Blue + Blue = Red

[BarryH]

As a follow on from my earlier Baby Blues post, and now my eyes are getting more used to spotting the new blue babies, I'm a bit confused. The only shrimp in this tank are Blue Dream, and, unless my eyes are failing badly, I'm 99% sure I have at least one red baby in with all the blue ones. Is it possible Blue parents can produce a red baby?

I think I'll let them all grow on a bit and if some of them do turn out to be reds, would it be OK to move any reds that I find in to a Sakura tank?

 

[mort]

This is simply genetics. I think these are all bred from wild type cherry shrimp originally and then colour bred. It started off with a browny red shrimp and the best red offspring were bred together and these would produce a mix of brown-red offspring and the best colours of these were kept and bred. With every "cherry picked" coloured shrimp generation you begin to see more red coloured offspring produced by them to a point where most are red.

With blues it's simply another colour mutation from the original strain which has been bred out, the same for yellow, orange. Some shrimp also interbreed which confuses matters further but if it looks red it probably is and you will also likely see really strong blue colours and more muted blues coming out. It's at this point that population control for colour comes in and why you can see mixed offspring sold quite cheaply. Alternatively just enjoy the variation.

It's the same process as with endlers, mollies, platys ect

 

[lilirose]

Blue Dreams come from the same line as Bloody Mary shrimp- they are line bred for colour but occasionally you will get a "sport", so it's very possible to have a red baby. However, I have found that very frequently, the genetics of blue Neos in particular can be kinda sketchy- people will label their blue shrimp with the name they think best resembles what they bred. For example, I was recently sold some Blue Velvets by someone that I trust more than the average LFS, but some of the babies appear to be Blue Jelly or Blue Rili (not Blue Carbon Rili), which is not really supposed to happen- but it does. Whether they were mislabelled shrimp or just have a weird genetic quirk is very difficult to say.

People who want to keep their shrimp line pure have to cull by moving shrimp that aren't the desired colour into a different tank so they can't interbreed with the others. I have a tank that was originally Painted Fire Red that I stopped culling after about six months, and most of the babies have been red, but after six months of breeding, there are reds, red rilis, wild types, and several that are white (which again, is really not supposed to happen).

Here's a Neocardina genetic chart- which, as illustrated above, should not be taken as gospel:

 

[Andrew Butler]

I've had a couple of Orange Rili emerge from a tank that had previously only been blues, nothing else added and as @mort points out it's just down to genetics.

 

[not called Bob]

Nice flash back to junior school and Friar Gregor Mendel and his peas and the start of the science of genetics.

Nice shrimp chart showing so many variables, the pea one is a little easier to get your head round as way less possible outcomes. There will always be a mutation for every how ever many normal colour morphs, we capitalise on this and breed traits we find desirable, just look at how many albino strains of livestock there now are, in the wild they would in all liklihood be the first animal a predator took down.