Let us dig a little deeper to understand what goes behind the scene when breeding black fancy tigers.

According to the Taiwan shrimp book, there is a short paragraph mentioning about a reputable breeder who did a test between pure black line female x red tiger male and red tiger female x pure black line male. The results were astonishing as the output of the first cross PBL female x red tiger male has high success rate of getting the black fancy tiger.

Line breeding start after the F1 shrimplet begin to show sign of success and to get few better gene F1 to cross back to the parent. After many generations the gene strengthen to develop into the renowned black fancy tiger.

Are there variations?

Certainly, in the gene pool if the breeder do not cull their shrimps many variations may occur. One such variation is the white fancy tiger.

White fancy tiger?

It really is a washed out cross between the PBL and tiger whereby the lines are disappearing and also the hino or Sabre tooth PBL marking is gone.

As you can see from the above picture, the shrimplets from this female has a very high percentage of white fancy when bred with a similar male. Is this the outcome you are trying to achieve? There are breeders “marketing” this as mosura fancy tiger. Personally I think that depending on which variant or outcome you would like, you can breed it to your liking.

For example if using a “white fancy ” cross with a “black fancy” chances are you will get a split between the both and 25% chance of a cross that will look like the black fancy. This is how it work in general:

25% of the outcome will be black fancy

25% of the outcome will be white fancy

25% of the outcome will be mix (black and white fancy)

25% of the outcome will be mix (white and black fancy)

This is in a very simple form of understanding of breeding but of cause in reality there is slight variations to it.

Coming back to variations, it is becoming difficult to ignore the fact that breeders (not commercial) who are in the know will share with you the outcome when they sell you the shrimp. If they are unable or trying to make a fast one, walk away. There are many reputable breeders who are more than willing to share.

Additionally, there are “black fancy tiger” lookalike but has pinto gene in it. The reason for doing so is to reduce the time to get the “black fancy”. However, with this the outcome of it will look like a black fancy but isn’t.

This picture is taken from a breeder and it does look like a black fancy, but the price is many times lower than black fancy because the shrimplets are more stable unlike the original. How do you even differentiate a lookalike black fancy and the original?

There will come a time where the difference could be difficult to discern but for now a few tell tale sign is that a pbl and tiger cross would have :

• Hino or pbl pattern on the top
• Black and white colors
• Pinto will give off very white kind of shrimplet and is very stable
• GT will have a vertical bar on the head
• Degree of black differs between GT, Pinto and PBL/BFT

Now you can see the difference.

Information about these elusive shrimp called the black fancy tiger does appear to be lacking and after speaking to various breeders in Taiwan and Germany, i have learnt quite a few new things.

Breeders normally breed something that would sell or fetch a high price in the market, hence the Red Fancy Tiger was the focus point when this Fancy tiger was first bred out. After a few years, the Red Fancy Tiger continue to be bred by many breeders to strengthen the gene pool. High quality red fancy still fetches a high price in Taiwan even today (2018 July)

Coming back to black fancy, what is interesting is that if black fancy tiger has pinto/nanashi gene in it. It will look darker and shrimplet coloration are more stable vs black fancy tiger without pinto/nanashi gene. However, if one is not concern about the outcome, yes i think it still have some beauty in it. on the other hand if one is more concern about the lineage then a pure bred black fancy tiger is difficult to come by and highly sought after.

Below are some female stock for breeding purposes, hopefully in a few generations, we will get what we want.

One of the easier to breed shrimp that has the deep wine red is really captivating. It is important that water quality is key for continuous breeding.

Water parameters:

pH:6.0

Kh:3

GH:2

TDS:110

Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate :0

Mosura wine red is one of the many wine red types but is highly sought after. Even within mosura wine red, there are different looks that people like. For example this mosura wine red male has no spots on the body.

Compared with this has red spots at the tail area.

Both have one similarity which I think adds to the overall look of the shrimp is the often overlooked legs. The legs are either white with red or white or red by itself. It accentuate the overall appearance of the shrimp by that finer touch of elegance.

When selecting shrimp it is important that you select something that you enjoy looking at. Reason being is that you are going to look at it for the longest time. Not your friends.

Many a time a simple shrimp like the mosura wine red is often overlooked as chasing the next new line bred species is the in thing.

Given good water conditions my mosura wine red breeds readily in the given parameters above. Should you require further information about mosura wine read, please do not hesitate to contact me.