color has been slowly washing out on the cherries... many generations, 100's of shrimp later... techniques for keeping the bright colors

[Magnum Man]

So, I started out with a couple different breeding groups, from different suppliers, in an attempt to start with as large a gene pool as possible, and have produced literally 100's of shrimp in this tank, in the last couple years... they are still red, but not as vibrant as the 1st breeding colonies...

so a couple questions about retaining color... of any of the colored neo shrimp...
are shrimps color effected by the foods they eat??? I've not been impressed with fish coloring up by any specific foods, I notice more coloration from a varied diet...

as far as the red color, the bloody mary shrimp are supposed to be colored differently ( less transparent ) would adding that gene trait to the cherries help keep a more solid red color, generations later???

so as far as foods, my shrimp eat algae cookies, and the extra fish foods, there are small live bearers in most tanks... in the rotation, includes dusted bug bites, and other high quality foods, and the tanks get treated occasionally with Bacter AE ( probably once or twice a month ) the tanks are all heavily planted...

I'm using a blend of RO water, and my rock hard well water in my shrimp tanks, and have not been supplementing calcium, and haven't been witnessing any shedding issues... I have been dropping other calcium foods into the tanks occasionally, but never got any activity around those...

so does the temperature effect the colors??? I keep the tanks in the low 70's F.

I posted a thread last night, as I got a trial of another type of calcium feeder, and the shrimp swarmed it in 5 minutes.... this picture from that thread, shows the shrimp are still red, but pretty translucent ( sorry about the dirty glass, I don't usually clean the glass in the shrimp tanks )...

noted in the 1st picture, I keep a small slab of limestone in each shrimp tank...

 

[TwoTankAmin]

As far as I am concerned there are three things which determine the quality of offspring produced fish or shrimp breeding and what the quality of the offspring might be.
1. Water parameters- Getting them close ti right for any given species is important.
2. Diet- this really matters on many levels one of which is color.
3. Who spawns with whom.

Number 3 above is likely one of your major issues in terms of color of the kids. No matter how well colored and how good the genes of any individual shrimp engaged in spawning, it does not mean all of the offspring will be as well colored. How red, how healthy etc. the kids are will vary. Some will not be up to the standards of the parents.

This starts to matter more and more as the population grows through reproduction. If all one has to start are really nice specimens and then you let them go their own way, some of the less red shrimp will end up spawning as well as the really red ones. What this means is the more shrimp in the tank the greater the odds are that not the best colored ones will also reproduce.

Ideally, to get the best offspring requires that they are produced by the best colored adults. Therefore, if your goal is to produce as many of the best colored offspring as possible, you need to remove the lesser ones from the mix. That is not so easy in your situation. But you are not a shrimp factory.

I am thinking that in your case the inability to keep the best colored shrimp by themselves to eliminate the lesser ones from doing the reproducing is one reason your are seeing a loss of color. However, diet also matters a lot. This is why we see color enhancing foods being sold. Something like this from kensfish.com might help. Astaxanthin Powder

Have a read here: The effects of feed on shrimp pigmentation you will read this:

In nature and in extensive or semi-intensive farms, shrimp absorb microorganisms, such as microalgae, that are rich in carotenoids. Carotenoids are pigments that give prawns their characteristic pink-orange color. Even though the Carotenoid family is quite large, only a few of its compounds have an impact of pigmentation. Among them, astaxanthin is the most effective pigment in impacting the color of shrimp. The majority of shellfish can also produce astaxanthin from other pigments such as β-Carotene.

I have a small tank with the red Neo. davidi and I notice some are really red and some are not. But I do not sell these. I also have another tank with the Blue Dream variety of the davidi and they seem to hold their color better than do the reds. I have sold a few 100 of the blues over the years. I feed both tanks the same foods. The reds are alone in their tank but in the blue's tank I also have amanos and a few white clouds and one albino BN plus assassin snails. So this tank also gets food for the fish. The tank for the reds gets only shrimp foods.

At my fish club meeting last August I came home with a small bottle of the Sera Shrimps Nature Shrimp Food:

Feeding guide:
Feed sparingly once daily.
Advice: Do not remove remainders of the granules, which keep their shape for a long time, too quickly since shrimps graze off their food slowly.

Ingredients:
fish meal, wheat flour, wheat germ, brewers yeast, spirulina (5%), Ca-caseinate, sea algae, gammarus, stinging nettle, willow bark, alder cones, fish oil (containing 49% omega fatty acids), mannan oligosaccharides, herbs, alfalfa, parsley, paprika, green-lipped mussel, spinach, carrots, Haematococcus algae, garlic.

Guaranteed analysis:
Min. Crude Protein 38.3%, Min. Crude Fat 6.4%, Max. Crude Fiber 7.7%, Max. Moisture 6.0%, Max. Crude Ash 11.8%, Min./Max. Calcium 2.0% / 3.0%, Min. Phosphorus 0.9%.

Additives:
Vitamins and provitamins: Vit. A 16,800 IU/lb., Vit. D3 820 IU/lb., Vit. E (D, L-α-tocopheryl acetate) 54 IU/lb., Vit. B1 16 mg/lb., Vit. B2 41 mg/lb., Stabilized Vit. C (L-ascorbyl monophosphate) 25 mg/lb.

 

[MaloK]

Your shrimps are still full of colors...

If you clean your glass, I'm sure they are going to look a lot brighter.

 

[Colin_T]

A couple more points continuing on from TwoTankAmin's post, in particular point 3 (genetics). In the wild I have found glass shrimp that varied in colour. Normal glass shrimp are clear and that is how they are found in most areas. In some creeks that were heavily tannin stained (black water), there were glass shrimp that were a pale yellow/ gold colour. They were semi-transparent but had a yellow colour to them. I have found marine glass shrimp that had a green sheen to them. These ones were found in weed beds where the plants were green and the same green as the shrimp. Some ghost/ glass shrimp have black spots or lines and others have red markings. Some have red & black dots and lines.

Over a number of generations, the shrimp will develop colours similar to their surroundings. Green shrimp in green weed beds, yellow shrimp in yellow/ brown coloured water. Your substrate appears to be brown and white and the shrimp will produce young with a range of colours. Some will be closer to the colour of your substrate and they will blend in better and be less likely to get eaten. Others might be much brighter coloured but get seen more easily and get eaten. Even if there's no predators in the tank, the shrimp will revert back to their original colours over time.

I had ramshorn snails in one tank for 10 years. The original batch of eggs that came in on plants produced dark brown snails. Over the years they became inbred and I saw snails with stripes and spots and some because light brown and others were red (red body & red shells). The inbreeding also weakened them and they didn't grow as big and didn't produce as many eggs. Eventually I add a couple of new snails that were black and it significantly improved the health of the overall population and I still had lots of variety in the colours of the offspring. The substrate in my tank was white gravel. I don't know if the colour of the environment affects snails like it does shrimp, but it might. However, after 10 years and potentially 50 odd generations of snails inbreeding, none went white or even came close to it. So I don't think snails adapt their colour to their environment like shrimp do.

In your case, I would add new bloodlines to improve the colour and remove any pale or poor coloured shrimp.

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As for adding calcium, shrimp and aquatic crustaceans normally draw the calcium out of their shell and store it in their body when they shed their skin (exoskeleton). Once they have shed the old skin, they pump the calcium and water into the new soft shell and it stays in there. Unless you have really soft water and the shrimp don't get fed a varied diet, you shouldn't have to add calcium to their diet. It's not going to hurt them but it shouldn't be necessary if they get a varied diet.

 

[Magnum Man]

I'm curious how some of the sellers that breed and sell shrimp, there are several sellers that breed their own, can maintain brightly colored shrimp to sell... maybe they use a system, of only breeding the original breeders, and separating all the babies to a grow out tank, to sell those???

I Originally had 10 - 12 from 2 different sellers, opposite sides of the country, in an attempt to get as large a gene pool as possible, and I have gifted starter groups to 4-5 people... one guy had a 70 gallon he just pulled down, and sold his fish to a shop that tegularly bought fish he was breeding... he pulled his tank down, less than a year after getting the started group from me, and he had around 100 cherries, so these have definitely been prolific...

in my original post I mentioned the bloody mary shrimp... I believe they are also neo shrimp, so should likely cross with the cherries...

I read this about bloody mary shrimp...

"Bloody Mary Shrimp are beautiful creatures! These tiny critters are often compared to standard Red Cherry Shrimp, but are slightly different in that their flesh, not just their shells, are red. This variety can also be identified by a shorter rostrum when compared to Cherry Shrimp. With proper care, freshwater shrimp have an average life span of 1-2 years. Most species will readily breed in healthy, freshwater conditions. It is recommended to keep shrimp separate from other species to prevent cross-breeding that typically results in brown, muddled offspring."

I know that happens with the "skittles" packs, but I'm curious if the bloody mary red flesh trait, could help the cherries with color fastness???

 

[Colin_T]

I have no idea if they can hybridise. If the bloody Mary shrimp actually hold colour and they can cross breed with the normal cherry shrimp, maybe they will provide better colour stability. The first thing to test is can they hybridise and if yes, do they produce fertile offspring.

 

[Magnum Man]

a little more on them...

"Bloody Mary Shrimp are fascinating shrimp with bright red color, they are another strain selectively bred from Chocolate shrimp. Unlike Fire red cherry shrimp, which have red opaque coloration, Bloody Marys are translucent with bright red tissues."