# Selective Breeding Cherry Shrimp Tips?



## WiyRay (Jan 11, 2009)

Hiya!

Here's my story:
Most shrimpers seem to look for the SOLID red colouration, and darkness has also been of interest lately too (ex. chocolate var.). With most lfs, their cherries are usually pretty "bleh" grade. I've always just assumed them to be the rejects that the local aquarists here don't want in their tanks. 

Though today, I was staring at a tank with some fairly impressive cherries, lfs-wise. There were a few that were close to high sakura - fire red but that wasn't what really caught my eye. There a few deep red cherries that were still transparent. They looked almost like what you would expect when I say a red jolly rancher candy. I'm not sure if I'm the only one who thinks that a tank full of red jolly rancher shrimps would look pretty cool, but I would like to attempt it.

Their bodies were more or less solid already (solid as in no cracks in colour, but still transparent), only their appendages were still non-coloured transparent. So I was thinking that maybe with a few generations of selective breeding, I can make them fully red jolly ranchered. 

Here are my actual questions:
Who here has/is selectively breeding shrimp? 
Do you think the variation that I'm aiming for is possible?
Any suggestions in terms of breeding appendage colour? (mainly the legs)
How many tanks would I reasonably need?
And any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I'm sure you'll get more answers of more help, just wanted to wish you luck - it's people like you that are the reason we have the many colours and such that we have in hobby shrimp nowadays. Selective breeding is done all the time, and I think jolly red rancher shrimp sound pretty neat.

At the most basic level, you simply choose to breed those individuals that show the characters you want. You pick females that show what you want, and place them with males that show those same characteristics and then you wait for the babies to be born. 

I don't think you need a whole pile of tanks, but you'd need a few. You can divide larger tanks into smaller sections to make better use of the space.

Baby shrimp may take awhile to show their true colours, so don't be too eager to cull a batch overly quickly. Don't get rid of the culls right away either, as you may see something in them a bit later you want to keep and use. 

Once the babies are old enough to sort, pick the ones you like best for the next generations and repeat the process. Some believe females are somewhat more important, overall, than males, while others believe both are equally important. Certainly, the more females you have berried, the more babies you have to choose from, but the actual genetic contributions made are equal from mother and father.

Of course, characteristics like colour are genetic, and presumably the quality of transparency or the lack of it as well. Depending on whether these characteristics are governed by dominant or recessive genes or by combinations of genes, will affect how long it might take to get the result you want and how much success you'll eventually have. Meantime, you'll learn a lot. Take lots of pictures and keep some sort of log, so you can keep track of your progress better.


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

Fishfur has covered all that you need to know;-) I just want to say I've been selectively breeding a tank of fire red that started with 10 female painted fire like this (I think it is qualified as a painted fire red, look at the leg ;-)










but problem was good male wasn't easy to find, so the 10 females were together with just ONE sub-standard male. Big mistake. The F1 was mixed with high and low grade and overall regress to about fire red on average, I culled heavily, more than 50% were retired.... then F2, a bit better, then F3 is much better (about 20% cull). In the process (very tedious), sometimes you see something special (not usually in a good way), such as this girl showed up










A few tips for you if you want to do this,
- It's really just a challenge you take on, as you can easily spend a few more bucks to get high end fire reds nowadays to start a breeding crew. You just need to be sure you get good male to start with. I do it just to claim that I can do it.

- Multiple tanks would make it easier, but I only used one. I use one or two breeder boxes in that tank. If there's anything not to my standard, I move them to the breeder box. I cull early, around 5mm - 8mm as I don't want to take the chance, I can always move them back to the main tank if they "repent" to turn up more colourful. It does happen as some shrimps just get more colourful later.

- Cull hard and heavy, have no mercy especially for males. If you miss one bad male and it mates with 3 female, you will have to cull another 45 shrimps from 90, if you miss a bad female, you might just have to cull 15 from 30. Assuming average clutch size is 30. And for some reason, the bad looking males are always more willing to mate and win most of the time 

One suggestion: You are going to end up with culls, and lots of them. Please do not feed them to larger fish. All shrimps are entitled to live no matter how they look. I gave away some lower quality ones to people who are interested in shrimps but don't want to or can't afford buying, I also sold some for cheap (like 40 fire reds/sakura for $10 - $15). Just don't kill them ;-)


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## Suen (Apr 26, 2010)

Good words, Randy


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