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Cross breeding cherry shrimp with others?


Shrimpland

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I have red cherry shrimp and red rili shrimp in one tank and both of them have been breeding successfully. I don't know whether they cross breed or not, but I didn't have any problems so far. Recently I added a few black shrimps and blue shrimps to the same tank.  I like to know whether they will cross breed and make their colours dull or they will breed only with their kind in my tank.

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Hi @Shrimpland! They will most likely cross breed and I'd expect that the offspring will be more like the wild type with the duller brown and clear colors. The 2 most popular genuses, or types, of shrimps in the hobby are Neocaridina and Caridina. Cherry shrimp, blue dreams, rilis, etc. are neocaridina, while shrimp like crystal shrimp, blue bolts, and tiger shrimp are caridina. Neocaridina will cross breed regardless of the color if put together, as will caridina, but neocaridina cannot cross breed with caridina shrimps.

 

If you are interested in maintaining the colors of the shrimp in the baby shrimps I'd recommend separating them into different tanks or putting up dividers in your tank to keep them from breeding with each other. If your main interest is just keeping shrimps and seeing all the colors together in one tank I say keep it the way it is. There's no negative effects to the shrimp if they cross breed, the main thing is that over time the population will most likely consist of the wild type shrimp. Hope that helps!

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I don't believe crossbreeding cherries and red rilis would dull their colors since cherries were originally derived from rilis (or possibly the other way around). Some babies may end up being more clear/less red than others with every batch of babies, which is normal and just due to genetics. Once your colony gets fairly large I'd recommend removing the less-colorful adults from the colony. By doing this you'll leave only the most red shrimp to breed with each other, which should result in the genetics being passed down to the babies so they should have more red color as well. If you keep doing this, over time the percent of deep red babies should increase to the point where the majority, or even all of the babies will have a nice red coloration. This can be difficult with neocaridina however because the males are typically less colorful than the females, so it's important to make sure to be aware of which are the males when removing, or culling, your shrimp. A common mistake that happens when breeding shrimp is that people will remove the less-colorful shrimp to improve the color and genetics, but in doing so they remove the naturally less-colorful males so no breeding would take place.

 

I'm currently in the process of letting my shrimp breed to get larger colonies, and once the colony's large enough I'll try to remove the shrimp with undesireable traits (less color, more of a certain color or pattern, etc.) so that only the shrimp with the desired traits are left to breed. It's a long process, but if you take the time to do it your customers will be very satisfied because not only will they have very nice-colored shrimp, but they will produce babies that are mostly or all the same color as the adults they bought. With the shrimp hobby growing so rapidly now, it may be easy to find nice-looking adult shrimp, but when you breed them you may find that the babies look nothing like the adults, which can be disappointing for those who want to breed them. I've tested several common sites that sell shrimp and now I pretty much buy only from 3 specific sites that have been shown to have high quality shrimp that not only look good, but produce babies that either look as good as the adults, or in some cases, even better than the adults I initially bought. That said, I definitely prefer buying from hobbyist breeders though as, in general, they tend to care for their shrimp more since the hobby is more important to them than making money, so I definitely support more USA shrimp breeders! Hope this helps!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can't thank you @JSak enough for long explanation. It's so good to know there are people like you to support in this hobby. I'm waiting to build a cement pond for shrimps and divide it to three parts from the money I earned from selling shrimps. Two parts for blue and black and other part for crystal shrimps. It might take another month to start that.  I'm not from USA. I live in Sri Lanka. Shrimp hobby just started here and spreading fast. Still it is very hard to find them in shops. So hobbiests have had to look for other hobbiests like us who sell shrimp at the same time. Species other than cherry shrimps are rare and crystals are only available from a couple hobbiests at very higher prices regarding to cherry shrimp. Here a cherry shrimp is 50-150 rupees. Online sellers like me them at the lowest price, 50. Most of my buyers were shop owners who wanted to breed them first and they also bought for Rs.50 each. Blue and black neo cardinas are Rs.250 - 500 each, but hard to find. Black crystal is Rs.650. Red crystal is Rs.1000(5.50$). Red crystal pinto is Rs.600. And they're available only from literally a couple of hobbiests and people may not look for them much either because of higher prices comparing to other fishes.

 

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No problem! I honestly have to stop myself sometimes from geeking out too much or else my explanations would turn into an essay 😅 Thank you for your kind words! I'm very passionate about the hobby as it has helped, and continues to help me get through some stressful and difficult times in my life. I'm a veterinary student and love animals so I'm very interested in the science behind how to properly keep animals, and like you said, since the hobby is still relatively new there isn't a whole lot of information about shrimp keeping compared to fish keeping, so it gives a sort of challenge to try to take what information there is currently and compare it to how my shrimp are doing. 

 

That's awesome! Just make sure that the crystal shrimps and the neocaridina shrimp don't share the same water because they have different requirements for hardness and pH. That being said, I believe that you could get them all to live in the same water parameters, but one type may do better than another. That's very exciting to be a part of a rapidly growing hobby like shrimp keeping in a country where it's still not as popular! You'll be the expert in shrimp keeping in Sri Lanka once it really becomes popular and everyone will be wanting your homebred shrimp over shrimp that are imported from other countries. I also have a plan like that as shrimp are not very well-known or popular in my home state, and I'm also very excited to sell shrimp to meet other hobbyists who are also as into shrimp as I am. Good luck! I hope you manage to help spread the hobby!

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