Selective breeding steps, tanks, and results.

[Subtletanks91]

So this idea came from another forum. But rather than just one topic I wanted several to get an idea of how to start doing this from a shrimp community rather than a wider community.

1.what are the basics, and the complex steps in selective breeding.

2. How many tanks is ideal to have for selective breeding, and what's the minimum tank number.

3. What are you breeding or what have you seen be bred in recent years and months.

I would like to try selective breeding with carids, but I'm unsure how I should go about this.

[Soothing Shrimp]

carids?  Do you mean cards?

 

the following are my opinions.  Other people will have other opinions.  As in anything, take what you find works for you and run with it.

 

1) Wow.  Lots of proven practices work in selective breeding.  Basically we are most concerned with inbreeding in shrimp.

 

People seem too think that inbreeding is a bad thing.  "Ewwww.  How can you breed him with his mom?  Defects will pop up.  They'll be unhealthy and have psychological issues."  When done corrctly, nothing could be further from the truth.  By inbreeding you do two things- a) Set the more desirable characteristics and 2) make the undesirable characteristics make itself known faster.

 

While in mammals deformities are shown to occur if too much inbreeding happens, in aquatic inverts this risk is almost null.  In fact a study showed that shrimp are able to be bred for 10+ generations and still have plenty of diversity in their DNA.  One theory is that they are "made" this way because they may share the same small area for years and years- thereby naturally inbreeding.

 

So, all selective breeding then deals with inbreeding or the occasional outbreeding (adding new blood.)   Outbreeding adds new health and vitality, however it can also add weakness, unwanted traits and other challenges.  In short, lots and lots of culling with the possibility improving or ruining years of hard work.  Thus, if we can minimize outbreeding, we can focus on creating a "pure" breeding strain of one phenotype.

 

2) Minimum number of tanks for selective breeding?  One.

 

Surprised?  Think of it as Darwin's evolution theory.  In short, the development that offers the best advantage survives.  In this case, the shrimp with the desirable trait survives and the others are culled.  Say you have a hundred shrimp in your tank and 10 begin to exhibit the trait you would like.  Cull the 90% and work with the 10.  When that number reaches 100, cull down to the best 10 or 20 again and continue the routine.  Eventually the shrimp trait will start appearing in more and more of your line.

 

Everything is based on variations of this.  You have some programs that select the best from one tank after culling, and place them with other tanks.  Some that use breeding tanks side by side for 6 generations and then crossing with each other, and then breeding for 6 more generations, etc

 

You have the most risky, which is finding the best of each you can find from different sources and continually crossing new finds... (Which in my opinion hardly gets anywhere because you continually scatter the modifiers instead of tightening them up.)

 

...and In Asia they go even more radically with parallel breeding.  Two shrimp of the best traits and opposite gender are selected to be bred in Tank A.  The same is done in Tank B. 

 

When the fem gives birth in Tank A- the best male from hat litter stays in tank A and the best female from that litter goes to tank B.

 

When the fem gives birth in tank B, the best male from that litter stays in tank B, and the best female goes to tank A

 

Thus the breeding begins again...over and over.

 

All these programs try to create the same goal, but are different avenues of getting there.  Some slower, some faster.

 

3)  I breed neos mostly.  I find it fascinating that shrimp vars come and go in fads.  Often, they can be out of fad and lost forever once gone, because nobody decides to keep up with the breeding.  One of my favorite vars of all time was the kanoko shrimp.  I would have LOVED to have had that, but the fad didn't catch on and the color died out.

 

I'm afraid that may happen to some of the other shrimp if we don't preserve their history as well.  Most noticeably recently is the Classic BV, with it's original sky blue color very much mimicking the blue pearl shrimp.  Lately people have wanted the darker blue velvet color.  So everybody is dropping their lines of Classics, soon I fear, to fade away to oblivion.

[Subtletanks91]

Dang, I never would have know to only have one tank and cull off I thought everyone that selective breeds uses like 3-4 tanks. Two from breeding and one or two for culling out. This is very informative. How about those breeder boxes that are plastic for selective breeding?

[Soothing Shrimp]

I've not heard great things with keeping shrimp in those long term, however short term it works well (so I hear) for placing a valued male and female together.  The goal here to berry the fem.

 

Once berried you remove the male and have two options.  1) release the shrimplets into the breeder box, or 2) release the fem and have her release the shrimplets into the tank.

 

Both have pros and cons.  However I think once she berries up, the best bet for survival of shrimplets and better care would be to release the fem into the tank.

 

I'm rapidly running out of space and may have to start doing this method myself, so I am following other threads on this as I speak.

 

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These are simple ways to selectively breed.  There are much more complicated ways such as doing multiple pairings, 1 male to multiple fems per tank, writing down shrimplet counts and results, and following family lines.  However that takes lots of time and money and space.  Keep it simple, keep it fun, and keep it a hobby that is relaxing.  IMHO that is the way to be successful.

[Subtletanks91]

I agree here. If its to complicated its not fun anymore haha. I may try to do that because I have three breeder boxes. The plastic ones. And tigers and cards and mischling I want to breed out. Oebt will breed with cards right

[Soothing Shrimp]

Yep.

[Subtletanks91]

Will the offspring have orange eyes??

[Soothing Shrimp]

I don't think I've seen them with OE, but if the genes and modifiers combine correctly, in theory it is possible.