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.
Do you keep all females from tank 1 in either tank 2 or 3? Do you ever cull females to tank 4?
Yes when I have sufficient females if not I will always keep the female till I have a large enough female colony in tank 2 and 3. That should be around 40 to 80 females at that stage.
So you don’t really care what the female looks like at first while building the colony up?
The female will depend on the budget If the stock are expensive. For example in the earlier posting of BFT, at 100,000 NT a pair I don’t think it’s feasible to achieve a good starting breeding numbers without getting gene females at a lower price. However, the opposite is also true if one can have access to good quality females you should always start with good breeding stock.
What happens once shrimlets start being produced in tank 3? Are those then put in a ‘new’ tank 1 so you know they are F2?
Technically you can place them in tank 1 but if you have spare tanks you can consider putting in another tank.