Moderator: Mustafa
Hmm...interesting. I did have some bluish shrimp with brown eggs that I separated from my "neon" shrimp, who also have brown eggs. I bred them both from the wild snowballs. Here is a link to some of the pictures I made a while ago:zwergkrebszuechter wrote: Blue pearl shrimp are not bred from white snowball shrimp. You can easily see that because they have brown eggs, no white eggs like snowball shrimp.
Somehow he managed to get rid of the brown pigmentation and leave only the blue. Maybe by breeding with snowball shrimp, I do not know.
Wild snowball shrimp are very variable in color. They can show like any color of a rainbow.
As I've said before, I'm very suspicious of reddish Neocaridina that are *not* red cherry shrimp. The red cherry shrimp is so common that almost everyone who breeds other Neocaridina varieties also has some red cherry shrimp. And I know for a fact that some people in Germany were keeping the two species (wild snowball and red cherry) together because they thought they cannot interbreed. So the chances of *most* reds that you find in a wild type Neocaridina population being hybrids with red cherries are pretty high, especially if the reds start carrying yellow eggs. I'm not saying that other Neocaridina cannot throw true-red non-hybrid mutations, but it should be very, very rare. Only if we are absolutely sure that these red mutations cannot come from "contaminated" populations can we really say that they true mutations of a given Neocaridina species (such as N. cf. zhangjiajiensis). Do your reds have yellow eggs? Hybrid reds don't necessarily have to have yellow eggs, as I have intraspecies hybrids between the wild form of N. denticulata sinensis and red cherry shrimp, which are reddish and have green eggs, but yellow eggs make it highly likely that you have hybrids. The possibility of hybrids is especially high if your population keeps throwing a relatively large amount of reds. True mutations are very rare and if they do occur it usualy occurs in one animal only, which then has to be selectively bred. If you receive a population of wild type Neocaridina and they start throwing multiple reds, then they have almost certainly been crossbred with red animals before.As someone mentioned those reddish wild snowball shrimp here, I started selecting for those, recently. As they appear more commonly in some tanks than in others I think it is genetic and can be bred for a pure strain. Its not a bright red, like red cherry shrimp, but a brownish, pinkish red. But still nice.
In fact there are at least 3 blue dwarf shrimp species know that do breed true.
,Blue tiger shrimp
blue "Tüpfel" shrimp
and blue pearl shrimp.
Yes thats quite what I think. It seems there is maybe only one gene for blue or not and some others that say how blue. It is the same with orange dwarf crayfish. I will tell more about that later in another topic and comment to that other varieties in wild snowball shrimp. I have some other things to do right now.milalic wrote:Very nice shrimp. I just have to say that they all look blue to me even if it is a light blue.
I really do not understand the 'true blue' term being used. Does it matter if it is a 'hue', if it is light blue, darker blue, if the shrimp looks blue and all of them breed 'blue' like zwergkrebszuechter says?
Even cherry reds have different tones of red color and we still say they are red. Even some snowballs look more white than others.
-Pedro
Yes, they are nice and they are blue(ishmilalic wrote:Very nice shrimp. I just have to say that they all look blue to me even if it is a light blue.
), but that's not the point. No, it doesn't matter. They are still nice shrimp, but that was never the issue anyway. It's a matter of personal preference. I would finally like to see "true-blue", i.e. really bright or dark blue, shrimp in the hobby...that's all. This is a good start and maybe with some selective breeding we can have some really nice blue ones in the future. I think you mis-read what I am trying to say above. I'm just clarifying things...not saying that these shrimp aren't nice shrimp.I really do not understand the 'true blue' term being used. Does it matter if it is a 'hue', if it is light blue, darker blue, if the shrimp looks blue and all of them breed 'blue' like zwergkrebszuechter says?
Quite possible.zwergkrebszuechter wrote: Yes thats quite what I think. It seems there is maybe only one gene for blue or not and some others that say how blue.
They look very nice.I got that original 10 shrimp from Ulf, yes. I have only one tank with these blue shrimp. On the picture are all those that chose to be the first to get the food I offered. No manipulation or selection in that. Just the average of that strain.
Thanks for the pictures. Hmmm...maybe your strain is different in that regard. The vast majority of my shrimp have greyish eggs. My orange "neon" morphs and the blue morph i've had had hazel-brown eggs. I've seen a few individuals with white eggs before, but they looked almost like snowball shrimp. Let me just say that the ones that have the stripe-patterns are the "wild-type", which all have grey eggs in my tanks, whereas the color morphs actually don't have any stripes at all on their bodies and have different colored eggs. Even your blues don't show any stripe-pattern like the wild-type.color of eggs varies a lot in wild snowballs. I have seen everything between white, yellow, reddish, brownish, even greenish and blueish.
Of course.One more thing: there are always more things out there than one thinks.
That's why I ask to confirm. Actually, yes. There are one or two swimming in my tanks right now. They are offspring of hybrid japanese Neocaridina denticulata denticulata and red cherry shrimp. Someone in Germany gave them to me as "Ninja" shrimp, which they are obviously not...they display all kinds of colors from red, to yellow, to greenish to grey with white stripes....very interesting but hybrids. Plus, I have seen the shrimp of a guy in asia who was breeding a totally yellow Neocaridina...don't know what happened to that population though.Have you ever seen a yellow shrimp with yellow ovaria and yellow eggs?
That would be a great shrimp to have in the hobby. The only thing we have to be careful about is to keep track of it's genetic line. Are they hybrids or true color morphs of a species? We don't want turn our shrimp into highly mixed animals like the variously colored mollies, where it's now impossible to trace how many species actually went into breeding the current hybrids. I'm not saying it's a bad thing necessarily, but maybe we should first concentrate on breeding the pure strains first and establish them in the hobby.I did not believe they exist before I got some myself. It looks kind of like a yellow snowball shrimp, but it is not.
I did not believe it either, but then contacted the guy who started selling them on aquabid to verify. That's what everyone should do...verify any claims that someone is making. It's not a hostile gesture, it's just scientific curiosity and healthy scepticism.I did not believe in that blue shufeldtii too, in the first place, thought they were maybe blue phase as this often happens, but now when several people say that they are still blue after molting it really seems to be a genetic morph.
.
Wow, thanks for sharing the photos with us. Sorry to hear about the shrimp loss. I hope you are able to establish your orange colony again, they are wonderful looking.
