ArrogantSword

$35

Personally my favorite plant that fits that description is Hydrocotyle triparta 'japan'. It sends out beautiful trailing vines. It is a plant that benefits from training, by trimming it to encourage certain growth patterns.

I know this isn't very helpful now, but if you haven't found any Malawa by next spring, send me a PM. I had a colony of several hundred until a CO2 related disaster brought that down to under 30, so it'll be several months before I have enough to part with some. Hopefully someone currently has enough to sell though.

Also, while I have lost 90% of my source material I was working off of, I did find a rough sketch of a chart for some of my findings. I know some of what I found was suspect and needed further corroboration, but I'll attach a picture here. If anybody notices any glaring inaccuracies please let me know, it will greatly help going forward. Also, If anyone has any suggestions for facebook groups, foreign language forums (praise google translate), or any other good places to find good info, that would help as well.

Main question: Is the main reason why some wild shrimp species are called Tigers and others Bee just because some have thin stripes and other have large sections, or is there some other reason for this naming convention? So I'm getting back into the shrimp hobby after a few years absence, and as I'm getting a little overwhelmed at all the new varieties I decided it might be a good idea to go back to one of the projects I was starting when I quit: to research the history of the various shrimp varieties to really understand what comes from what and how. Now I know that Soothing and others smarter and more experienced than I am were overwhelmed by this, and I remember thinking that if I came across one more 10+ year old forum post that redirected to a "we're sorry, this page is no longer available" message I was going to tear my hair out, but I learned a lot and I'm ready to give it another shot. I used that one rah-bop chart we've all seen a million times, but I'd like to be able to independently verify all that information. It seems that one of the biggest trends in new shrimp over the last few years have resulted from various crosses with tiger shrimp. While I initially focused on Crystals and TBs I want to extend my research to the various Tigers as well. Which has me thinking about naming conventions. If I remember correctly, standard Tigers and Crystals/TB are both C. cantonensis, despite coming from different varieties called tiger and bee respectively. And the Super Tiger, Red Tiger, and Tangerine Tiger (along with the newer red and blue Tupfel) are all tigers but are different species despite interbreeding with cantonensis. And there are a few Tiger species that do not interbreed. In addition there are a few species such as the Paracaridina 'Blue Bees' that are referred to as Bee shrimp but do not interbreed with cantonensis. So is the reason behind the naming convention as obvious as it seems? Tigers have thin stripes, and Bees have large sections that look like a bumblebee. I'm about to dive into more scientific literature to try to figure out some basic origins and distribution of tigers, as well as when where and in what order some of the captive bred varieties appeared, but I wanted to clear up this simple point first.

I hate finding old threads with no resolution, so here is a final update. Long story short, never had the orange eye red stripe pattern pop up again and the whole colony died. I ended up having a heater malfunction that wiped out most of my shrimp, and the few that survived ended up in other tanks with fish. The population limped along for a while but as of a year ago when I moved and really stripped down tanks and took inventory, there were no more Tangerine Tigers.

Another small update. For a while I had had the shrimp in an in-tank cloth breeder box, but as the holes were starting to grow algae and making it hard to see, I moved them to a Marina HOB which I put on the front of the tank for visibility. A few days later the female became berried for a 3rd time. However after about a week and a half when I checked in on them the eggs were gone again. At this point I am going to split them into two separate breeder boxes. The first will have the male, along with several female regular TTs. I should have done that a while ago. The second box will have the female with a few regular TT males. I think there is a problem with the female, and after 3 dropped clutches in a row I am not expecting much, but I figure there is a slim chance that the problem comes from the mating of this particular male with this particular female. My best bet is with breeding the male to other females, and then breeding those offspring back to the father, etc. Hopefully in a few months I will have a better update.

Sorry guys, I got busy with work and school and hadn't visited the site in a while. I wish I had more to update with. Both shrimp are still alive. I believe one is male and one is female. The female has been berried THREE times now, but there have not been any babies. I don't know if the babies somehow all died or if she dropped the eggs or what. The eggs have been a light tan color, which is different from the darker brown that most TT eggs are. I am hoping that she isn't somehow sterile or something. Hasn't been berried in about a month though. Should I add some more normal individuals to the breeder box with these two? And if so, what kinds, like add one female or one male, etc. Anyways, here are some updated pictures. You can see that one of the the shrimp is pale enough that I would maybe think I had a blonde OEBT, but the second shrimp is darker and clearly has the TT coloration. http://imgur.com/a/pkhS9

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I like TTOE for a working name. If I ever establish a viable strain I can rethink that. I think I will move the TTOE to their own 5.5g. They are a little too young to sex, but in case they are males I am thinking about putting a few adult females in. Now of my adults, about 60% have standard TT coloration, and the other 40% are paler like the TTOE. Would it be smart to go with the paler adult females in hopes that they are where the TTOE came from?

So I have a handful of really unique looking TT babies, and they have finally gotten old enough that I think this will be their adult coloration. There are at least 3 of these. They have orange eyes, they are paler than the other TTs, and their stripes appear to be red instead of black. I posted a blurry picture on another forum a while ago and was told it was probably just a cull OEBT, but I had the TTs for about 3 months before these offspring showed up, so I am reasonably certain these are actual TT offspring. I have included a few pictures. The first is of the unique TT offspring. The 2nd is it with a normal TT of the same offspring (possibly the same batch as well). And the 3rd is 2 of the orangeeyeredstripes with an adult. Now about half of my adult TTs have the darker tangerine color, whereas the other half are a bit lighter like the one in the first photo. None are quite as light as the OE offspring though. http://imgur.com/ERDt1mF http://imgur.com/7uVcE1r http://imgur.com/mMxjO9u So what are peoples' thoughts? Before I get too excited thinking I have some awesome mutation, is there a better explanation? Would an OEBT cull have the red stripes? The only possible way I can think that they could be OEBT is if some newborn shrimp hitchhiked with some plants or something. But at the same time none of the places I get my plants from carry OEBT. If this is a mutation though, it looks like I have a new breeding project.