I have been having good results from my Blue Velvets that were bred from my Blue Gene Red Rilis. I am up to F6/7 and have had them breeding true for 3 generations. Today I was catching them out to put into a new tank and there is a whole batch of reds in there -just very tiny with only a very small number of Blues in the batch. Damn- I haven't added any new blood or shrimp to the mix so they are a throw back even this far along and to make it worse I don't know who the mother is because all the girls are berried but at least their eggs look blue. I have caught them all out and put them in the pond to grow up. Will need to kep a closer eye on them to make sure no red eggs show up at a later date!

Ineke,

This again relates to the topic of Dominant and Recessive genes. 

The Blue would be the dominant colour gene, and Red the recessive colour gene.

Despite not showing up in your last 3 generations, the red recessive gene is still carried by one or more of your Rili. When those two Blue Rilis carrying the red recessive genes got together, they produced some reds.

 

I'm going to add a little table in my draft post that will hopefully go towards showing how dominant and recessive genes are carried over and how some % of shrimp will inherit certain features (colour in this case).

 

This is the beauty of nature. We would all look the same if it were not for the complexity of genes.

 

<edit> - We are only talking about colour genes. Wait until we introduce genes for other features. Like shorter rostrums, or Red eye or Orange eye features, etc...

Edited October 2, 201411 yr by jayc

But that's ok breed true for 3 gen only needs to breed true for 2 gen to be pure so Im told

Come over on the weekend and pick up the ones in my tank Ineke. There is about 4 berried girls there.

I have been having good results from my Blue Velvets that were bred from my Blue Gene Red Rilis. I am up to F6/7 and have had them breeding true for 3 generations. Today I was catching them out to put into a new tank and there is a whole batch of reds in there -just very tiny with only a very small number of Blues in the batch. Damn- I haven't added any new blood or shrimp to the mix so they are a throw back even this far along and to make it worse I don't know who the mother is because all the girls are berried but at least their eggs look blue. I have caught them all out and put them in the pond to grow up. Will need to kep a closer eye on them to make sure no red eggs show up at a later date!

eventually by removing any red shrimp you will end up loosing the red gene, it may take awhile but it WILL happen Ineke, the red gene will be lost when the shrimp carrying it die and the shrimp that are born red are removed from the gene pool, just keep going :)

Come over on the weekend and pick up the ones in my tank Ineke. There is about 4 berried girls there.

Thanks Emanuel my girls are all berried too

eventually by removing any red shrimp you will end up loosing the red gene, it may take awhile but it WILL happen Ineke, the red gene will be lost when the shrimp carrying it die and the shrimp that are born red are removed from the gene pool, just keep going :)

All the red babies have been taken out. I have been culling heavily for sometime now and the blue is getting to be quite good . It was just a bit of a shock to see a whole batch of red babies but all good you. Get used to having the occasional setback. It was the same with the original Red Rili colony I was getting really good pattern and colour and suddenly got babies with too much red on them, but heavy culling is getting the pattern back. - It seems the Cherries do regress every now and then as even my blacks will occasionally throw a few light babies plus just once in a while really nice red but they are getting less.