Decision time with shrimp

[Cinnebuns]

I have had my blue dream colony for about a year and a half. At one point early on, I was down to 2 females. One of the 2 was low quality. She also happened to be the one who was berried most often and most heavily. Because of this, I have been struggling with culling the colony for quality. A few weeks ago I decided to cull more heavily. Tonight I realized I've now culled about 90% of the colony. They are still in the next door tank so I can put some back, but it was kind of an eye opener to me how many of them were not desirable. This leaves me needing to make a decision. The way I see it here are my options:

1. Stay the course but don't cull as ruthlessly. Pull out obviously really bad ones but don't be as picky for now. I would also need to make sure I have a decent amount of females so I don't bottle neck my genetics again. 

2. Put some back from the cull tank. Maybe I can find the not-so-bad ones and put them back? Idk. 

3. Rehome the colony and start new. I wouldn't mind switching to red anyway. I've recently kind of regretted my choice to go with blue. 

What's your thoughts?

[TheSwissAquarist]

Option 3. Restart the entire shrimp colony, seeing as most of the current shrimp probably carry the dud gene. 

[nabokovfan87]

He has a video regarding his blue shrimp, quite a few honestly as that's his main neocaridina line... But I wanted to find the video where he talks about resetting. This one is specifically tied to culling and so I wanted to share.

 

On 10/26/2023 at 9:38 PM, Cinnebuns said:

Tonight I realized I've now culled about 90% of the colony. They are still in the next door tank so I can put some back, but it was kind of an eye opener to me how many of them were not desirable.

I've seen it time and time again where someone "resets" as mentioned above. Basically you choose 2-5 males and choose 4-8 females and then let it do it's thing from zero again. You may end up back to culling a wide margin to get that selective color you're looking for.

Essentially, say what you're wanting is a 15-25% of your shrimp hatch. Let's say you have 4 females. That's around 120 shrimp or so per first spawn and you're keeping ~20-30. Yeah it seems like a ton of work but you'll end up with the genetics filtering down the line to what you want. Maybe it takes 2 of these big culls until you really see things where you want.

Same thing that happened with your guppy line you were working on, but I think this is much easier for you to enjoy, if that's something you want to do.

[nabokovfan87]

On 10/26/2023 at 9:38 PM, Cinnebuns said:

2. Put some back from the cull tank. Maybe I can find the not-so-bad ones and put them back? Idk. 

I would definitely avoid this until you give that tank (just like the main tank) 45-60 days to pop and grow at least one generation.

[Cinnebuns]

On 10/27/2023 at 12:57 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Option 3. Restart the entire shrimp colony, seeing as most of the current shrimp probably carry the dud gene. 

I made this exact post in several fb groups too and based on about a dozen or so responses I've gotten so far this is what I'm leaning towards. Funny part is those posts were in international groups yet somehow word must have gotten out. I've already gotten 3 messages from people in my state asking how much for the colony haha. I have no idea how to price that. 

[Cinnebuns]

On 10/27/2023 at 1:36 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

Same thing that happened with your guppy line you were working on, but I think this is much easier for you to enjoy, if that's something you want to do.

This didn't happen with my guppy line. I considered doing it but I never actually did. I just ended up rehoming the entire colony because of health reasons. If it weren't for the health I wouldn't have reset them even though. I would have started to cull more heavily than before though. 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 10/27/2023 at 12:38 AM, Cinnebuns said:

I have had my blue dream colony for about a year and a half. At one point early on, I was down to 2 females. One of the 2 was low quality. She also happened to be the one who was berried most often and most heavily. Because of this, I have been struggling with culling the colony for quality. A few weeks ago I decided to cull more heavily. Tonight I realized I've now culled about 90% of the colony. They are still in the next door tank so I can put some back, but it was kind of an eye opener to me how many of them were not desirable. This leaves me needing to make a decision. The way I see it here are my options:

1. Stay the course but don't cull as ruthlessly. Pull out obviously really bad ones but don't be as picky for now. I would also need to make sure I have a decent amount of females so I don't bottle neck my genetics again. 

2. Put some back from the cull tank. Maybe I can find the not-so-bad ones and put them back? Idk. 

3. Rehome the colony and start new. I wouldn't mind switching to red anyway. I've recently kind of regretted my choice to go with blue. 

What's your thoughts?

Similar thing happened to me. Life got busy and I stopped culling. Now the blue dreams have a black inkspot pattern and some have a striped pattern down their back. Also at one point I gave my friend 25 of the good genetic blue dreams. So my blue dream tank was looking kinda empty with a few of the inkspot shrimp which were never looking too active, unless they got something special, like spinach or shrimp lolly.

My wild tank is always super active and swimming all around. So I just combined the 2 colonies. My wild shrimp are actually my favorite shrimp because they are all different, and I’m very happy and content with the decision I made. The tank is full of energy and life.

 

I’ve come to realize I don’t care about cosmetic issues. If they are healthy and happy, so am I. And I am always delighted when I see a new pattern in the youngsters.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Rube_Goldfish]

I was getting ready to say that you could get a new group of high quality blue dreams from somewhere and add it to your current best shrimp to reinvigorate the colony and get new genes in the mix, but then I saw where you said you're ready to move on to red anyway. Sounds like Option 3 is your best bet.

[tolstoy21]

On 10/27/2023 at 12:38 AM, Cinnebuns said:

A few weeks ago I decided to cull more heavily. Tonight I realized I've now culled about 90% of the colony. They are still in the next door tank so I can put some back, but it was kind of an eye opener to me how many of them were not desirable.

Yup!

I think what you do depends on what your goals are. (And sorry in advance for a long reply, but brevity is not my strong point!)

Route #1 -- If you want to improve a line and make it fantastic, culling as heavy as you are doing is part of the game.

I always cull back my breeder tank (a 10G) to the best one or two males and the best 5 or 10 females. As they have babies, I remove the babies to a tank next door (another 10G) and grow them out a bit. From those, I will select only those juveniles of better quality than their parents, and relocate those back into the breeding tank. 

As the breeding tank population expands a bit, I will set aside some time to reduce its number back down to the original handful of the best shrimp (I do this maybe once every month or two).  Rinse and repeat. 

All my culls from the juvenile grow out go into a larger tank (20G), and those I either sell or put into my community tank and just let them do their thang (which is get eaten or find a way to survive in jungle, which a lot of them do). 

What I have observed is that, over time, the quality of the shrimp in the cull tank also slowly improves, and what one might now consider culls are actually very nice shrimp. (It helps to have a place to re-home or sell culls so you keep that population rotating out over time, other wise the cull tank goes back to square one).

In your case, if you don't have any shrimp right now that you think are worth working with, I would reset things, and look to acquire some of higher quality. 

Route #2 - Now, if your goal is to just have a colony to enjoy and look at as you relax in a chair at the end of your day, then just plucking out the few undesirables that you can see is the way to go. But, this can become hard to manage over time, as an ugly shrimp or two could be hiding out in some plants, laughing at you, while making ugly babies with a beautiful wife! 

Route #2 is  far less work than #1  (and requires less aquariums). So again, it all boils down to what your goals  and the personal approach you choose as a means to find enjoyment in this hobby.