Charose Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 I got a group of red cherry shrimp today from my local fish store with the intention of starting up a colony to maintain and supply my other tanks. Their stock was pretty low and long story short I think I ended up with 4 females and 2 males (shop clerk thought he gave me 4 males and 2 females though I requested at least 6 females and 2 males...) and one of the suspected males is a red rili variant. I was wondering if I should remove this rili male to prevent him from breeding. I know rili is a mutation, but don't know the genetics of it or best practices for establishing a good breeding colony. Will his progeny be a mixture of pure red and rili individuals or all red? I don't want to end back up with muddy shrimps right off the bat so any advice would be appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lefty o Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 im no expert, but judging from the photo, he is just a poorly colored cherry. whether he is a rilli or just poorly colored, he can pass along the genetics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted December 23, 2020 Author Share Posted December 23, 2020 2 minutes ago, lefty o said: im no expert, but judging from the photo, he is just a poorly colored cherry. whether he is a rilli or just poorly colored, he can pass along the genetics. yea the other thought i had was he was immature and not fully colored, but I haven't raised these before. was basing the rili phenotype based on this Red Cherry Shrimp Grading (with pictures) - Shrimp and Snail Breeder AQUARIUMBREEDER.COM Today I would like to talk about Red Cherry shrimp grading. As a matter of fact but most aquarists do not even know what kind… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shkote Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 Ideally, if you want to keep them a specific color you'll cull for any undesirable traits that aren't up to the standards you'd like to see in your colony, rili pattern included. The shrimp above does have a rili pattern, though not a strong one, and has the potential to pass it on. Your solid red cherries can potentially have rili offspring down the road as well. Keeping a colony "true" requires a lot of diligent culling. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrostiesFishes Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 (edited) I’ve attempted to keep cherry shrimp colony’s deep red. And I had little success with doing so. I got rili shrimp every once in awhile and would pull them and put them in their own tank to try start a rili colony but it always seemed to collapse. Maybe after many years you could attempt to keep a colony red. but just starting out I’d just try to get the numbers up and pull a starter colony from their offspring. You’ll have far more to choose from. Edited December 23, 2020 by FrostiesFishes 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted December 23, 2020 Author Share Posted December 23, 2020 Thanks for the input @Lynze and @FrostiesFishes! That was sorta what I suspected, that the mutation is somewhat common and to be expected. Concern at the moment was if starting out with one of two males being in the 'cull' category, if I'd doom myself to too many undesirables in the next generation. I don't mind a few mutants in the group over time. I'll add to the gene pool in the future with the addition of new shrimp too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JettsPapa Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 If your goal is to have a colony of deep red shrimp then I'd remove him. If you do only have one other male I'd rather look for one or two more than have to cull most (or all) of his offspring. As far as how strong that trait is, I don't have any studies to post, but from personal experience it seems to be pretty strong. I had one blue rili in my red tank for a short time early on. Now I have quite a few red and a few blue rilis in my cull tanks, and am still pulling one out of my red tank occasionally. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandy Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 (edited) Only need one male...but if your other male doesn't make it, you need some male. I ordered some online, received 10, 2 died a day later, leaving me with 7 females and one male. I then held my breath...I have hundreds now. I have yet to see a rili in my colony, but I do get near clear culls. By culling hard at this point I expect to have a very solid medium high grade colony in a year. My original shrimp were sold graded "skakura" but were actually over 50% high grade skakura/low grade red fire, with 2 high grade red fire females. I let them breed without culling for 6 months, target feeding and establising them in new tanks. Now I have the nucleus of a really high grade red fire colony in my guppy fry tank, where they get tons of food and no competition. My point of all this rambling, is that before culling, EXPAND your colony as much as humanly possible. You want a huge pool to pick from. Then choose 10-20 of the very best shrimp. feed the rest to a loach (or whatever you plan to do) and repeat. In a short time with this method you can shift the population genetics far without losing the diversity that will keep them healthy. Edited December 23, 2020 by Brandy 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted December 23, 2020 Author Share Posted December 23, 2020 2 hours ago, JettsPapa said: If your goal is to have a colony of deep red shrimp then I'd remove him. If you do only have one other male I'd rather look for one or two more than have to cull most (or all) of his offspring. As far as how strong that trait is, I don't have any studies to post, but from personal experience it seems to be pretty strong. I had one blue rili in my red tank for a short time early on. Now I have quite a few red and a few blue rilis in my cull tanks, and am still pulling one out of my red tank occasionally. OK, thanks for the observation! I wasn't sure what the penetrance of the mutation was, a quarter of offspring showing the phenotype would be on the high side for me, would you say it's around that? I'd rather get some new males down the line than have to cull too much at first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted December 23, 2020 Author Share Posted December 23, 2020 2 hours ago, Brandy said: Only need one male...but if your other male doesn't make it, you need some male. I ordered some online, received 10, 2 died a day later, leaving me with 7 females and one male. I then held my breath...I have hundreds now. I have yet to see a rili in my colony, but I do get near clear culls. By culling hard at this point I expect to have a very solid medium high grade colony in a year. My original shrimp were sold graded "skakura" but were actually over 50% high grade skakura/low grade red fire, with 2 high grade red fire females. I let them breed without culling for 6 months, target feeding and establising them in new tanks. Now I have the nucleus of a really high grade red fire colony in my guppy fry tank, where they get tons of food and no competition. My point of all this rambling, is that before culling, EXPAND your colony as much as humanly possible. You want a huge pool to pick from. Then choose 10-20 of the very best shrimp. feed the rest to a loach (or whatever you plan to do) and repeat. In a short time with this method you can shift the population genetics far without losing the diversity that will keep them healthy. I'll have to take a close up view next time i feed them, will probably remove the rili in the meantime. Really bugs me because I'd contacted the store before making the trip over and they assured me they had enough shrimp suitable for mating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JettsPapa Posted December 23, 2020 Share Posted December 23, 2020 26 minutes ago, Charose said: OK, thanks for the observation! I wasn't sure what the penetrance of the mutation was, a quarter of offspring showing the phenotype would be on the high side for me, would you say it's around that? I'd rather get some new males down the line than have to cull too much at first. I have no way to know for sure, but in my case I suspect it's considerably higher than 25%. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandy Posted December 30, 2020 Share Posted December 30, 2020 On 12/23/2020 at 11:17 AM, Charose said: I'll have to take a close up view next time i feed them, will probably remove the rili in the meantime. Really bugs me because I'd contacted the store before making the trip over and they assured me they had enough shrimp suitable for mating. Well I have to correct myself. Several hundred shrimp in, I found a red rili this afternoon--a pretty nice dark one actually. I fed him/her to a juvenile acara. Whether that arose spontaneously (genetically unlikely) or was the result of a recessive that is buried in my colony (very likley) I can't say for sure, but obviously I have my suspicions. I bring it up because assuming all your shrimp came from the same colony, you may find a high number of rili among the offspring either way to start. A straight mendelian recessive will show up at 25% to begin with. If you cull those, the remaining shrimp will be 2/3 carriers, so it could take quite a while to remove it. In light of that I reverse my position. You can buy more shrimp that are not rili if you need to. If you just want shrimp for yourself it is fine of course, but if you want to develop a pure line...That is more work than necessary. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted December 31, 2020 Author Share Posted December 31, 2020 5 hours ago, Brandy said: Well I have to correct myself. Several hundred shrimp in, I found a red rili this afternoon--a pretty nice dark one actually. I fed him/her to a juvenile acara. Whether that arose spontaneously (genetically unlikely) or was the result of a recessive that is buried in my colony (very likley) I can't say for sure, but obviously I have my suspicions. I bring it up because assuming all your shrimp came from the same colony, you may find a high number of rili among the offspring either way to start. A straight mendelian recessive will show up at 25% to begin with. If you cull those, the remaining shrimp will be 2/3 carriers, so it could take quite a while to remove it. In light of that I reverse my position. You can buy more shrimp that are not rili if you need to. If you just want shrimp for yourself it is fine of course, but if you want to develop a pure line...That is more work than necessary. Yea good point, if there already is one rili in the group they all may carry the trait. Not sure where my fish store sources their shrimp from, could be local breeders or a larger distributor. Ultimately, I just want to maintain some red shrimp and would rather not have them all be rili's, I'm not overly concerned with breeding anything special out, though that could be fun to get into at a later time 🙂 I'm 99% sure the rili ended up being the sole male in the group I got, which is disappointing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandy Posted December 31, 2020 Share Posted December 31, 2020 Sorry! No chance anyone is already berried? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted December 31, 2020 Author Share Posted December 31, 2020 16 hours ago, Brandy said: Sorry! No chance anyone is already berried? not the end of the world, I wanted to get some really nice shrimp online but the shipping fee was daunting and I thought it might be nice to use the local business, but they keep disappointing me. No berried shrimp yet, so I have a little time to find a suitable male. Actually, if you don't mind taking a look, i'll attach some more pics of the rili 'male' and a couple of 'females,' would be great to get some confirmation my sexing is on target. Their coloration seems to be sorta mid-grade red cherry? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lefty o Posted January 1, 2021 Share Posted January 1, 2021 the bottom2 are for sure females. the poorly colored one is more than likely a male. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandy Posted January 1, 2021 Share Posted January 1, 2021 Agreed, and also I would call the females mid or sakura grade. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FishyThoughts Posted January 1, 2021 Share Posted January 1, 2021 The rili style look can occur from too much inbreeding, which is an indication of weakening genetics. Also can occur with breeding across different color strains or with wild shrimp. It’s good to add a few new shrimp to your colony on occasion to help keep strong genetics and desired looks. If you have multiple tanks that you plan to keep shrimp in you can maintain colonies that separate enough from each other to maintain healthy genetics without the need to purchase more. And the changes can happen quick. I ended up with a wild neo mixed in with my amano shrimp that were added in the tank with my blue dreams. And ended up with a couple shrimp similar to that. So I would definitely cull ones that are completely different from what you want. And here’s the picture of mine with that wild. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charose Posted February 22, 2021 Author Share Posted February 22, 2021 Got a second batch of cherries, two looked like males, though were pretty solid red so wasn't 100% confident, but the proof has finally arrived 🙂 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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