Ok. I am new to the whole breeding thing. But I'm enjoying it. What Is line breeding? I thought it was keep breeding the original father with his female offspring. Is this a bad thing to do?
line breeding (or selective breeding ) is where you pick out specific fish (of the same species ) based on a certain trait which you want strengthen
Still operating on no sleep from bagging fish earlier today, but FWIW, line breeding is selective inbreeding. Selective breeding doesn't necessarily mean inbreeding.
When inbreeding, the more complex the organism, the less inbreeding that can be done before things go awry. For example, single-cell organisms can split themselves over and over and over without repercussion. While in humans, inbreeding is highly undesirable. Fish are in between those two extremes. Typically you can go 3-4 repetitions inbreeding cichlids before you should cross in fresh genes.
Line breeding would be breeding a pair, selecting their offspring with a trait or traits you want to encourage, breeding fish with those traits to each other or back to one of the parents, and then repeating that a few times to entrench the desired traits. When you outcross for fresh genes at some point, you'd be selecting fish that are unrelated, but also show the desired traits.
With respect to breeding in general, if you're breeding brothers/sisters together, if you start to get considerable frequency of deformities/etc, it's a sign that the time has come to get new genes involved. Personally, I try to aim at getting unrelated males and females if the opportunity allows. It might be difficult though until you're able to identify where fish originate from. For example, which private breeders practice this effort, or which import new, wild stock, or if buying from a LFS, where they get their wholesale stock from.
