Low quality to high quality

[Pieter]

Dear fishkeepers,

can you get higher quality shrimp from lower quality shrimp?  and select cultures from there to get high quality like SSS?

greets Pieter 

[tolstoy21]

Yes. But it takes many generations and a lot of attention to selective breeding and culling.

[Struggle]

On 7/30/2022 at 5:25 PM, tolstoy21 said:

Yes. But it takes many generations and a lot of attention to selective breeding and culling.

Agreed, I’d suggest starting with the highest quality possible even if it means waiting while you save up more money. Depending on the strain the quantity will degrade significantly if you don’t cull as well. 

[tolstoy21]

On 7/31/2022 at 9:47 AM, Struggle said:

Agreed, I’d suggest starting with the highest quality possible even if it means waiting while you save up more money. Depending on the strain the quantity will degrade significantly if you don’t cull as well. 

Yeah, starting with a higher quality shrimp jump starts the process.  If you don't already have shrimp you plan on working with, I'd shop around for something that seems affordable to you that's closer to where you want to be.  A lot of shrimp breeders sell culls for reasonable rates. These are not perfect specimens, but they tend to carry decent genetics. 

Plenty of good articles and youtube videos out there that discuss how to think about selectively breeding shrimp to improve a line.

[ccc24]

Agree with everyone else. It will your habits as a breeder that determine if this is possible in your tanks. You can breed only the best specimens, cull aggressively and you will improve the line. If you don’t do this, the line will not “self improve” and you will roll the dice with each generation as to the quality you get. 

[gardenman]

Very few breeders intentionally raise low quality fish/shrimp. When you find a low quality one it's typically a cull. But a fish/shrimp that's from a good bloodline still has potential for its fry to be good. The right genes may be there, just inactive in the lower quality fish, but they may resurface in fry from that fish. The whole active/inactive gene thing gets complicated, but it's very possible for a lesser quality fish/shrimp to have the genetic potential to produce exceptional fry. That individual fish/shrimp may just have the "good" genes inactive, and their fry may find those genes active. The whole active/inactive gene thing gets a bit mind-bending, but it's very possible for an ugly duckling of a fish/shrimp to produce an impressive batch of fry. 

[tolstoy21]

On 8/5/2022 at 9:04 AM, gardenman said:

The whole active/inactive gene thing gets a bit mind-bending, but it's very possible for an ugly duckling of a fish/shrimp to produce an impressive batch of fry. 

Right. And if the gene isn't in there lurking around as a recessive trait, you're waiting for a mutation that's advantageous to what your looking for and then separate that one specimen out for selective breeding.

Edited August 5, 2022 by tolstoy21