Breeder Questions

It is always important, especially nowadays, to know where your shrimp source(s) come from.  In the Crystal Shrimp world, the source of your shrimp can determine so many factors.  For example, it is believed that Black King Kongs, Red Wines and the other new Crystal Shrimp mutations come from a Taiwanese line. There are "Pure Red Lines" that have rich coloring of thick white and solid reds coming from Japan.  It's so competitive in Japan and all of Asia that breeders in these countries have started to name their own shrimp lineage.  Names like "Ebi-ten" and "Hataka" are just two of many lines.

Creating your own line is possible, granted you selectively breed properly.  Anyone can have "Pure Red Lines" of their own.  The basics of a PRL (Pure Red Line) or PBL (Pure Black Line) is that it has no golden/snow shrimp in its genetics.  Currently, calling something "PRL/PBL" is really misleading because  PRL/PBL shrimp that are being sold at this time have thick and rich colorations with very solid white and red colorations.  Just because you have a blood line that does not have the golden/snow gene, it does not mean you'll automatically get these rich colors.  This requires a lot of selective breeding.  So, not all PRL/PBL have thick colors.  In fact, many people have PRL/PBL with really crummy colors.  They just need to selectively breed their shrimp for color to achieve such strong red/white or black/white.

Now that we have that cleared up, it is important to ask your shrimp breeder some questions before purchase.

Here are some questions I asked my breeder, when I purchased Crystal Black Shrimp from him.  Below are questions I asked and the response he gave me.  I included the answers to help me document this information for my own purposes as well.

Q. What were they kept with?  Was it a mixture of CRS and CBS or were the CBS in a tank by themselves? 

A. I have two sources to choose from for your shrimp...my 20 gal SSS CBS tank and my 75 gal High grade CBS tank. In both tanks there are a few CRS but they are not kept together.  the few are from offspring. I have been selectively breeding my shrimp intensively for 3 years now.

Q. Furthermore, were golden crystals ever introduced into the CBS population?  

A. I have NEVER introduced goldens, and both of my stock sources said they did not either, but I know one of them did introduce goldens because they throw occasional goldens in their offspring.  It usually never happens with high grades, only SSS but you never know.

Q. What grades are the shrimp that these CBS are coming from?  

A. Your shrimp are the offspring of either High grade CBS (S-SS) or SSS/SSS+

Q. How long has this colony been going on for and was "new" blood ever introduced?  If so, from where?  (country or state or continent)  If you even have the name/website origin, that would be amazing too. 

A. My colonies have been breeding successfully for ~3-3.5 years.  No new blood introduced

My colony comes from stock from Kangshiang, Chaqua, and AlphafishFarm