Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

ToddnBecka wrote:I'd say it's likely that the snowballs are producing some wild-color offspring.

That would not be really likely if the white coloration is a recessive trait. It would take another chance mutation for some wild colored shrimp to appear. Same applies to red cherry shrimp and reports of sudden "reversions" to wild coloration...this just does not happen (see below). This only applies to intraspecific (i.e. same species, different color morphs) "crosses" though. What's more likely is that you guys have had interspecific (i.e. between two different species) crossbreeding going on at some point in time in your line of shrimp and the results of such crosses rarely, if ever, follow simple mendelian genetics.

For what it's worth...i've been breeding the snowball shrimp for almost 2 years now and I have never had any brown or red shrimp appear in my tanks. All of my offspring are white. Same applies to my red cherries...all of them are red. Barring any extremely rare and unlikely, chance mutations, if any weird colors appear among your relatively newly purchased offspring (say within a few months), then there must have been crossbreeding going on in your line of shrimp even before you purchased them.

Very interesting info, Mustafa.

My snowballs are still doing very well. I have had absolutely no deaths in my colony (*knock on wood*). They all live with a lone red ramshorn snail in a forest of Rotala rotundifolia.

AnneRiceBowl
That is great news. Keep up the good work.
The Hobby could always use a few more SnowBalls

John

Neonshrimp wrote: This shrimp has more names than any other shrimp I know! There needs to be a cutoff that limits the amount of common names allowed. One day they will call it "Shrimp with many names and has arms that look like fans"

thats just to funny

Neonshrimp wrote:Great not only do we get to enjoy keeping these great shrimp but we also get to learn latin while we are at it. "Carpe diem" translated means "seize the day", anyone know the the latin word for shrimp?

I don't know the latin word for shrimp, but "Habeas Corpus" (everyone has heard of this word)...means "Produce The Body", or "you should have the body". I work for an Attorney, and we use latin a lot (I still don't know 1/2 the meanings of the words we use! LOL)!

I work for an Attorney, and we use latin a lot (I still don't know 1/2 the meanings of the words we use! LOL)!

It's hard to revive a dead language I do agree that snowball shrimp are one of the better looking ones in a tank with green and dark colored contrast.

I'm back again with a new and overdue update on my snowballs!

My colony of my original 7 are now up to well over 30 (plus the 11 I rehomed and the 6 that were lost due to a complication in my tank). As of now, nearly all of my females are berried, with only 3 plus one or two that just hatched their eggs. So, that's about 12 females that are/were berried up until a few days ago!

A few months ago, I rehomed ALL of my RCS, the snowball hybrids were either rehomed (with a FULL disclosure to the new keeper) or fed to a carnivorous fish. That led to a 30 gallon long with no dwarf shrimp. After I made ABSOLUTELY SURE there were NO RCS left in the 30 gallon long, I moved in my snowball shrimp from their original 10 gallon tank. The 10 gallon was sold due to my current situation.

The new setup of my 30 gallon long is Eco-Complete substrate, Eheim 2213, Stealth heater (tank temperature is 76F), AquaClear skimmer that attaches to the filter intake, 96W 6700K CoraLife PC, various Cryptocoryne species, Anubias nana, corkscrew vals, Fissidens sp., and Malaysian driftwood. The occupants are 12 Atyopsis moluccensis, 10 Auratus pencilfish (gotta get the Latin), 10 dwarf cajun crayfish, and 30+ snowball shrimp--let's not forget the Malaysian trumpet snails. The tank gets 50% water changes weekly with tap water aged one week with Prime.

I now move my berried snowball females into a 10 gallon tank that's filled with hornwort, a piece of Malaysian driftwood, a little bit of Java lance fern tied to a piece of petrified wood. The tank is filtered with a ZooMed 501 filter, no heater, and no light. I feed the tank a variety of foods such as Tetramin Tropical Crisps, my homemade sinking food, and spirulina flakes.

Today, when I checked on the girls, I removed the stuff in the tank out of curiosity, it was SNOWING!!!!! LOTS OF NEW BABIES!!!! I didn't count how many shrimplets there are, but let's just say that there's a whole lotta shrimp!

That's good news. I'm glad that your showball shrimp are thriving.