Enjoy my most recent posts
The articles are being categorize into various sections and you can find them in the individual sections such as Shrimp, breeding, tips and others. On mobile devices all articles will be shown. If you want to find older articles please refer to Archive Should you not be able find an article you wish to read about or learn more on, please feel free to contact me using the Contact page.
Now that you know breeding one line of shrimp is all about having more tanks or a minimum of 3. So in this Part 2 of “all about breeding tanks”, I’ll be touching on what goes inside the breeding tank for selective breeding.
Selective breeding can be quite daunting for some as it requires discipline and a lot of tanks. The long and short of it is to selectively pick out the desired trait and breed it and eventually crossing back to strengthen the gene. Here is an example of selectively breeding the black fancy to make it blacker or darker:
- Purchase a black fancy tiger male (A)and 5 black ninja female (A1)and place them in tank 2
- After successful first brood, remove all shrimplets to tank 1 as the shrimplets will look more like black ninja then BFT. (Time line : 4-6 months)
- Continue the process of remove shrimplets to tank 1
- Pick out all the females from tank 1 and put it back to tank 2 for breeding (at this stage the female will have some bft gene (F1) this process is to help tank 2 breed out as many shrimplets as possible.( time line : 9 months )
- If you have access to more tank, you can remove all the F1 female and use the black fancy male (A) to breed or get another male with same black fancy line to help speed up the process. Remember at this stage, you will only want to get your stock from reputable breeders because if the new male is from a different line, your effort is wasted. Have a plan and execute.
- At the end of 9-12 months you should have a sizeable colony in tank 1 to pick out a new male and a few nicer females to be place into tank 3
- By the time tank 3 breeds and become adults it will be around 1.5 years later and you should have some desirable trait to it. To perfect it requires a lot more time and line breeding.
- Keep repeating the process as tank 2 age and die off, with tank 3 becoming the new tank 2 and so on and so forth.
- At any stage remove all males of non-desirable trait to tank 4 and also remove females that don’t fit the desirable outcome when there is a good size colony.
- Personally I only use 1 male and the rest are females, I also have an all male tank where I keep the back up stock in there.
Some points to note:
- Keeping another tank of black ninja as a back up in case the 5 female don’t make it (this will require another tank) along the way, you will still have black ninja stock to work with (tank 5)
- Getting a couple more bft males as back up placed in tank 4 or tank 6
- Speeding up process by getting both bft lines
- Prepare more tanks in case of emergency
- Get stock from one single reputable source (do not mix other line of shrimp)
- Line/selective breeding is an old methodology that works – don’t reinvent or adjust, you will not succeed with mixing A to Z.
- If the desired outcome is a mix of 2 selectively bred lines, it only means you will need even more tanks to ensure you have all the shrimps that is being bred to achieve the goal.
- This process works for selecting the desired trait for pattern, color and anything that is within possibilities.
Bft male x black ninja F1 shrimplet 
Bft male x (black ninja Female F2) shrimplet
Bft male x bft female F1
Bft female
Have you wondered how many tanks is required to breed a single line? A minimum of 3 but having more is always good.
Pardon my drawing and here is the break down.
- Tank 1 is shrimplet tank
- Tank 2 is breeding tank
- Tank 3 is selective tank
- Tank 4 is all male/cull tanks
So technically you need 3 tanks for one line. If any breeder you visit have one tank per species and claim to be xyz line bred out then generally it will not progress nor will you be getting what you paid for.
The following will describe why these tanks are required as a means of selective breeding.
Tank 2 is where 1-4 males with 20-40 females are house to help with breeding. All the shrimplets will be move to tank 1.
Tank 1 is where all the shrimplets grow up, when they grow big females are then move back to tank 2 to help increase the numbers of shrimplet. Males of non desirable trait will be move to tank 4. 1-4 males with desirable trait will be move to tank 3.
Tank 3 is where the elite or selected traits are considered and bred. The shrimplets are then move to tank 1. And the process continues.
So one line requires 3-4 tanks at least. If there is a couple of good traits you would like to achieve, tank 2 and 3 will expand to get a lot more shrimplets and then selectively bred.
Shrimp selective breeding requires a lot of discipline and hence that is why some of the really good quality shrimp are far more expensive than others.
Every shrimp molt as part of a growing/breeding process but molting can be difficult for some shrimp and they normally die during molting. We term them fail molt.
There have been many confusion of what is a Super black crystal, panda and black ninja. Are they all the same shrimp?
No.
If anybody say they are one and the same then you are in for a ride.
Reason being is very simple, a Super black is a selective bred PBL for its black properties and it will throw out PBL “no entry” at times.
A black ninja is a reverse selection process to obtain the black and white mask on the head and will not throw out PBL no entry.
A black ninja looks like a Super black and so does a gene BFT that has been selectively bred with black ninja to make it blacker.
So how can you discern which is which? Ask the seller. If they say it’s all the same then you are better off walking away. If fundamentals such as this isn’t clear, those sellers are trying to rip you off. In other words their integrity is questionable. Happens a lot in Singapore and with the frequent communication in Taiwan and US, it appears it’s the same.
This is a black ninja
This shrimp is call 4 section (created from Extreme black)
4 section denotes the white area. Picture from Hwa shrimp Taiwan
Here is a Super black (credit to shrimp and scape Uk site : https://www.shrimpandscape.co.uk
Super black and extreme black are different shrimp but all originated from PBL. The black ninja can be seen with more prominent black legs as compare to Super black. The Color and coverage of the black ninja is almost 100% covered from head to tail. The Black ninja is around for a Long time even before the Super black was created in Germany and Taiwan. Super black will never breed out black ninja because they ain’t the same shrimp.
A Super black would need 3 years of selective breeding to obtain extreme black and then reverse the selective breeding to get 4 line and then slowly selectively bred to get black ninja. So a Super black would probably cost $1-2 but with the number of years needed for black ninja to be created takes a Long time hence the high price tag on it.
Black ninja and black ninja one line is the same as it is being translated from Chinese 蒙面侠一线.
Don’t be taken for a ride if you are trying to keep the black ninja by getting the Super black.