breeders i know only use WC.

Is this the same for the zebra community?
Or does the price and scarcity mean that many people mix generations in their stock?

Right now i have a trio that are F2, at the end of this month i will be adding a trio of F1, and i hope next month to pick up 4 WC that i seen for sale in my area.
any comments about mixing generations?

My breeding adults are wild caught - about 6 years old...

I have however got 2 smaller juveniles in there - once they are older I will probably not worry too much about seperating them - as you say the rareaty means that you can never really be positive about their background anyway

I am not sure if you are talking about deifferent generations that all started from the same parents or about purchasing different generations and mixing them.

If the former I doubt it is a big problem since the time between birth and the ability to spawn is fairly long. I would be more concerned about pecking order problems than inbreeding.

If the latter I doubt it matters.

generally speaking there will only be a pecking order problem if there's two males wanting the alpha position.

Inbreeding... this is actually quite interesting. personally I belive it takes a lot more inbreeding in fish before it becomes a problem than in humans! but, the once so hardy guppy is now a very delicate fish - due to inbreeding.... But it takes a long time to get there I'd think.

McEve- do you think there is also a peckimg order among females? I would assume they all want to spawn with the alpha male? My feeling is both sexes work out a pecking order.

I can say yes to trhe above... I believe there is... I currently have quite a badly whitened female after adding another mature female to the group

i know my frontosa have a pecking order with both males and females.
i have had my alpha female frontosa be the alpha fish, meaning though she was smaller than the alpha and beta male, she was the boss of the tank, so the males would not breed due to fear.
so i had to remove her and let the males take charge, then breeding started.
i later would add her back to the tank, and she would get her status back with the females, but this time the male will stand up to her, though if she wanted to she could beat him down because she is pretty mean.
thats how my frontosa work anyway.
the females are fighting alot, trying to move up the pecking order.
the males pretty much just hang out and watch.

TwoTankAmin wrote:McEve- do you think there is also a peckimg order among females? I would assume they all want to spawn with the alpha male? My feeling is both sexes work out a pecking order.

yes they do

Breeding an F1 with an F2 would rear fry that are F1.5 or F2.5?

Sorry just had ta poke fun at it for a sec.

lol

well, due to the difficulty in finding zebras, and not fully knowing the generation i'm going to go ahead and mix them, unlike what i do with my frontosa.
So now i have a mix of 3 F2 at 1.5 inch, and 2 F1 at 2.0 inch.
In 2 weeks it looks like i will be picking up a quad of WC (if that is true) that the guy has had for nearly 2 years, plus 5 juvies, so i'm pretty stocked about that.
They will all be residing in a 55, so that should be spacious enough for them.
course then i thought about splitting into 2 tanks, in case something bad happens i won't lose all of them.

so, what i will do is.
The new four WC, plus my two 2 inchers in 1 tank.
The new five 1.25, and my three 1.25 inchers in another tank.

so a tank of 6 of the larger, and a tank of 8 of the smaller.
The older group are F0 and F1.
the smaller group are F1 and F2.
I think i'm about done adding to the group.
unless i can locate proven females of course.....

what i ended up doing are the 4 "WC" are in one tank, and the 10 F1, F2 juvies are in another tank. Mostly due to size differences. When the juvies hit 2.25 i may mix them in with the "WC", not sure yet.