Why can't you breed a veiltail? (or can you?)

[jeffegg2]

Originally Posted by Aus

It's downright shameful that veiltails have such a marginalised place in the IBC.

They're a foundation animal. They should be upkept, to whatever standards beyond simple soundness might be placed on them by whatever body sets the breed standard.

One day, there very feasibly may not be any veiltails that are not genetically weak, which means that one day there could feasibly be no more veiltails.

Don't blame the greedy mass breeders or the people who buy them for pets. Blame the people who set the standards and turn their noses up at these fish, whose standards are so 'high' they'll let the veiltail die out as a viable breed type rather than act quickly and diligently to preserve and strengthen it.

Of course I realise there are people working to re-establish the veiltail type. But until the VT is actually deemed as valuable as any other tail type (which are also badly bred and languishing in tiny pet store cups everywhere...) to the species/show crowds in general it won't catch on and the VT will continue to be marginalised, to its vast detriment.


TL;DR: I love veiltails too.

What is a "foundation animal"? It is not a wild type. I consider it a step towards the half moon type. I would not be opposed to an IBC veil tail class however. But if there was such a class, perhaps they would be swamped with Thai betta owners.

[Aus]

I guess I'm used to talking about mammals..

What I meant was, it's one of the original tail types developed. No matter whether VT is considered as a 'step toward' any other type, it's still a tail type exhibited by the species that imo deserves to included in the IBC, if for no other reason that to encourage the breeding of good examples of the type and genetically sounder strains of fish with it.

Why would it be swamped with Thai betta breeders? Are the other classes not so?