Cherry Shrimp Selective Breeding Guide For Beginners

If we want to get the best color out of our cherry shrimp, we need to breed them carefully. Shrimp breeders perform selective breeding to produce higher-quality offspring in future generations.

It has been going on for years in the shrimp-keeping industry. At first, selective breeding was only done by the professional and experienced shrimp breeders. But now, average shrimp keepers like you and me can selectively breed our shrimps too!

The process is not that hard. In fact, it is extremely easy. In this guide, I will show you the step-by-step process for selectively breeding cherry shrimp.

I’ll also explain the theory behind selective breeding, culling shrimps, and what to do with the cull shrimps.

So, it’s going to be a long guide. Sit tight and enjoy!

What Is Selective Breeding?

In simple terms, selective breeding is the process of selectively choosing only the best-quality shrimp and breeding them. Following a selective breeding process increases the chance of getting better-quality offspring.

In the selective breeding process, we exclude the shrimps that we don’t like or whose appearance doesn’t appeal to us. We can do that in 2 ways:

1. We catch the unattractive-looking shrimp or the physically deformed shrimp. Then, we place them in a new tank, thus separating the healthy and cool-looking ones from the rest.
2. We can only catch the best-looking shrimp and place them in a new tank. Both processes yield the same result: the separation of the good-quality shrimp from the bad-quality shrimp.

Why You Should Do Selective Breeding?

Here are the reasons for doing selective cherry shrimp breeding:

• With selective breeding, you’ll get much higher quality offspring in the later generations
• You’ll take the color of your cherry shrimp to a whole other level
• If you want to sell shrimps, you’ll get a much higher price selling higher quality cherry shrimps
• You can show off your cherry shrimps to other shrimp breeders

Frankly, selective breeding is not a must, and I get it if you don’t feel up to it. This is more for shrimp keepers who want to achieve the next level in terms of quality and color by breeding their shrimp.

How To Selective Breed Cherry Shrimps?

Here is the step-by-step process to selectively breed cherry shrimps:

1. First, you’ll need to cull the shrimp and work with only the best ones. Suppose there are 100 shrimp in your shrimp tank. Observe closely and look for the ones that show the desired trait in the offspring. Catch the selected shrimp with a net and put them in a new tank where you’ll breed them. Among the 100 shrimp, 10-20 can show the desired trait. The rest are culled shrimp.
2. After you’ve selected and transferred the 20 shrimps to their new tank, wait for them to breed. Once the shrimp number in the new tank multiplies, again look for the shrimps that show the desired trait and the ones that are culled. This time, take out the culled shrimps and transfer them to the old tank. We only want the best quality shrimp in our new tank.
3. Repeat the process multiple times, and with time, you’ll have much higher-quality offspring in the new tank.

This is how shrimp breeders selectively breed their shrimp to achieve higher grades, quality, and body color. Simple, right?

Mendel’s Law Of Inheritance

Now that we know how to selectively breed cherry shrimps practically, it is time to learn it theoretically. How did selective breeding come into existence? Who first thought about it? Well, to find out, we’ll have to meet with a biologist: Gregor Mendel.

Gregor Mendel was born in 1822. He was an Australian monk with an unusual love for working with plants. Mendel was known as a biologist, too! He often tried to breed pea plants. By doing so and quenching his curiosity, Mendel eventually formed an interesting theory, which was later known as Mendel’s Law Of Inheritance.

Here’s how Mender performed his experiments:

At first, Mendel took a pure-breed yellow seeded plant. He bred it with a pure-breed green-seeded plant. The offspring was yellow seeds.

After the experiment, Mendel came to this decision:

As all the new seeds were yellow in color, he called the yellow color dominant trait.

After the initial experiment, Mendel decided to self-fertilize the hybrid yellow-seeded plant and see what happened. He successfully self-fertilized the plant, and in the second generation, Mendel got both green and yellow seeds.

This meant that, during the first generation, the green trait was hidden by the Dominant Yellow trait. Mendel named this hidden green trait Recessive Trait.

For example, in the above picture, we can see a cross-breeding between a crystal red shrimp and a crystal black shrimp. In the resultant breed, the black color is the dominant trait, and the red color is the recessive trait.

At that time, Mendel did not know the concept of Gene. However, he guessed that there were two factors associated with each trait, each coming from each of the parents.

In this modern age, we call these factors Alleles. They are responsible for the variations we see in genes.

Before going further, we need to clarify our concepts regarding two more terms: Phenotype and Genotype.

Phenotype

Phenotype is the visible expression of the gene. It mainly determines the traits that we can see. Phenotype also combines the environmental influence that can impact a being’s appearance.

Genotype

Genotype is simply the information stored within a gene. We can’t see It; it is only determined through biological tests. The information saved inside the two alleles is known as the Genotype.

Selection Of Shrimps

The selection of shrimp simply refers to selecting the shrimp that show our desired trait and leaving the rest. There are basically two ways for selection: natural and artificial.

We’ll be taking a look at both ways:

Natural Selection

The natural selection occurs naturally without any human intervention. There are basically 3 types of Natural Selection: Stabilizing, Disruptive, and Directional.

Stabilizing

Under Stabilizing selection, shrimps with an average trait form show the highest fitness. Suppose one of your cherry shrimps got berried with either 5 eggs or 100 eggs. Both are not optimal and fit for nature.

With only 5 eggs, the number is too small to increase the population of the shrimp colony. On the other hand, with 100 eggs, the number of shrimp in the colony will get too high. As a result, the competition for food will spike, resulting in a weaker colony.

So, what are the ideal numbers? An average of 20-50 eggs.

Disruptive

Under the Disruptive selection, shrimps with an extreme variation of the trait show higher fitness than shrimps with an average form of the trait. For example, a larger female cherry shrimp will give birth to a large number of shrimplets.

Among the large number of shrimplets, there will be a higher number of males. The small males are comparatively more agile and have a higher chance of fertilizing eggs.

Directional

Directional selection says that shrimps with an extreme form of a trait are more fit than shrimps with an average form of the trait. To better understand this theory, let’s look at wild neocaridinas.

If we look at the wild neocaridinas, we can see that most have brown bodies with light patches. This is natural, as the brown color helps the shrimp camouflage within their surroundings and save themselves from potential prey. In the wild, the red or yellow color will easily make the shrimp stand out in the environment, so they’ll get eaten more!

That’s why the brown color dominates here; it is the fittest in such surroundings.

Artificial Selection (Culling)

Artificial Selection is done with human intervention. It is not natural. Artificial Selection of shrimp is also known as Culling. Basically, there are 2 types of artificial selection: inbreeding and Crossbreeding.

In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at both.

Inbreeding

Inbreeding means breeding shrimps that are closely related in terms of genes. It is performed to achieve genetic uniformity among the offspring. Shrimp breeders only perform inbreeding with a small population of shrimps.

The famous and highly-praised Crystal Red Shrimp is a result of the inbreeding of 3 types of shrimps.

There is a serious drawback to this breeding technique.

With every new generation, the offspring can start to lose their color. This phenomenon is known as Trait Depression. Along with that, too much inbreeding can result in the following:

• Decrease in the survival rate
• decrease in the fertility rate of the shrimps
• increase in physical deformities
• reduced lifespan
• Shrimps are becoming more prone to stress and diseases
• loss of genetic diversity

Don’t get depressed if you see too many drawbacks. There is a solution to this problem. The solution is to introduce ‘new blood’ from time to time into the colony.

We need to refresh the genetic pool to make the offspring more stable and stronger. For this, breeding with new batches of shrimp produces the perfect result. This process is also known as interbreeding among biologists.

Crossbreeding

Crossbreeding refers to the breeding process of two shrimps that are distinct genetically and not the product of the same line. The shrimps are not products of linebreeding, either.

Linebreeding is a milder inbreeding process. In line breeding, relatives are involved in the mating process more than once in each line. However, this breeding process is not as close as inbreeding.

Crossbreeding is generally used to refer to the breeding of two different species of shrimps.

Why Do We Need To Do Culling?

We need to cull shrimps for the following reasons:

• In order to keep a shrimp colony at its fittest and healthiest state, there is actually nothing we can do other than culling. Culling keeps the colony strong.
• Culling helps your shrimps to achieve better quality, patterns, and coloration. Otherwise, there is a chance of the cherry shrimp going back to their wild color after a certain number of generations
• Culling is required if you want to have higher quality as well as high-grade cherry shrimps in the tank.

Tips When Performing Culling

• Culling can be done considering many aspects, such as deformity, pattern, color, etc. But there should be a priority. The most important thing to do is to remove the deformed shrimp first. After deformity, you should consider color and pattern. Achieving a good color through selective breeding can be very hard, as color isn’t easy to get by breeding.
• Don’t get impatient seeing transparent baby shrimps. At the baby stage, cherry shrimps don’t show much color. They start to show more color as they age. Around the breeding stage, the shrimps should show their true potential color. So, don’t get impatient and wait until your shrimps are at least one centimeter long. I won’t recommend culling them too early. I wait until they reach sexual maturity.
• If your shrimp has recently molted, don’t cull right away. Wait for a few days. Molting can affect the color.
• This is a very important part, and you need to pay attention to it. Male shrimps generally don’t have as vibrant color as the females. As a result, if you don’t know the gender, you can accidentally cull all the male shrimps in the tank. I have seen this happen quite a few times. Here are the differences between male and female cherry shrimps you need to know.
• The key to successful shrimp breeding is having a good ratio of males to females in the tank. However, it is also important to get rid of the bad-quality males, as males have a dominant effect on the offspring.
• If you can manage a separate tank for selective breeding, keep only a handful of the best-quality male shrimp there. The number of female shrimp or the ratio won’t matter then. The females will get berries soon and start breeding.
• Don’t think about culling until you have at least 50-60 shrimps in the tank. It is fruitless to cull when you only have 10 shrimps in the tank.
• Make your selection process stricter with each generation. This will ensure further high-quality offspring in the later generations.
• Give at least a break of 2 weeks between each culling. This gives the shrimps the necessary time to develop color and pattern.

How To Catch Cherry Shrimps For Culling?

For a small shrimp tank with a handful of cherry shrimps, it is not hard to catch the undesirable ones with a net. However, it can get problematic when you have a large planted tank with hundreds of shrimps.

Here are the steps you can follow:

1. Don’t feed the shrimps for 2-3 days before the culling day. It will keep the cherry shrimps enough hungry for the next step.
2. Take a shrimp feeding dish and place your cherry shrimp’s favorite food there. Place the dish inside the tank at the front side so that you can clearly see what’s happening.
3. As the shrimps are not getting any food for 3 days, almost all of them will swarm over the feeding dish within a few minutes. They’ll be in the open devouring the food for at least half an hour.
4. You can clearly identify the undesirable ones then and take them out to a separate tank.
5. Repeat steps 1 to 4 several times until no undesirable cherry shrimps are left in the main tank.
6. It is best to catch the cherry shrimps with fishing nets that are available in the aquarium stores. When the shrimp is inside the net, press the net against the glass of the tank. This way, the cherry shrimps can’t jump out of the net.
7. Some shrimp keepers also found better results using a shrimp trap. Personally, I think that’s too much work and not worth the effort.

What Should You Do With The Cull Cherry Shrimps?

This is the first question that hit me when I first heard about selective breeding. Though the cull shrimps have undesirable traits, I don’t love them any less than the desirable ones. I am equally responsible for all the cherry shrimps as their keeper.

Here are the things I’ll suggest you to do with the culled shrimps:

• I do this: I keep the culled shrimp in a separate tank and let them breed to their heart’s content. This is good because, if you are lucky, sometimes you can get good-quality offspring from free-style breeding. It’s natural, too!
• You can sell them at a lower profit to other shrimp keepers who are just starting out in the hobby.

Conclusion

So, this is how you selectively breed cherry shrimps at home. The process is quite easy but time-consuming. At times, you may get very impatient. It’s normal and happened with me too.

Just stick with the process and after a certain period of time, you should start to get much higher-quality cherry shrimp offspring in the tank. Continuously doing the process will lead your cherry shrimps to achieve much higher grading. I have talked about cherry shrimp grading in this article.