Wildcaught, F1, F2 Captive Bred??? How does that work?

The term wild catch will be familiar to many in the aquarium hobby. It means no less than that the fish in question comes from the wild. Because of the large populations and distribution of the species, these fish have the genes that most closely match what the fish look like in the wild.

Fortunately, not all fish are caught from the wild. But then, how do you indicate how far the descendants are relinquishing from the wildly caught specimens? For this the hobby uses (or misused) the notation that comes from science. In order to investigate the inheritance of plant properties, the Monk Gregor Mendel set up a system in the 19th century to keep track of how the inheritance works. To keep track of which generation of descendants he was working with, he used the term F1 for the first generation after the parent; F2 is the second generation after the parents.

Use in the aquarium hobby

This notation is used slightly differently in the aquarium hobby. We are not scientists and we only want to indicate how many generations are between the wild-caught fish and the fish we buy. you get the following list:

After F3 we no longer use the F notation and speak of Captive bred.

What to do now with offspring of, for example, a wild-caught male and an F1 female. You can best describe this as WC x F1, it is not F1 or F2. So keep it simple, use the term wild caught only for fish caught in the wild and the F1 to F3 notation only for the fish of which you certainly know the origin. If you are not sure if a fish is WC or F1 – F3, use the term captive bred.

Hybrids

In this article we assumed that the parents are of the same species. A wild-caught male x a wild-caught female of a different specie, does not produce fry that you can label as F1 (scientifically undoubtedly correct but undesirable in the hobby). These fry are what we call hybrids. Most hobbyists prefer to keep original species or specifically cultivated varieties.