# Parameter initialization in a genetic algorithm

I'm using a neural network in a genetic algorithm. The neural network has 4 inputs (values between 0 and 1) and 4 outputs, corresponding to the probabilities of different actions. The neural network has 58 parameters.

At first, I create a random population: each individual has 58 random parameters. Parameters are chosen randomly with the default method of Keras, on python (values between -1 and 1). Is it a good method? Maybe the best solution needs to have parameters with values higher than 1 for example, but with my method, only values between -1 and 1 exist in the "gene pool". So, parameters equal to 3.4 can't appear for example.

I tried to train the same neural network with labeled data and gradient descent, in order to have an idea of the range of the parameter. After training the model, I obtained some parameters with values >1, or <-1. I thought I could use those parameters as initialization for my genetic algorithm. But how could I get different individuals? If the 1st parameter of my trained model equals 2.5, do I have to set the 1st parameter of the different individuals to 2.5 +- 20% for example?