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Don't worry ineke still have my lines of cherries and cbs crs that are still pure as they were 5+years ago the joy of separate tanks not system .Have my orange cherry breed from my reds breeding 100% orange but only 40% high grade still work to do.These orange have provided me with orange rilli that breed100% orang but only 20-30% rilli.Greens are a pain as well as yellow rilli but still improve each generation putting bubs back over parents.Have even got carbon rilli poping out of 2 diff bloodlines 1 from blue rilli shrimp 1 from my black cherry.And my blues from black now breed 80% blue but only 60% quality.When I learn to post picks properly I will start being more active again.

I'm probably never going to call any of my shrimps 'pure' unless they are bought as PRL/PBL from a trustworthy breeder. E.g. for CRS, if I do at some stage sell them, I'll simply say these CRS have been throwing 100% CRS for the last 2 years. Even if I get their quality to a stage where they have good coloured legs, etc, I would still say they are CRS with good colour and throwing 100%. If at some stage a CBS pops out from a batch, then I'll start the clock from then again. Personally, I go for aesthetic good colour and quality rather than fancy names. If a good quality CRS looks like a poor quality PRL, I would buy the cheaper CRS any day. I enjoy looking at beautiful quality shrimps, not so fuss their lineage and names. Call me shallow if you like but looks matter to me in shrimps. Haha.

jc12 I think if you dig deep enough there are quite a few dedicated pure line breeders on SKF. They just don't post much anymore. It's getting the really pure lines that is becoming the problem I'm afraid and that will be another thing we need to go into- when can we call our line pure? As we have all had to purchase our original shrimp we don't really know how pure that line is now. So how can we define when our line is pure? How many generations of "pure" stock do we need before we can say 100% that our shrimp have no other genes in them. My CRS haven't been crossed with anything for 2 years but I know some of them have come from breeders that had CBS in with their CRS. There are a lot of things that will need to be added to the criteria of stating that our shrimp are pure. BUT we have to start somewhere and in the long run it can only benefit the hobby. Hopefully others out there will agree and come on board. Maybe the overseas members will know a bit more about guidelines on this subject- or are their lines as mixed as ours?????

I have no problem with pinto tigebee mishling or other hybrids of any kind as long as its stipulated when selling.Yes its hard and no-one wants to draw the line.As long as people buy culls,poor quality shrimp,or just mislabled shrimp with a fancy name people will fill the need and sell them.

Facebook sites will come and go, SKF is here to stay. Once we get agreement on what the correct information is, I can talk to other forums and we can all then progressively try and get facebook sites to publish the correct information. If we can take a scientific approach then there isn’t much room to argue against. Will be on the to do list as soon as I've finished with all the upgrade work.

Maybe I am being over simplistic but I see that we have 2 choices 1) let things deteriorate further or 2) work with the hobby and start to resolve the issues. We may not be able to tackle them all at once but at least start to steer this thing in the right direction. Cherries included, just look at what breeders have done with the naming. We need to pull it back to the basics using scientific names not super cool marketing names just because it may sell better. If we can achieve this then at least we have a better chance of working out lineage.

Don't get me started on that one LOL. I didn't realise I felt so strongly about it but it just poured out and has made me understand a few things that are going on in my shrimp room.!!!!

Hi Sonic, 1) The Fulval spec aquariums, if I recall correctly, have small slits for water intake to the filter. These will have to be covered up with mesh, foam or maybe fine flyscreen material. The choice is yours. Despite my Googlefu, I can't find a clear picture of the Tetra cube filter. However, adding a mesh or foam prefilter to the intake is a must like any other filter. Every aquarium filter (that has an impeller) on the market needs a mesh prefilter for shrimp if you want to keep shrimplets from being sucked into the filter. The tanks are small, so the chance of water parameter fluctuation is high. It's not impossible maintaining a stable environment for shrimp, but you will just need to be more diligent. An additional external canister filter might also be a good idea. A 2 tray 500-800LPH unit filled with quality bio-media would work well as a supplement filter to the inbuilt unit. Can't have too much filtration. 2) the LED lights that come with these tanks are not particularly good for growing healthy plants. However, a shrimp tank only needs mosses. And the lights that come with these tanks will be sufficient for growing moss. If you want to keep more complex stemmed plants, an upgrade of the lights are in order. Hope this helps. Just ask if you have more questions.

Well lets clearly describe what a cull is along with what shrimp grades are outside of culls. We are the largest shrimp forum in the world now with a ton of experienced breeders here. It's an opportunity to do right by our members by putting out correct information which hopefully spreads into the FB world. I know what I call a cull isn't a cull by many others. But these days I just squish them and feed them back to the shrimp as I don't have any other tanks or ponds to throw them in.

this is awesome thanks for sharing ineke im so glad that you have done this and it worked out well for you! I will have to check out squiggles diy again too as im looking to do something similar atm. I have horizontal tank setups too which I will have a new m2k3 and some smaller old aqua one pumps I already had but currently the setup is so noisy that i will only turn it on if i go away overnight or longer - as backup but I must do it properly when I get time! love n peace will

Just a quick thank you to JayC for organising some Agar Agar for me and then sending it on free of charge. It arrived today Thanks Jason much appreciated.

Hubby and I have just finished doing my new airline system using Squiggle's DIY thread. As my tanks are on a horizontal bench- not a rack system - the airline had to run over 3 1/2 metres along 2 walls. We went for the black irrigation hose (12 mm I think it is) -as opposed to the thicker plastic tubing - which is attached to a length of timber fixed to the wall and 4 mm connectors and irrigation hose. Then using a sprinkler system tap which is also 4 mm we attached ordinary airline hose for each filter and connected the pump. To connect the pump we filled the end closest to the pump with silicon with the air line in the middle of the silicon forming a good seal. The further end was just folded over and clamped shut. I have 1 extra tap that is left slightly open to relieve any pressure buildup- again as per Squiggs instructions. We opted to use the irrigation connectors , taps and hose as it was easier to tap holes into the hose instead of drilling into rigid plastic. The 12 mm hose acts as the reservoir for the air and I have spare connectors so I can add more lines if needed. I am running each side with 2 Schego pumps , which then run 5 tanks one side and 6 tanks on the other. So far it runs extremely well and it is so much easier to get at the individual taps for each filter. It's such a small step but makes the world of difference from having to fish around behind the tanks to get to the control valves and also now running only 2 pumps rather than the 4 I was using. Each tank has 2 sponge filters- a couple have 3- and there is plenty air left so I'm very happy ! Thanks for the idea Squiggs!

I agree with newbreed, it will get worse before it gets better and unfortunately doing research doesn't guarantee that you won't be ripped off. I am aware of what happened to daydream, they were bought from someone who has a good reputation. The problem with reputation in shrimp is that it is easily gained by posting up a couple of good pics,i have noticed especially on facebook that alot of people that give others a good reputation aren't buying shrimp they are only looking at pictures. if you are selling crap it will catch up with you eventually but it takes time. I don't agree that it could be an honest mistake to bag up culls and sell them as quality, especially the number of culls that were in the bags. Cheers mick

I'll have to check with him as he's fairly busy at the moment with other work and my million and one requests.

Is he for hire? I need a new logo too

Hi Will, I only have the one riffle but in the future I would like to. I've heard the juvies are a bit harder to raise compared to the neocaridinas and caridinas so I might go the route of quality CRS's before I venture into riffles. They are plenty interesting though and are great additions to a shrimp tank. I'll have to look up Seachem's Purigen and see if it does what it says. Nothing like a happy colony of shrimps I do weekly 10-15% water changes using treated tap water with neutral PH and plan on doing so until it gets to 7.2 but seeing as it might be an alkalinity related issue I might pull back on reducing PH this way and causing unnecessary spikes. Love was/is still in the air, with my 4th berried blue velvet spotted this morning. She was rearranging her eggs, presumably just finished mating. On a side note, I'm thinking of replacing the Sochting Oxydator with an airpump (AquaLighter aPump) connected to a CO2 diffuser. Wonder how that would work out as getting H2O2 at the right percentage seems like a bit of a hassle. Best regards, Howard

There are a few LFS around now who will only buy certain grades of shrimp. Many are becoming sponsors of FB sites and have tanks specially setup with shrimp soil. There are 2 close to me that have vastly improved their quality of shrimp and now sell lots of shrimp specific items at long last. Hopefully as people become more informed quality will improve even more .

Disciple depends on quality of culls.I keep about 10shrimp to breed and 10-20 to sell out of every 200 or so the rest are then classified culls.Most of the time these are feed to fish but on the odd occasion someone will be buying another sp of shrimp from me and Ill pick the best 10 of these and give them away letting them know I classify them as cull grade.Its a surprise for them and me when they belive that these culls are of a higher standard than others are selling.

Just to be clear, the intention of developing this further isn't to get rid of cross breeds but rather to better inform both buyers and sellers in the hobby. It's also aimed at moving the hobby back to science rather than sales and marketing.

Shitty situation for you mate, i agree there is lots in this hobby out to rip people off. A sign of the world we live in today. Thankfully i only have CRS and they only throw CRS cause i was given some from reputable people on here and won in comp when all mine carcked it. I am paranoid as all crap when i sell anything because i dont want to unknowingly mislead someone

I am probably more old school and prefer 'basic' shrimps. I love CRS, CBS and TBs (which means only WR, RR, KK, Panda and BB). However, with TBs being so expensive, I have mischlings and have since got a few batches of TBMMs (some of them actually look like pintos) which unfortunately looks like they have not survived. I'm still working on survival rate at the moment. Once I can successfully keep and breed a couple generations of TBMMs, I would then go pure TBs, if a trustworthy breeder and/or pure TB still exist by then. I enjoy seeing pintos but don't think I'll ever go down this path, which makes me worry I might unknowingly buy some TB(MM)s with pinto genes in future. My aim is to just focus keeping and breeding quality CRS, CBS and TBs. Perhaps we could set up dedicated breeding groups within SKF which commit and focus on specific shrimps? I know some fish breeders do that... i.e. dedicated species group.

It would be a great thing if we could do it Nogi - a huge thing for the shrimp hobby. Yes we could start and redefine the Neo lines. Try and bring back the names- what are Blue Velvets now anyway ? When I was breeding them they were from Red Rili blue gene- now I haven't got a clue anymore???? But yes it would be good to define each colour and grade. However the Facebook sites are very popular now and as can be seen by the auction sites people are using them to sell rather than a controlled site like SKF. We used to have high selling rates here but now very few for sale ads in comparison. I don't know or think that there is a lot of control over names and definitions of being able to say pure bred on those sites. We used to say TBM and TBMM here but very few people are using those terms on Facebook - mostly people who used to be very active on here. As you say though it would be good to make a start and perhaps using the information on our own Shrimpkeepers facebook page

wow.. now Im just beginning to appreciate the simplicity of cherry shrimp lines lol

Nogi it's very hard to define culls with all the new names made for them -it used to be quite easy to define what a Rili was but the lines seem to be blurred now. It is also very hard to describe what say a Mischling should look like. I have CBS Mischlings that would pass for SSS grade CBS - their quality is really good BUT I know there is Mischling in that line as at one stage when I was having all the losses in my shrimp room I had to put most of my shrimp into 3 tanks instead of the 10 they had been in. Most of them were of such good quality I could no longer tell them apart from my pure CBS and now 8 months on my ?CBS ? F8 Mischlings are giving me TBMM. So if I can't tell my own stock apart -well some do look lower grade and are probably Mischling- how can a beginner know unless the seller is 100% sure of their stock and 100% reliable? The same goes when speaking to breeders locally -I have been talking about their pure TB and suddenly as if it is a great thing to have they say oh by the way you will probably get some Pintos from that line ??????? As much as I love my Tibees and Mischlings and I will continue to breed them -I think they have become a bit of a blight on the shrimp scene. If Mischlings had been kept and used for what they were intended- carrying TB lines to help improve our chances of TBM when pure TB used to be so expensive then it wouldn't have gotten so bad but now it's very hard to tell who is what. Then the other side is if people hadn't done the experimentation we wouldn't have the nice Pintos etc that are now available and as a shrimp in it's own right the Pintos are indeed a very nice shrimp -if that is what you were after. I guess that is why I keep getting told to move on and accept the hybrids for what they -hang the problem of not being able to get PURE breeds of shrimp. This is a very hard subject to make clear cut because of so many differing opinions of the breeders out there. It was so much easier when TB were KK, Panda and Bluebolt- now we have all the different patterns to contend with as well. Good luck sorting this one out- I don't think there are enough STRONG people to put a line in the sand and define what course we should be following. I wish I was strong enough to throw out most of my shrimp -several thousand of them- and start again from pure lines.

If not the poster, surely we have enough knowledge here on SKF to put together an information page for people to refer to? Maybe questions for buyers to ask, encourage sellers to post lineage info with the sale? I have limited knowledge outside of the cherry shrimp so a little out of my depth here.

As far as Im concerned a cull is a cull not to be sold.If people would sell quality instead of culls The buyers would breed quality and improve the quality of shrimp in this country instead of destroying the bloodlines we have here.I am by no means a expert but not a newbie either.And yes it is sad as I have lost a lot of love of the shrimp side of the hobby.

It is a real shame the way things are going at the moment. I have noticed so many ads that say pure TB and then further down the ad it mentions pinto lines or Mischling mother. People new to the hobby can only go by what they are told and don't necessarily know that this breeding isn't pure bred. A lot of the shrimp sold on the auction sites are not pure but you really need to read the full ad to find out. There are so many " experts" on Facebook shrimp sites that people follow and hang on their every word but when you see their stock you realise they really don't know what they are talking about. It's very very sad that the hobby is taking this turn. But even the cherry lines are getting blurred now with the quality of some Rili types being cull grade yet being sold as good Rili.

This is the problem when people join the hobby to make a fast buck.

Well this time I got stung.After buying a few thousand $ of Tb ,pure? have tigerbee and pinto bubs mixed in with kk panda rw and rr in 1 drop.Think with the way Im spending money on shrimp of this price you would find people would be honest.Think that its time for me to have a break from purchasing cross breed crap to line the pockets of so called breeders and stick to cherries at least if you get ripped off Its only hundreds not thousands.So for now until the price comes down I will be breeding my lines of cherries and devoting my time and tanks to my lines of rilli.Will not be naming and shaming these people know who they are and should remember you reap what you sow.No wonder the quality of shrimp in this country is on the decline not the incline.

Makin' movies, makin songs and fighting round the world. Yeah good call Bob... You could have another book just of aquarium rants. It's like growing plants, everyone's microclimate and method are different. "What potting mix should I use?" You're right there's plenty "left over" to demand water changes. All kinds of mineral cycles are going on as well as N, plus the livestock are all producing hormones, plant growth inhibitors and other crap that we certainly can't test for. People talk about the chemical warfare in their reef tanks but no one seems to consider it's all happening in freshwater too, albeit probably at a reduced level. I appreciate what you're saying Fishmosy and it's great to see ethics enter the arena. I actually wasn't suggesting that fishless cycling shouldn't be attempted, just that it doesn't end with a fully cycled tank, and many keepers seem to think it will. We don't consider P-cycling or anything else than N in freshwater aquatics but as suggested above it's going on. We can see it, the succession from brown diatoms to green algaes, the way a system just works better after 12 months compared to 12 weeks. We just aren't thinking about why, for the most part. At my place, livestock don't need to be exposed to high ammonia or nitrite levels to cycle a tank; I have media to borrow from other systems and don't feel compelled to overfeed. I'm sure it's the same at Bobs and probably yours too. I certainly agree that borrowing media is better than commercial cycling agents. We will use what we can and sometimes that means people buy cycle or similar. It probably gets them through. Of course bacteria levels don't stay constant but again without a reference I'm going to suggest that our aerobic nitrifiers don't multiply as fast as many other bacteria. A fluidised media system like sand provides them the best situation to rapidly expand and is my 1st choice of biofiltration. Geez that seems all over the place. I hope there's some sense in it. I've been too busy thinking about Autobots, thanks Will :)

Awesome stuff Ineke, glad that my thread was so helpful!

FIGHT I hate peace LOL Its all about what works for you and the really hard thing is what works for me may not work for you, one MUST be adjustable to some extent and on the ball. My pet hate is selling a breeding pair of any thing, yep might have breed there butts off for you and may never breed for me because of so many variables, water, aspect as in orientation to sun light, food, water changes and so many more, yea I know off topic but its the point I am trying to make, works for me and may not for you or works for you and may not for me = there really is no hard and fast rules, just common sense. My favourite about water changes is, if you don't want to be regular with them, go and lock your self in the LOO and turn the water off, now have 3 meals a day in there, not a nice place at all after the first day and we do that to out aquatic critters, who really knows what is left at the end of the nitrification cycle, I am sure there is thing we can not test for at the end, my case for water changes. I know I know off topic, ranting again Bob

from memory I think this article (which is by no means a scientific journal so not 100% certain for sure) states that the autobots can double their numbers in 24hours http://www.oscarfish.com/article-home/water/71-autotrophic-bacteria-manifesto.html

I will stick up for fishless cycling here as I believe it is a ethical way to ready a tank for shrimp or fish without intentionally exposing shrimp or fish to high levels of ammonia, which as we all know is bad for them. Fishless cycling can work to establish the bacterial colonies that consume ammonia and nitrite. However there must be a source of ammonia - fishfood, rotting meat, plain old ammonia itself. The point is to establish the bacterial colonies using your ammonia source, then add your livestock so that they provide the ammonia (and of course stop adding the original source of ammonia). The number of bacteria will either shrink or grow to account for the differences in the amount of ammonia you fed the tank verses how much the fish produce. Bacteria reproduce extremely quickly, minutes to hours. And remember that their number grows exponentially - 1 becomes 2, 2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 8, 8 becomes 16, 16 becomes 32, 32 becomes 64. And so on. Just to reiterate - fishless cycling is designed to ensure that the bacteria are established in the tank. It is not designed to perfectly match the number of bacteria to the amount of ammonia that will be produced by the fish that will be added. As explained above, the bacteria will quickly adjust their numbers to account for any differences in the amount of ammonia (and nitrite). The amount of bacteria in a tank never remains constant. It fluctuates to account for the amount of food (ammonia, or nitrite) is available. More fish = more ammonia = more bacteria. And vice versa of course! If you feed the tank, there will be a increase in the number of bacteria as they consume the ammonia produced via the feeding fish, then over the next few hours their numbers may decline as the amount of ammonia in the tank decreases. That said, I believe the best method is to add established media from another tank to introduce the bacteria into a new tank, and as I mentioned above, they can rapidly reproduce to use up all the available ammonia (and nitrite) so fish or shrimp are never exposed to high levels of ammonia. If you cant do this, fishless cycling or other methods that prevent the exposure of organisms to high ammonia levels are in my opinion the most ethical ways to cycle a new tank.

Arrived today, fast shipping! Thanks again newbreed, looking forward to seeing how this goes with helping the shrimplets. :)