Soothing Shrimp

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC125020/ More references are available at the bottom of the paper. Hope this helps.

Once again, neos seem to be overlooked. *sigh*

If bound, it can make tissues/pigment bluish-brown.

Congrats!

I was doing some research on shrimp pigment and found out that shrimp color- such as different types of albinism is not related to melanin; that's a mammal thing. Instead, crustation pigments are all carotenoids. Not surprising when you think about it, and something which I guessed already. However upon further research I found why astaxanthin causes color change. In my past experiment with neo yellows, feeding astax causes a color shift from yellow to greenish to blue to brown. Why is this so, when in fish it can make them redder? The answer lay in how the molecule is constructed. When astaxanthin is relaxed it is red, when compacted it is blue. In crustations it does not occur in it's basic relaxed form when eaten; instead it’s mostly bound to a protein called crustacyanin that causes it to compact. Thus causing a bathochromic shift. In other words, since this string winds up being crumpled up and forced into into another molecule, it behaves as a blue/brown pigment. An example of this is a normal brownish lobster. Cook that lobster and it turns red. Why? Because the protein that compresses the astaxanthin is broken and the astax then is free to go to relaxed form. So color of the tissue/shell is from differing amounts of free and bound astax in different layers of the shell, how thick the shell is, and whether astaxanthin is closer to the surface or in a deeper layer.

I tried to find it yesterday, with no luck. I'll look again today, but perhaps it was just a trick of the light or something. As I wrote before, if it seems too good to be true, perhaps it is. heh Still, it was exciting when I thought I had one.

If it stays that color as it grows, yeah. Truthfully though, I think anyone with a large amount of neos could find new projects. It's just that if a person has one strain, the unusual ones get culled to keep the strain breeding true. It's a game of numbers. The odds are better with lots.

baking dish? Oh no!!!

Place the bag in back of your double filter. You want the water currents to move around it.

Congrats!

Try now

Yeah, it snows a little yesterday and today. Plow didn't come through, so had to shovel about 20 feet into the street. The black line is where our driveway ends. The circled item is not a Sasquatch. heh It's a 5' 10" person.

I'll do a trade with ya. May as well try another species. PM me and we'll figure out something.

Looks to me offhand like sunkist shrimp. Caridina cf. propinqua. Anyone else?

You can buy shrimp from this forum. Lots of good hobbyists here who care about parameters and their shrimp. http://www.shrimpspot.com/index.php?/forum/6-the-marketplace/

I use a very tiny bit of baking soda to bring up the ph.

LOL We'll see Will. It still may have just been a light reflection or something.

I've used the same substrate off and on for two years, and it still does its job. I like bit higher ph, because breeding seems to do better for me.

I'll look into that. Thanks James.

I would have never guessed...

You betcha.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww

I have hope, however I'm also telling myself the odds are so stacked against this...we'll have to wait and see.

May be a pumpkin then. (?) Shrimp genetics are very strange at times. Some of the most unexpected colors pop out of others.

Have you tried MzJinkzd? Limnopilos naiyanetri (micro spider crab) $3.50 ea Here's Rachel's site: http://msjinkzd.com/stocklist/ She's a well respected person with fish.