Out of the Blue and Into the Black

[Kingo]

So, I got these two little tackers the other day from a mate who is starting a blue project; he didn't get any info about his original stock. The line of Neos he has is throwing dark blues to almost black. I have no experience identifying shrimp whatsoever, (but usually 100% accurate identifying a CRS from CBS!) so calling on th elders here to see if anyone can identify them or point me in the right direction. 

He gave them to me as the female appears to have no blue whatsoever, but upon seeing a few shots with my macro lense, I see blue spots on the side of her head and across her tail. Can I selectively breed this line to get pure black? Advice and opinions greatly appreciated... 

Edited October 15, 2017 by Kingo
Typo.

[Baccus]

Since I think blue is the harder colour to get and stabilise in shrimp it should be relatively easy to breed yours back to black. You may have to take lots of macro shots (and if possible have the camera setting on true colour or something like that, mine has it to capture the true hues of sunset), and be ready to remove any that don't meet your standards/ requirements.

The reason I warn about the colour setting on the camera is that depending on tank lights, ambient light and angle of the camera you can get very drastic colour variation on the  same creature. Since I have a slight colour blindness I find it easier to A try grading shrimp in real sunlight and B bug my Husband into coming and checking and confirming my colour suspicions. A hand held magnifying glass can also be useful.

If the shrimp you where given where not throwing 100% black offspring then I would suspect that you will end up getting a lot of chocolates with or without some black on them, Blacks with patches of dark blue and even the odd semi-clear wild type.

[Kingo]

Thanks @Baccus! Sounds like you're speaking from experience? They are living in an ultra small nano, so I plan on culling pretty hard. Would you usually separate into a glass or something to check before culling? I remember my RCS dropping their colour in a few seconds before when shocked....

[Baccus]

I usually try to cull obvious wrongs in the tank they are living in, that at least eliminates the dropping colour from stress and change of water parameters. I usually also have a couple of the nifty cheap 20L glass tanks laying about and I set one of these up on a table with some plant life and a light (or where it will get sunlight) and leave the shrimp to settle in this tank for up to a couple of days even a week and then I sort desired and undesired.

If you only have one tank for the shrimp your biggest problem is going to be where on earth to put the undesired or cull shrimp, not such an issue if you have some semi aggressive fish that may eat them or like in my case having a large pond that culls can run wild in with some native fish like gudgeons that I know gladly scoff any shrimp they find. If you have large numbers of culls you may even be able to tempt a local pet shop into taking them off your hands and depending on the grade of cull they could sell them on to other fish keepers or sell them on as live food.

I have had some issues with breeding black cherry's. At one time I got some dark chocolates and planned to selectively breed them back to black. The plan was working until I noticed the shrimp numbers in that tank where decreasing instead of increasing. It was a 20L open topped tank in my car shed and a dragonfly had laid eggs in the tank. So dragonfly nymphs where having a feast. After that experience I tend to always keep relatively docile or small mouthed  fish with my shrimp because I know the fish will eat the tiny dragonfly eggs or newly hatched nymphs just like they do any mosquito eggs/ wrigglers. I then started again with breeding the chocolates and now have a tank that produces almost 100% black cherrys and only occasionally do I have to hunt out wilds or chocolates. Even the occasional red will even still turn up but rarely. Recently I even got a couple of blues out of this tank.

I would attach a couple of pictures of my blacks and chocolates but have been really struggling with the new size limits of photos and resizing my pictures.

[Kingo]

Awesome advice, thanks @Baccus! These guys are intact upstairs, but I have already fished out one little tri-tailed dragonfly nymph some months ago. 

 

My other tanks Hanks however are downstairs in an underground shrimp den (also the garage) so I will keep an eye on that. Would love to see them! I downloaded an app to drop file sizes for these forums. 

Recently successfully bred (one batch) of CRS, so I have also now a new pair of 30L tanks cycling, along with a cup tub, so the culls can live out their life there. How many gens did it take you to get black back?