Just not these... lol
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I couldn't agree more. Take a perfectly pretty fish and line-breed it into something that looks like a cull. Yuk.
Unfortunately, this has happened with many African Rift Lake cichlids. The situation amongst Malawians is particularly distressing, so much so that it's getting difficult to find pure species in the hobby. This is a monophyletic species flock that evolved only recently (~500K YBP), so it is perhaps not surprising that interspecific and intergeneric hybridization is rampant in captivity.
The polyphyletic Cichlid species flock of Lake Tanganyika is much more diverse, and much older (
i. e. more distantly related). Furthermore, many of these fishes are significantly more challenging to keep and breed in captivity, so one might have expected them to be less prone to genetic manipulation. By and large, that has been the case, but there have been exceptions. One example is
Tropheus sp. 'black' Kiriza, which looks like this in the wild-
The much-ballyhooed line-bred amelanotic 'Kiriza Gold' derivative looks like this-
Now, I'm not saying that Kiriza Gold is an ugly fish, but why bother when the wild-type is so much more dramatic? Moreover, there are many intensely yellow Mbuna in Lake Malawi that are prettier than Kiriza Gold, and they are way less expensive and way easier to keep in captivity. So what's the point, except for novelty?
Tropheus sp.'black' Karamba and its amelanotic 'Red Bishop' derivative are another example of this sort of silliness.
But IMO the 'Black Widow' derivative of
C. frontosa is the worst of all (so far) as regards taking a perfectly pretty fish and selecting a less attractive derivative. But lest you think that this is the end of this sad story, there is a newer, even less attractive
C. frontosa strain called 'Night Star' that has been developed recently, and of course, it is even more expensive. I just don't get it.
As regards wild-type
C. frontosa, the 'Blue Moba' population is clearly the most sought-after, and because their collection point is in the DRC, they are wildly expensive. Good luck finding a pic of these online that hasn't been through Photoshop!
