There are any ways to take a good picture. I picked up photography when I was young and spent countless hours in the field taking macro photography.

Certainly it will be great if everyone can afford a DSLR a macro lens etc to get the perfect shot. However, what dictates a good photo? In my opinion a good photo is one where you can capture the moments.

In this blog post I will not be sharing how to use a DSLR to take shrimp pictures but simply using your phone and a clip on lens.

All these pictures and most of my blog post are taken by using a handphone and a clip on macro lens.

Gear :

• iPhone 8 (or any phone)
• Clip on lens with 12.5x magnification.

What I did realise is that setting up the area where you want to shoot is more critical than the shot itself.

• If I want to have my shot there I will make sure that that area is clean, glass is spotless both inside and outside.
• I will also make sure that area is the feeding area. Shrimp will know eventually that is the feeding area.
• I prefer taking pictures horizontally so I tilt my handphone sideways.
• When focusing tap and adjust the brightness of the photo to reduce exposure and snap away.
• Phone camera in general uses light optics to capture image so a good strong light for focusing will be good.
• I like taking my shrimps horizontally due to the depth of field in phones.

Focus on the head region, when The Eye is sharp and in focus that is where it is the most critical to the picture.

Very straight forward. Setting up the area and waiting for the shrimp to come into frame takes a bit of time. In general I will feed 15 mins before I take a picture so by the time I’m ready to shoot, the shrimp should be all around their food.

Keep those questions coming and I’ll blog it for you!

Cheers!

1. Myth: shining strong light on your shrimp will make it look nicer

✓ Fact :no matter how much light you shine will not make your shrimp look better. You might as well cook it.

2. Myth: buying culls and slowly trying to breed and get good quality shrimp is achievable

✓ Fact: Good line breeding(selective breeding) is how nice shrimp traits are being pass on. The next time someone tells you that buying culls and slowly breed is trying to earn a fast one. Read up on selective breeding and you know none of the pedigrees are bred with culls.

3. Myth: A small amount of ADA Soil would be sufficient for shrimp and to be compensated by adding more bacteria

✓ Fact: a rule of thumb is that for every 16 litre of water you will need 1 litre of soil

4. Myth: Continuous culling of a Galaxy Tiger will eventually become Fancy Tiger

✓ Fact: Both are from different parentage, where a galaxy tiger has pinto gene in it whereas fancy tiger has prl/pbl in it. No matter how much culling is done, under a well trained eye, a GT will always be a GT. Walk away if they can’t openly tell you the difference. Look at their breeding tank and if there are any signs of pinto shrimplet in it or pinto gene if you are looking for FT. Alternatively, you can visit the blog link.

5. Myth: I only need 1 tank to achieve extraordinary results in shrimp breeding

✓ Fact: for selective breeding the general rule is that at least 3 tanks is required. main breeding tank, shrimplet grow up tank, grade 1 breeding tank. In general people will start with one main breeding tank with a male to female ratio of 4:20. This will generate higher success rate as the probability of all males molting at the same time is greatly reduced. This main breeding tank will keep generating shrimplet to be remove to the shrimplet grow up tank when they are 0.8cm. Once there is a good selection of male and female (1M 5F) that exceed expectation,they should be placed in the grade 1 breeding tank to continue the line. The grade 1 breeding tank and main breeding tank will continue to have more and more shrimplet to be placed in the shrimplet tank. The main breeding tank adults will not mix with the grade 1 breeding tank as the grade 1 breeding tank is to refine the excellent line, even better. If you have an additional tank (tank 4) this will greatly help to split the shrimplet male from female at a younger age to prevent unnecessary dilution of gene amongst the shrimplet.

New post right after Chinese New Year. For those who have been requesting me to write on some topics. These are for you.

Sharing some of the black fancy tiger picture with you.

Is the shrimp price bubble that will burst eventually. This blog post will be about the dark secrecy that underline prices peak period.

Have you wonder why are some prices of shrimp so high whereas some are Low? Actually this is all relative. When a new selective bred shrimp is new it often command a high price and after about 2 years the price will fall.

Take in the case of black King Kong, when it was firstly available in the market they are priced very high but because it is fairly easy to stablize the prices plummeted crazily over a short period of 1 year. Different shrimp have a different price cycle where it goes from high to Low.

There are some shrimp until today still command high prices because of the difficulty to get good graded quality due to instability of the breed.

The dark secret of some hobbyist who sell shrimp to fellow hobbyist is to prey on your new venture into shrimp hobby. They know that you have little knowledge and they will brainwash you and inflate the prices. Such behaviour is highly disregarded and totally lacking of integrity. They will tell you anything and everything despite their little knowledge. Shrimp keeping hobby started in Japan but in my opinion perfected in Taiwan. Some hobbyist continue to con newbies by creating groups to sell them their shrimp and wares without having sufficient knowledge learn from the source. This result in degradation of the shrimp keeping hobby. The degrading of knowledge twisting facts to sell their shrimp.

One example is that you can get graded shrimp from culls. Another example is that PRL will breed out Snow White. These are the very notion that created confusion and degradation of knowledge. Pure red line is term pure for a reason, whoever claim that Snow White is the end result of PRL has totally no idea of what they are talking about. If culls can get graded shrimp, it will be heavily guarded by breeders themselves.

Another example is the following.

This was sold to me by a Local hobbyist who at that time had 3 years of experience. He sold it to me as a black fancy tiger at an extravagant price due to my lack of knowledge and my weakness to trust. However, through this ordeal the “friendship” is only worth as much as the shrimp. It was after a year I realise he continue to prey on newbies and taught them poor shrimp keeping methods. How did I find out? It was through connection from FB that they shared their frustration with me.

This was sent to me from an irate hobbyist frustrated over his nonsense. Names are edited out to protect their identity but would leave the person who continue to prey on newbies. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. Should a journey of fun and learning become derailed by someone unscrupulous is worth sharing with the community as we continue to stand tall to sellers who lack integrity.

Circling back to the topic, price is a tricky topic to discuss and only through examples highlighted above will hobbyist know that there are many dark secret behind it. Black fancy tiger pricing has been quite high for graded ones and the prices for BFT in Taiwan dollars:

1. Grade 1: 100,000 twd per pair
2. Grade 2: 70,000 twd per pair
3. Grade 3: 50,000 twd per pair

Some of the reasons for the high pricing is due to the difficult in breeding quality graded ones even after such a Long time.

This is a grade 1 male.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Should there be other questions on pricing etc feel free to leave a comment or look me up in FB.

Keep those request coming and I’ll blog it for you.

What is the key to success in breeding these black fancy? Can we attribute to luck and close our eyes to randomly breed hoping something good may appear?

In line breeding, luck plays a small part. So what is the critical success factors?

There are many ways to achieve quality black fancy tiger and below is a few elements that will increase the probability:

1. Good genetic shrimps (top appearance)
2. Sex ratio 1M:7F, 2M:14F,3M:18F
3. Stringent culling (13% keep rate or 2 pairs @ first grade, 6% keep rate or 1 pair for 2nd grade shrimps, 3% keep rate or 1 shrimp for 3rd grade shrimps)
4. Be responsible and not dilute the gene by selling non-graded shrimp as graded
5. Know your source (ask tough questions)

Does the seller know how to differentiate between a shrimp with galaxy or pinto gene in fancy tiger

Can the seller show you his step by step shrimp in his breeding room how it was created

Does the seller have documents or article when he make claims of how it was done. If yes good if not maybe a reference to the article from the original breeder will be handy

With the above (not exhaustive) list, you should be able to steer towards the right direction. Often breeders would want a cheaper alternative and faster approach but this is line breeding, it takes time and a lot of trial and error. If you are looking for a faster approach, you will need to pay the price the breeder took to create or stabilise the line and the years it took.