What Happens when You Breed Blue and Red Neocaridina Shrimp together?

foreign my name is Lauren and welcome to another video from the tiny Menagerie what happens when you breed a blue neocarolina shrimp to a red one this is a question I have been pondering for a while now as I have two colonies a thriving red one and a blue one that is just getting started and I can't help but Wanda what would happen to the qualities of the future shrimp if I was to combine the two and so to answer my own question I have set up a little experiment I cleaned out and set up a small 25 liter tank and gave it a couple of weeks to mature then I added to it a few of my favorite young female red cherry shrimp along with a couple of blue males now both sexes were selected based on their quality and age so the cherries needed to be of at least high quality sometimes called fire red that being a nice solid red opaque body with no clear patches showing but I wasn't too worried about them having completely solid red legs or anything like that I didn't mind if they were a little bit clear and the blue males just needed to be a solid blue coloration with no clear patches or black patches again though I wasn't worried about getting any particular Hue or shade of blue I didn't mind whether they were pale or dark and I also didn't want any of the shrimp to be fully grown just yet this was just so that they had the best possible chance of acclimatizing to the new tank especially the males as I say this colony is only just starting and I really didn't want to risk losing any of them but also to make sure that the females have not been mated to a red male while they were in their original tank as this would have completely invalidated the experiment and so while the shrimp were old enough to be easily graded they were still Juvenile and only about 1.5 centimeters long once added to the tank then the waiting began I left them in their new tank for about a month in order to acclimatize and once the females were buried I removed the males back to their own tank again and left the females in there with the babies while they all grew up [Music] now to the best of my knowledge what you feed shrimp doesn't actually have any effect on their color despite what the manufacturers like to tell you but just in case it does in order to prevent any chance that the food could influence the color of the shrimp they were fed only a very cheap fish flake mix for some extra protein and the lights were left on in the tank for about 16 hours a day just to encourage as much algae and biofilm growth as possible and after waiting for the babies to grow up here are the results now obviously I did some research into what would happen so no part of me was expecting to see purple shrimp they don't exist yet to the best of my knowledge and that's not really how shrimp genetics work anyway I wasn't expecting to combine the two variants of shrimp and somehow have them blend together like paint wood but the first thing that is immediately noticeable about my first generation of crossbred shrimp is the marked decline in the quality of the red coloration all of the females used were of a high quality at least and yet if I was selling this first generation of crossbred shrimp they would at best be classed as poor or medium they certainly no longer have that lovely uniform red coloration over the body at best they are rather streaky and at worst they can barely even be called spotted the carapace is also no longer opaque and every single individual is now transparent for the most part with just the odd red patches on them and these tend to be confined to the top of the carapos as well and it doesn't continue down the legs at all or if it does again they are extremely spotted [Music] one thing that has really surprised me about this though is that almost no blue at all has translated into this first generation you can see just the old tiniest smudge or a hint of blue in the clear parts of the carapace especially around the thorax on some of the individuals but not one shrimp at all has a definite blue coloration I could certainly never sell any of these as blue and those that do have the tiniest little bit of blue in them are very much in the minority I would say less than five percent of shrimplets show any blue at all now obviously this is not a rigorous study and I certainly couldn't make any scientific claims but it seems to me that it's highly likely the genes that code for blue coloration are recessive to the more dominant red ones and that's why I'm not seeing any blue at all in this first generation because every single shrimplet has inherited those dominant red genes from the females even if they also have the blue recessive genes in there as well it'll be the red ones that are showing through or perhaps it could be that shrimplets just inherit most of their color from the female rather than the male and if that is the case remembering that all of the females in the group were red then all of the shrimplets are going to have inherited red the only real way to get any sort of answer to this would be to repeat the experiment again but use red males and blue females instead and then see if The Offspring still come out as a poor quality red shrimp and if so if blue females will still produce poor quality Reds then we can very likely assume that red really is just the dominant color also the effect of Crossing appears to have had more of an effect on the male shrimp compared to the females most of the first generation females are of medium quality they have quite a bit of red on them although this is very streaky and only one or two of them though would be considered as poor the males on the other hand are the other way around they are mostly poor quality with just one or two of them looking fairly red and probably tipping into the mediums female shrimp though are generally more desirable than males as they tend to have better coloration plus they are of course considerably bigger and this Crossing seems to have emphasized this although if I am perfectly honest I would not like to Hazard a guess as to why also surprising is the complete lack of wild type coloration which I was expecting from the accounts that I've read on forums and from other people online who've conducted the same little experiment [Music] I was expecting to see at least a few patchy brown or greenish colored shrimp in amongst the colored ones but not a single one of my first generation are showing any of this which if I'm honest I am a little bit disappointed about I was hoping for a few of them to Be Wild again though this may just be because I haven't given them enough time and I'm hoping that the Next Generation after this will give me at least a few of the wild types and if not if they are staying resolutely as a poor quality cherry shrimp then I will have to look at adding another color into this mix such as yellows for example hopefully that will mix up the genetics enough to let the wild coloration show through and one thing that has really stood out to me as I have watched these little shrimp grow is just how fast they have grown this first generation have malted every couple of weeks like clockwork and I have had no issues to speak of whatsoever with them they seem to be a very very healthy Bunch just a shame they're not quite so pretty which of course though is often the case where inbreeding has been used to emphasize a certain trait in a group such as a certain color or a size by breeding the same individuals back to each other and their own offspring again and again and again you are intensifying that desired trait but you are also severely compromising the overall health of the population and so these little Mongrel shrimp probably are just an awful lot healthier than their rather inbred parents were the question is now though can they be brought back to high quality and can I get some wild types out of them which is going to be my next challenge and another thing is that this little experiment has certainly highlighted to me the importance of keeping on top of culling in order to maintain quality in the group as well as of course not mixing your colors if you want to keep the strains pure also if my Colony ever starts to look like it is suffering from a lack of breeding they just aren't producing very many shrimplets as I would expect or they show any signs at all of poor General Health then it might be time to introduce some fresh genetics into the pool just to keep them as healthy as possible because this really has shown me the effect that inbreeding has on growth and development rate but after all that at least I have answered my own question of what happens when you breed blue and red shrimp together and the answer is you get lots of ugly little shrimplets who are supremely healthy and grow like wildfire anywho though I hope you've enjoyed this little video All About cross-breeding shrimp happy shrimp keeping everybody and I will see you again soon bye bye [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Tiny Menagerie

Views: 57,556

Keywords: Aquairums, aquariums, fish tanks, nano fish, neocaridina, cherry shrimp, freshwater shrimp, red shrimp, blue shrimp, neocaridina shrimp

Id: Psqo7PjKRK8

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023