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:
- Good genetic shrimps (top appearance)
- Sex ratio 1M:7F, 2M:14F,3M:18F
- 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)
- Be responsible and not dilute the gene by selling non-graded shrimp as graded
- 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.
Very interesting info you have here Sir. Information like this is very hard to find. Thank you for you time and trouble. I have been shrimp keeping for about 10 years, but recently I have thought of expanding my knowledge of care and learning more on the breeding process.
Hi Paul, yes indeed very few information today steer towards good content. most just about selling even though they don’t really know much about shrimps nor the product they are selling.