# Selective breeding dilemma..



## LTPGuy (Aug 8, 2012)

First, some pictures...



















I recently acquired some Blue Diamonds, of which most appeared to be black, and some dark brown. Luckily, there is one pair (M+F) that are distinctly blue leaning toward the darker royal blue.

I initially thought that they were black from shipping stress, but this appears to not be the case. Can anyone else comment on their blue diamonds?

As the photo clearly indicates, I am getting some awesome looking offsprings. The ratio is about 1:20.

I have a huge dilemmas on how to go about selectively breed them. Here are some of the things I've done...

1. Separate parents who are distinctively blue in hope that the offspring will be truer to blue. I abandoned this attempt as I read that the colour gene may be hidden in shrimps that do not show selective colour.

2. I've culled the reddish brown and the somewhat transparent with light scatter pattern of dark and green.

3. I've isolated the True Blue Offspring as in the second photo, in a separate tank.

So right now, I have 3 tanks dedicated to the blue diamonds.

Tank #1 contains all of the selective blue offsprings.
Tank #2 contains the original parents plus F1 and I doubt it has been long enough for F2.
Tank #3 contains 2 maybe 3 of the original parents, a range of grades of F1, and all of the culls.

Am I on the right track to getting more blue offsprings? Your experience suggestion, and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


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## eatmysox (Jul 24, 2012)

First off, congrats on the blue diamond breeding project. With blue diamonds they are extremely variable. Do you know what parents have produced the very blue shrimp or is it random? If it were me I would use one tank for crossing the offspring of the blues back to the parents that produced the blues, in another cross together all of the blue offspring to see what you get. Don't be afraid to cull. With neos I have began to backwards cull. I allow berried females their own section and let the shrimplets grow out, then choose from the large juveniles or adults which should go back into the line. This cuts down on accidentally ruining a line of shrimp. Hope it helps, there really isn't a wrong way of doing things just opinions when it comes to shrimp genetics 

Sent from my tube on the lazy river


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

First step of selective breeding normally starts with getting lots of offspring. When you have like 20-30 of the shrimps that look like your goal then you can breed them together to "purify" the strain. 

AFAIK, blue diamond, black sakura, chocolate, and a few other higher end neo are mass bred together and the sorted before they hit the market. Don't be surprised when you see a bloody mary in the offspring.


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## LTPGuy (Aug 8, 2012)

randy said:


> First step of selective breeding normally starts with getting lots of offspring. When you have like 20-30 of the shrimps that look like your goal then you can breed them together to "purify" the strain.


I must have googled until my eyes fell off and never came across helpful comment such as your above. I'll forage on ahead with isolating enough offsprings for this endeavor.



randy said:


> AFAIK, blue diamond, black sakura, chocolate, and a few other higher end neo are mass bred together and the sorted before they hit the market. Don't be surprised when you see a bloody mary in the offspring.


I understand that blue diamond are bred from chocolate, but I did not know what you've said were true!

I wonder now if some of redder juvie might turn out to be bloody mary!

This also explain why some of my "blue diamond" looks a lot like high grade chocolate, and black sakura. This is a bonus for me, but it can only mean one thing...MTS

This is all very fascinating as I've read your comment in another post on mixing together the strains in contrary to popular conventions.

Normal convention dictates that cross breeding the variants will result in more natural looking Neos. I've a handful of them in my "community" tank for show, but I've seen some very strange mix as you have mentioned also.

With regard to the blue diamond, black sakura, and chocolate, are they closely related enough that they are mass produced as you have mentioned? I can understand that producing them this way will result in stronger offsprings unlike that of the OEBT.

Thanks very much for your always insightful comments.



eatmysox said:


> First off, congrats on the blue diamond breeding project. With blue diamonds they are extremely variable. Do you know what parents have produced the very blue shrimp or is it random?


Thanks for your encouraging words and putting my mind at ease with the variability of the blue diamonds.

Unfortunately, the blue offsprings are random, and I don't have enough original shrimps to try out some of your suggestions for now.



eatmysox said:


> If it were me I would use one tank for crossing the offspring of the blues back to the parents that produced the blues


Is this another approach to purify the strain?



eatmysox said:


> Don't be afraid to cull. With neos I have began to backwards cull. I allow berried females their own section and let the shrimplets grow out, then choose from the large juveniles or adults which should go back into the line. This cuts down on accidentally ruining a line of shrimp. Hope it helps, there really isn't a wrong way of doing things just opinions when it comes to shrimp genetics


There is a whole lot said in the above paragraph and I am way to green to read between the lines.

To reiterate what you're saying...

By backward cull, do you mean berried females are quarantined, until the eggs have hatched? The babies are isolated until they have reach puberty (3 months). At which point, the "chosen" shrimps goes back to the breeding colony? Therefore no "cull" will have a chance of washing out the original "line".

This is also very fascinating. All of this scream MTS.

Thanks for your suggestions.


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