Briggadane neo genetics

[Briggadane]

My background pertinent to what I am going to study:

I've bred harlequin Great Danes for many generations.

Great Dane colors are bred separately. We have blue, fawn(brown), black and harl families. Only a solid black that does not carry recessive color may be bred into another color family.

Harlequin is pretty much it's own ball game in colors. In the harl family we have merls, mantles(b/w tuxedo color), harl and solid white(we call these 'lethal' white) and merlequins. No 2 colors bred together guarantee getting any one of the other colors. White is called lethal because if 2 whites are bred together, most, if any, will not survive. We have some serious recessive genes. About 100 years ago(WWI), Great Danes were almost wiped out. I believe there were only about a dozen SHOW quality Danes left in Europe. So colors were mixed then. We still get a few recessive a today. And we have others who have accidents or research type crosses now and then. But when one color of dog sells for 3 times the other colors, and a good one is drop dead beautiful, well, we aim for this. So harl breeders don't generally cross lines, and we strive to keep the genes color pure, we also have to figure out which color crosses will give the highest number of well marked harl puppies. Since the merl gene carries the harl gene, we generally get a lot of merls in a litter(my litters averaged 10-12 puppies). With the right cross, I could get 1/2 a litter of harls. You do the math. It pays to breed harls and know the genetics.

I don't actively breed anymore, but I still support others.

So, my free time was boring.

I played with fish off and on through the years. At one time I had a fish room devoted to show guppies. About 30 tanks, I think. I also kept Plecos. Queen arabesque, king tigers and the like. It was a lot of work.

And at the time I was raising a toddler and a newborn.

Now I'm ready for some fun.

I've got a number of tanks with guppies and ancestrus Plecos. I got some RCS in a tank of live bearers and plants I got from a club member a while ago. Tank had health issues I resolved, mostly from reading on forums like this. Now,I have small colonies of reds. So I set up some more tanks, and decided to get other neo colors. They kept dying(not sure it was my fault, seems neon yellow had something killing them?) anyway, I left that tank go with just guppies. One yellow survives alone. I wanted more, so found some chocolate neos. I put them in my 125. Wow are these fun! I get all kinds of colors coming out of them. It made me curious as to why. And could the colors be bred pure like Danes?

My plan is to separate the chocolates' offspring by color into the tanks I have established and see how often and to what degree an "off" color turns up in a population. Right now colors seem to happen by mutation or chance. I want to know if color is carried within a color. See the "Strip Tease" by JP Yosha a Great Dane breeder to understand concept.

So I plan to use my current shrimp as follows: one red tank for adding red culls, the blue velvets for blue culls, and into the neon yellows tank will go the wild or yellow culls.

I've got about 9 tanks to play with. I'll post when I see results.

My house tanks:

A. 125g two separate genetic pools in it so far, would like to find an unrelated 3rd, for true diversity.

B. 20g with 1 neon yellow and now 2 wild.

C. 10g with 6 blue velvet(added 2 black diamond culls).

Indoor tanks have pH around 7.5-7.8

Temps vary. 125 @ 78-82, 20g 75-77, 10g at room temp...

I use a combination of tap water and whole house dehumidifier water. I re-routed to tank to a huge Rubbermaid tub. I use Amquel on all tanks to avoid heavy metal problems in water.

My gH and kH are very high but stable over time.

Fish room tanks:

90g kiddie pool/pond. 2 sponge filters and an aqua clear 70 powerhead with filter attachment.

15g CRS. 10-20g HOB.

40g darker red CRS pulled from the 15g. Whisper 400.

All are at room temp. pH is 7.4-7.6 same gH kH as above.

I use a combination of tap water and rain water here. Explains pH difference.

My philosophy: use common sense but don't pamper shrimp.

I drip acclimate new to me shrimp. I 1/4 cup cut water water between house and fish room shrimp, and pretty much just float to temperature within the house tanks.

I tend to 'survival of the fittest' once I acclimate. All my tanks have guppies and are planted. some almost look like a jungle. So a young shrimp with good hiding skills will make it.

In addition to Amquel, I use a touch of Kent's essentials stuff, flourish, and Vita Plus.

I make my own calcium feeder blocks and keep one going in all tanks.

Fish room tanks get fed once a day, regular fish food for guppies, crumbles. water changes every 10-14 days.

Indoor tanks:

The 125 is my favorite. It has an aqueon 75/90 HOB, an elite 55, an aqua clear 50 with filter attachment, and a green machine UV sterilizer. It also has a fluval marine/reef led, and solarmax HO 220. It gets food about 4-6 times a day(tons of guppy fry here, and 9 Plecos). Fish food, nothing specifically for shrimp.

20g fed fish food 2x/day

15g fed fish food 1-2/day

I also use shrimp pots I make for them to hide/play in.

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My thoughts about what I will find( I expect to be wrong, that's why I'm making a journal).

Chocolate will not be stabilized as a color. It requires the addition of other colors to balance and maintain darker pigment. It will always throw wild colors in addition to other colors.

Red. I don't know what to expect.

Blue. I think blue will predominate. Other colors will be thrown. I don't think they will throw red though.

Wild- will stay in the wild color spectrum. Most likely tank to get color variation and patterns, WHEN they show up.

Should I put why I expect these results? Maybe. Perhaps another day. I'm done writing for now and this is too long.

[Elo500]

Looking forward to your results! How do you make calcium blocks?

[Briggadane]

I use calcium carbonate powder, a bit of calcium silicate, fish food, and vitamins/minerals. Mix it up, add water as needed, put it in a mold and wait. Caviat- do not make them on a rainy day. They will mold before setting. It really stinks. My mistakes went out to the rose garden, but even rain doesn't seem to effect them once they do set.

[Briggadane]

Well, an interesting development.

I put what i was relatively certain was a red female from my first batch of chocolates into one of my red tanks. Tonight while feeding and cleaning out a powerhead, I found her. She is no longer red, but more of a blue splotched. And she is berried. The berries appear to be a dark blue. I've pulled her.

Now I have to decide what to do with her. Either put her back with the chocolates, or get her into another tank. The problem here is that the only other tank set to correct parameters probably has a male cherry in it that I can't find.

Why do I believe this? Because I found one berried female in it yesterday... I had previously pulled all the adults out of that tank.. So these had to have been babies. Time wise I am certain this is a first berried female from the babies. The adults were only in that tank a maker of days, and all had been accounted for. The substrate is natural, and all plants are green. There is nothing red for them to blend in with. And I checked every cave and pot and such for any other shrimp.

I do have a few tubs for growing out male guppies going, but those only have air stones. I couldn't get them ready fast enough. Plus, they were recently dosed with Lifebearer.

Has anyone had to set up an emergency shrimp home fast? Was it successful, and if it was, what did you do to make it so?

[Soothing Shrimp]

I have.  Use a seeded sponge filter, move over some moss with biofilm on it, and you are good to go.  They will eat your prepared food while the tank biofilm is starting.

[Briggadane]

I don't have food specifically for shrimp, just powdered fish food made from crushing a combination of various dry fish foods as well as a few pieces of high protein cat food and plecocain.

I do have a spare sponge filter and a 2 gallon empty tank. Sponge is not seeded. I can use some substrate and plants from the tank she was in, as well as the extra media I keep in filters 'just in case'. I know she would make it in the 125, it was her grow out tank. Is it worth the risk to make the temporary home?

Will do so tomorrow. Gonna have to make room on a dresser in the house. Will make observing results easier and more reliable, but riskier to the shrimp needing a more stable environment. Care of small tanks is much harder.

[Briggadane]

Today, the berried blue female I put in the CRS tank( she was red when I put her in), is pushing out her shrimplets. There are at LEAST a dozen so far, and she still has lots of eggs to go.

She is on a partially submerged piece of drift wood, directly under the lights. She is a perfect turquoise blue/green. Very beautiful.. I'm not collecting babies this round, I will separate her next time and see what I can do with the color...

[Briggadane]

Oh, on a side note, I believe I figured out how to recharge Chemi Pure. It's very easy and simple.

Boil the old bag as you would to recharge the carbon. Let cool enough that you can handle the bag. Get a metal kitchen sieve- about 6-8 inch. Take a glass bowl( I use CP elite, so no metal bowls) that is about an inch wider than your sieve. Fill bowl 2/3 of the way. Set sieve in bowl so top half is not in water but bottom half is. Open chemi pure bag. Dump contents in sieve. Rinse bag so residue goes to bottom, turn inside out and put the crud in the sieve too. Then gently swirl the sieve. The brown granuals will sink into the bottom of the bowl. Remove sieve. Pour the granuals back into the bag. Now fill bowl again and swish to get the remaining granuals out. Pour those back into the bag as well. Set carbon aside. Refill bowl with fresh water. Add bleach. Use purigen dose. Let sit for an hour or so.

Rinse bag with granuals(sp)well. Then fill bowl with fresh water. Dose with a lot of dechlor. Either let sit to dry and shake bag now and then, or set in oven on low til mostly dry. Then dechlor again. Then dry. Add the carbon to the granuals when your comfortable that bleach is out. Secure the bag and re- use. I'll report results soon, cause I started to notice cloudy water. If it clears up by tomorrow I'll know it worked. If not, this experiment did not work...

It worked. Water is back to crystal clear, and it's only been a couple hours since I put the bag back in. I did add an additional step. I boiled the bag one last time, just to remove all traces of chlorine. I felt it was over kill, but I'm glad I did it. This was in the same tank as the baby shrimp birth, and the babies are still doing well. Starting to move around and seeking hiding places.

To anyone interested, I use one full size bag of chemi pure for the whole tank. It's my 125g. I have 3 filters going in the tank, plus a uv sterilizer. Tank has 35,000k of lighting. The bag lasted 6 weeks with a bio load of about 20 adult guppies, 9 large but juvenile BN Plecos, 150 guppy fry, 100 or so shrimp, and a lot of freeloading snails. It's fully planted as well. Weekly water changes of about 20%.

[Briggadane]

Update. Have culled over 500 blue pearl/pastel green/pastel yellow from the tank. I'm now starting to get a lot more chocolates.

I'm also seeing a morph that is a wood shrimp pattern-color.

I've had absolutely no cherry red shrimps show up. Anything born red changes to blue-green pastel upon maturity.

A note of interest: I dose flourish, Kent marine minerals, and Azoo vita plus once every 2 weeks or so. Shortly after that I have a population explosion in shrimp. The plant growth spikes as well. It's AMAZING to experience. The down side is an increase in green and hair algae too. The 9 Plecos and 100's of shrimp can't keep up with it.

[Soothing Shrimp]

pssst: BP is a different shrimp than cherries. heh

 

Your wood shrimp pattern-color is probably chocolate sakura.

[Briggadane]

Soothing, can BP cross breed? Cause the single BP I put in the RCS tank was peewee sized when I dropped it in, and then berried when I pulled her out. So either she cross bred, or the cherries I got had red masquerading in it.

[Soothing Shrimp]

Since BP is also a neo, yes it can cross breed with cherries.

 

The result would be Neo. Davidi x Neo. Palmata