Ebiten Shrimp Tank #3: F1 Self Cross Breeding

Ebiten Shrimp Tank #3
Ready to Go!
There are about 15 F1s,, good new is that two females are berried already.
 

Ebiten Shrimp Tank # 2: Back Cross Breeding

Ebiten News:

Tank # 2
This beauty's pregnant since November 12.
Back Cross mating!
I select 3 nice F1 Males to this new tank.
By the way,, those little shrimp lets around her are round 2 F1

Flower Head -- Ebiten PRL Crystal Red Shrimp F1

What? A Green King Kong

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/photo.php?fbid=156646664405887&set=a.101779109892643.2461.100001816624943&type=1&theater

I saw this picture from FaceBook. There are red, black and blue king kong. Now, is this new species? Crystal red shrimp species are really amazing, and there is much more fun for us to discover.

Enjoy the picture! & Have fun with your shrimp colonies.

About Ebiten Pure Red Line

Ebiten Pure Red Line CRS is the result of several generations' selective breeding. The chosen ones are not only pretty, but also bigger. I have been keeping those Ebiten Shrimp for about a month. The result is significant. They grow faster and bigger than other crystal red shrimp. The one shown in the picture is about 3/4 inch, close to 1 inch. This is the first time she gets berried, I estimate there could be around 50 eggs. Her capability is close to cherry shrimp, which never happen to my other CRS. If the parent shrimps are big, future baby shrimplets are more likely to be big in size, and in a healthy condition. Being pretty is just one point of pure line, what's more important is the healthy gene.

Red Wine Shrimp --- King Kong

Black King Kong --- The Black Shadow

Rili Shrimp Feed on Algea

Feed on Algea

Rili shrimps just look so perfect match with green!!

Japanese Ebiten Pure Blood Line Crystal Red Shrimp

Fish Boraras for Shrimp Tank

I got some nice and gentle little boraras fish for my shrimp tanks.
I like it in nice red color. Well, this photo could not present their beauty (my camera's limit).
About the seller, they have very nice fish, and very professional package, but they charge way to much shipping and packaging fee, which I think is really unreasonable. Anyway, I receive this little guys safely, that's of the most important thing.

Berried BKK and RW

Selective Breeding --- Nakajima Breeding Technique

How to  selective breeding?
How to get offspring at your desirable characteristics and color trait?

The solutions may vary depending on what you have,, and what you are going to put into the project.

What I am going to introduce today is called Nakajima Breeding Technique. Most information is from: http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/tonina-bestcrs/article?mid=28&prev=139&next=25. That's in Chinese, translated from Japanese. I just try to keep the main basic idea about this technique.

The very first factor that affect the breeding project would be the size of your tank. Let's take the example of a 60cm tank. First of all, we need to start from the pairing shrimps. If you put it favored 3 ~ 4 males, and then relatively more females. In this case, the male will pick whichever female it likes to mate. It is like a short cut to success. If the number of males is not enough, it will decrease the rate of successful mating. On the other hand, if the number of male is excess, ready to mate female, being weak after molting, will be chased by one, and ,another, and another males. Ultimately, Exhaustion. So, you need more plants,,more hidden places...

After successful mating, let berried female stays in the same tank for 3~4 days, and then move it carefully and slowly to the tank rich of moss and micro-organisms (of course, you have to prepare this tank ahead).  In this way, you have clear idea of what pairs make the offsprings. Make it easier for future selection. And it could prevent the trouble from males.

The first day eggs are hatched, you should start to feed baby shrimp food that's rich in protein. New born shrimplets are difficult to seen for the first week. There are several choice of special design baby shrimp food. There are not great different between them. What I am using now is from Ebi-Ten Shrimp Bacter, and Borneo Wild Bebi Shrimp Food, which you can find from my Product Page. When shrimplets start to color up, if you find that the number of shrimplets decreases, well, there are lots of reasons. One of the most important one is that babies are highly sensitive to temperature change that's greater than ±2～3℃. Some hobbies may use heater and a chiller at the same time to keep temperature within desirable range, minimize the temperature change ( which could be really costly).

After food and temp control, another question is water change. Never ever change lots of water. A idea rate of water change could be 1/100 once a week. For the 60 cm tank, that would be 500cc water change once a week. When adding new water, make sure that things like chrome, etc are filtered out, and new water temp should be close the the tank, and you can mix some minerals to new water before add it to the tank. use drip acclimation system to slowly add in new water. For the water loss that's due to evaporation, you should add in new water in other way, like the distilled water.

Above is a brief introduction.. and there are more to know and discuss in the future. The following picture is one of my newly rearranged tank. I follow the basic idea. Now in this tank, only a few berried shrimps, the rest are all new born shrimplets. It greatly helps increasing the growth rate of shrimplets. Now I feed baby shrimp food twice a day, in the morning and at night.

King Kong and Genos

Flower Head Crystal Black Shrimp

Finally, it is berried, one of my pretty flower head crystal black shrimp, with pretty and special symmetric head pattern.

Black King Kong Baby --- From Blue Egg

My Heroine Mum

She is my heroine mother.

Human beings lives could be really fancy and differentiated. How about the life of a shrimp? in a 10 gallon tank?

This gene shrimp mother' life story is a legend. She travelled half the world from Taiwan to United State, during 2009's autumn. When she just moved here, she's about 3 month old. How many year she has lived?? Actually, she is really old now, from the perspective of shrimp's life span. But she is the toughest and strongest one. I have got 20 gene shrimps,, but only two females left,,, now only she left... and can't imagine how many times she has survived from unpredicted environmental change... and she continues to give birth... until now...

When I only have gene shrimps,,, she is the top unusual one. She was the only one that have baby of a black king kong and a panda..(refer to post http://crystalredshrimp-yoyo.blogspot.com/2010/12/hope.html)

Now,, the result of true king kong blood line and a gene shrimp: dark dark black color eggs.. full loaded... only the one that close to tail isn't. We have been expecting such a moment for long long time. First time we see it in person,, that's our shrimp,,, we're shocked and moved, by this heroine mother!!

She is the best! Hope this batch could hatch successfully,, and shrimp babies can grow up with no accidents!

Crystal Red Shrimplets

The DIY shrimp egg hatching is really a successful one. Hatching rate is almost close to 100%. So glad to see how many lives it has saved.

Shrimplets

In the following picture, all eggs are from crs. So amazing that eggs are showing different colors. The color that makes me feel the most exciting is the blue, esp. dark blue ones. You know what it is!!

Funny Rili Shrimp Show

 Rili shrimp is really a new interesting specie. Each individual has its different presentation.

Paired 

Tripled

EBI-TEN --- ULTRA PEARL

Weight: 8g.
A vitamin concoction developed by the Japanese research team of a university, the EBI-TEN Ultra Pearl encourages rapid development in growth, breeding and coloration of the bee shrimps. Ultra Pearl is one unique and effective product which is not found in industry yet.
According to their research report, in order to increase the solidity and enhance the coloration, they suggest using 2g, for 100L water, for every 5-6 days. 


Result: 
5 days after the second times using ultra pearl, they took out sample and did analysis, and found that the thickness of shell is increased slightly;
10 days after, the thickness of shell keeps increasing;
15 days after, the thickness of shell is indeed increased; and the solidity of body coloration is enhanced obviously. 


And this product is so effective and popular that, it used to sold out fast in Asian Market. 


My experience:
This is a really effective product. After I first used it in two of my tanks, a big crs tank, and red ruby tank. Both tanks have female starts molting, and male shrimps started to fly around. And found one berried red ruby shrimp the next day. 

Red Sea --- Painted Fire Red Shrimp

DIY --- Shrimp Egg Hatching

Losing shrimps is a tragedy
Losing a berried one is more than a tragedy
But there is still something you can do to save some lives  \(￣︶￣)> 
Do it yourself egg hatching:
What you need: air pump, air line, air stone, sucker, fine tea ball (make sure that the gap is small enough so eggs will slip out), and a cylinder tube that fits the tea ball. Set it up as shown in the photo.
Advantage:
Eggs in no danger of being consumed. 
Fresh water keeps flowing from bottom. Eggs keep moving around and up & down,, so won't be stuck in the gap.

In breeding ~~

Slim cylinder making sure that water flow concentrated. 

A strong flow is recommended

Egg extraction from the female should be done as soon as possible after female dies, making sure that eggs are fresh. You can move the dead female to a dish container with water from same tank, for easy handling. The female carcass must be separated from the eggs. Each egg should stand individually.

Don't use bare hand to touch eggs. I use tooth pick and a tweezers for this little "surgery operation". Tweezers grips the female, and tooth pick separates eggs. Be gentle, not to squish the egg,,  neither rip the female apart. 

Well, you should always be patient and gentle during surgery, but timing is sensitive too!!

ABOUT Rili

Rili Shrimps --- cherry shrimp species ( recessive trait )
Scientific name: Neocaridina heteropoda var. Rili
Origin: Taiwan
Size: male/female 0.8 inch/1 inch
Water Temperature: 64 - 82 'F
pH: 6.5 - 7.5
Difficulty: Easy

Rili Ball