Shrimp Breeding Project

[wendypizza]

After stopping by a few local pet stores today, I found some wild-type feeder Neocardinias for sale at a reasonable price, and decided to get my red cherry shrimp breeding project started! Ideally, this thread will be proof that these shrimp were not imported and were not bred here, where it is illegal to import aquarium shrimp, if I try to sell/trade these to a LFS. Regardless of the outcome of the breeding project, they can just be pets and chill in the tanks. Either way, I think it's a fun (and low cost!) breeding project, especially compared to my ricefish 😭

A bit of background: where I live, neocardinia davidi are an invasive species, released by aquarists into local waters and are out-competing the native shrimp. Accordingly, neocardinia davidi are sold as feeders. (further reading here and here)

I picked up a bag of shrimp from two local stores; if you're a local to Oahu you'll know which ones I'm talking about. For brevity's sake, store one is KPS and store 2 is ELP.

KPS: 2x 10 shrimp @ ~$2.50 per 10.

ELP: 2x 8 shrimp @ $1.00 per 8 Noticed at least 2 shrimp were berried.

The current cost of this project is about $8, which includes some Hikari shrimp food I bought at ELP.

As the KPS shrimp came from...kind of a nasty store, they went into the orange ricefish tank, as there's more detritus, algae, etc. for them to snack on. ELP shrimp went into the Daisy's ricefish/bronze cory tank.

I'm going to be setting up a breeding for profit rack soon, with a 30g tank and some 10g growout tanks. A group of the shrimp will live in the 30, and some will be going into the growout tanks to take care of any fungus-y eggs.

I understand the basic principles of breeding and culling, but I'm interested in literature about breeding RCS from wild type neocardinia, as well as any tips you folks can offer! Should I be looking to selectively breed the darker/patterned ones? Or can the red develop another way?

 

[Brandy]

Sounds like a fun project!

I think the trick with small organisms with a short generation is to use massive expansion followed by repeated bottlenecks. In other words, make your 18 shrimp into 180+ (until you run out of space, food, or patience), find the most colorful or interesting 18, cull the rest, and start over.

I work with genetics in my lab job. What you are looking for is a spontanelusly arising mutation or recessive gene. The fastest way forward is a pure numbers game. Once you get something cool (any unusual color in this case) you THEN select toward that thing. Say you get one pinkish shrimp in your first 180. You keep it and your 17 healthiest shrimp. Then by the next 180 you should have several pinkish shrimp, and so you repeat. Once you have 18 healthy pinkish shrimp, you then choose for the darkest pink, etc.

Your wild type shrimp theoretically contain the potential to deliver any of the colors known in neocaridina. It is just a matter of breeding an insane number, and watching closely for the odd balls.

[wendypizza]

1 hour ago, Brandy said:

Sounds like a fun project!

I think the trick with small organisms with a short generation is to use massive expansion followed by repeated bottlenecks. In other words, make your 18 shrimp into 180+ (until you run out of space, food, or patience), find the most colorful or interesting 18, cull the rest, and start over.

I work with genetics in my lab job. What you are looking for is a spontanelusly arising mutation or recessive gene. The fastest way forward is a pure numbers game. Once you get something cool (any unusual color in this case) you THEN select toward that thing. Say you get one pinkish shrimp in your first 180. You keep it and your 17 healthiest shrimp. Then by the next 180 you should have several pinkish shrimp, and so you repeat. Once you have 18 healthy pinkish shrimp, you then choose for the darkest pink, etc.

Your wild type shrimp theoretically contain the potential to deliver any of the colors known in neocaridina. It is just a matter of breeding an insane number, and watching closely for the odd balls.

Thank you so much! This is exactly the advice I was looking for; I wasn't sure whether the red would be a spontaneous mutation or something recessive, so I'll keep an eye out for both 😄

Ultimately I suspect I'll run out of interest before anything else; there are plenty of tanks/ponds around for my culls to go into, lmao. But biology and genetics has always interested me, so I hope the fascination will stick.

Edited December 27, 2020 by wendypizza
added words

[Andy's Fish Den]

Sound like a fun project, I'm interested to see how it works out for you. 

[FishyThoughts]

It’s a numbers game for sure. And from my understanding about breeding shrimp, though I’ve never bred from wild, you want to encourage the desired trait as much as possible. So while those 18 shrimp are breeding look through from any shrimp that there’s any coloring on. Move them to a tank by themselves, no other shrimp, and breed those together. Continuing to add others with those colors and removing all without, less or different color.

Allowing a colored shrimp to breed with a different colored, or wild, can cause that color trait to revert back to the wild shrimp appearance or mutations to another color. While you may want to do that with some of them to see what you get. If your specifically wanting red than I would suggest trying to only breed that trait with others of that trait whenever possible.
And if you find a buried female with the trait you desire, it might be best to isolate her until they hatch. Then add her with the other of that trait. probably easier having the babies in a small isolated container to see what traits come up than trying to get them out of another tank. 
 

Definitely an interesting project no matter how you go about it.
Mark’s shrimp tanks has some good info, has website and youtube. But think most is with regards to breeding an already established strains versus breeding for a strain. 

[wendypizza]

2 hours ago, FishyThoughts said:

It’s a numbers game for sure. And from my understanding about breeding shrimp, though I’ve never bred from wild, you want to encourage the desired trait as much as possible. So while those 18 shrimp are breeding look through from any shrimp that there’s any coloring on. Move them to a tank by themselves, no other shrimp, and breed those together. Continuing to add others with those colors and removing all without, less or different color.

Allowing a colored shrimp to breed with a different colored, or wild, can cause that color trait to revert back to the wild shrimp appearance or mutations to another color. While you may want to do that with some of them to see what you get. If your specifically wanting red than I would suggest trying to only breed that trait with others of that trait whenever possible.
And if you find a buried female with the trait you desire, it might be best to isolate her until they hatch. Then add her with the other of that trait. probably easier having the babies in a small isolated container to see what traits come up than trying to get them out of another tank. 
 

Definitely an interesting project no matter how you go about it.
Mark’s shrimp tanks has some good info, has website and youtube. But think most is with regards to breeding an already established strains versus breeding for a strain. 

Thank you! After watching the shrimp settle in over the day, the berried females are definitely darker, though I suspect that might also be because they're older than the others--they are about 2-3x larger than the smaller ones. I don't have the rack and extra tank to hold the selected shrimp, but maybe they'll hold onto the eggs for a week or so. I'll definitely check out the channel you mentioned!

From the charts I've looked at this afternoon, it seems like the initial variants I'll get are either red/brown/yellow or red/blue/brown depending on the phenotype of the wild type. I'd wanted to aim for red cherry since it seems like the easiest to get, but I'm certainly not opposed to a different color 🙂

[FishyThoughts]

Yep, it could definitely take up a lot of tanks depending on how you go about it. Fortunately you can get away with some relatively small containers for some shrimp as temporary containers. 
And if you have any extra sponges you could possibly stick those in the cover of an established tank. Then when you need to setup an additional container for shrimp you could move that sponge and some of the tank water over and more or less have a cycled setup. Haven’t tried it, but possibly shove an air stone in a pre filter for a quick diy sponge filter. Obviously wouldn’t work as good as an actual one. But maybe good enough to be a temporary option. 

[Streetwise]

I like the variety you get from going wild: not just colors, but stripes and dots. Enjoy!

[wendypizza]

On 12/26/2020 at 11:50 PM, FishyThoughts said:

Yep, it could definitely take up a lot of tanks depending on how you go about it. Fortunately you can get away with some relatively small containers for some shrimp as temporary containers. 
And if you have any extra sponges you could possibly stick those in the cover of an established tank. Then when you need to setup an additional container for shrimp you could move that sponge and some of the tank water over and more or less have a cycled setup. Haven’t tried it, but possibly shove an air stone in a pre filter for a quick diy sponge filter. Obviously wouldn’t work as good as an actual one. But maybe good enough to be a temporary option. 

Ooooh I'd never thought of the air stone + prefilter. I definitely want to try that, since I have two mulm-filled sponges in the tank for the shrimp.

5 hours ago, Streetwise said:

I like the variety you get from going wild: not just colors, but stripes and dots. Enjoy!

Thanks! Now that they've settled in some are definitely showing dots and darker colors, so I'm excited to see what the shrimplets will look like.

[FishyThoughts]

7 hours ago, wendypizza said:

Ooooh I'd never thought of the air stone + prefilter. I definitely want to try that, since I have two mulm-filled sponges in the tank for the shrimp.

Yeah, I haven’t tried it and doubt it’s a great replacement for a regular sponge filter. But a well seasoned prefilter could be a quick way to jumpstart a temporary tank if needed. And I’m sure the shrimp wouldn’t have any problems with a dirty sponge.