[Splak]

Hey all, I have about 6 carbon rili adults right now.

1 female who is blue with black blotches
1 female who is what I assume a Carbon Rili looks like, more transparent body, with black head and tail.
1 female who is almost all blue with little black.
1 male who is the most carbon rili, transparent body with black head and tail
1 male who is almost as nice as the first
1 male who is just dark blue with a pinch of black on nose


So, my first 2 females just dropped their babies, and I am thinking now, most of them wont come out the way I want them to look like.

So. I am trying to think of ways to improve my stock to produce mostly transparent bodys with black heads and tails.

Here are the two options I have thought of, please let me know what you think, or if you have a better way!

Option 1:

Leave them all together, let them reproduce, and cull the babies who arn't what I want them to be. Once I have enough of the ones I want, I can remove my current adults that arn't all Carbon Rili.

Option 2:

Remove my strongest male and female and move them to a seperate 5 gal tank, and hope they reproduce.

-This is the best option that I see, but what are the chances of them reproducing, just the two of them?


I will post some pictures of my current stock, so you all get a better idea of what I have, and am trying to achieve!!

Thanks!

Edit:

First 2 pics are of the best male and female, last pic is of others.

The last pic, male on right I think is really cool with his solid black chest, it appears to go all the way around his body. Is this a Carbon Rili or some other name?

 

[coldmantis]

since you have such a small colony to start breeding I would just leave them alone until you have lots to selectively breed from, if you move them now to another tank they might not breed or die.

 

[Fishfur]

I'd agree with that. With so few shrimp to begin with, you really need to build up numbers. Sometimes shrimp die, for one thing, so having more gives you a buffer if you lose one. Some females won't have successful first broods too, may drop their eggs early, for example. For another, at this point you have no real idea what genetics are available from the stock you have, so if you allow the numbers to build up quite a bit,you'll have a much better idea what you have to work with. I'd only cull the ones that are really way off what you want, after you've had several broods grow up successfully.

Once you have a thriving, good size population you can cull more heavily. And I know Randy has said more than once that you should keep your culls for awhile, because some shrimp are slower than others to show their full colours. So what looks like a cull at a couple of months of age might actually look a lot better with another month or two or growing time.

 

[Splak]

Thanks for the replies, I going to keep them together till I have a huge mess of them. I notice about 50 babies right now, all seem to be healthy and growing fast.


Also, would Red cherrys or Carbon rili's be okay in 0 KH? I might throw some of either into a 29gal with my crystals. But I always see recommended KH is 1+. Do they need a KH of 1?