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When do you start culling?

3K views 18 replies 7 participants last post by  Kinection 
#1 ·
I've been trying to get my fire red males to "look" better, but they aren't improving, actually going down grade. I wanted to know when do you guys cull, I might not be giving them enough time to develope. I've noticed that if they are born solid red, they stay like that, and that's always the deal with these males. I've only gotten 2 PFR males, after 5 generations. I cull the splotchy ones at about 1/4 - half an inch, and they all go into the 75G. It might be because I have Rilis/ Blue rilis in the tank? I'm starting to get some juveniles that look orange, or is it just me? I also have some brown babies, they have those "sparkly dots" on them, but look very solid. Wouldn't it be better to keep a low number of males, since they can injure the babies?
 
#2 ·
Neos will interbreed and you'll further muddy the genes you want to achieve..

If you have rillis plus fire red, you'll get some odd looking offspring on both sides eventually.
 
#3 ·
Ditto, Rili's are essentially selectively bred Neo's, so there's no question they will interbreed. You could strengthen your Rili population( if they were red Rili) with PFR genes, but the PFR lineage will suffer. I'd separate them and cull out all the shrimp you don't want breeding together.
 
#9 ·
I've been culling my fire reds for 3 generations now. I started with 10 very nice painted fire reds and one so-so male. The F1 I culled about 50% of the male, F2 was a bit less, now I think I will still cull 30% in F3.... all because of 1 bad male.

How big you ask? I cull any male that is close to sexual maturity (i.e. very small), for female, I cull at first berry. Reason being, if I miss a bad female, I might have to cull 50% of that clutch, if I miss a male, I might have to cull 100 shrimps in the next month or so.

As mixing them with rilies, I think that's a bad idea if you want to have higher grade PFRs. A few of my culls look just like rilies. Such as this one,




BTW, if I know how to catch all the shrimps in that tank, I'd just restart with all nice ones.
 
#13 ·
I just mark them as Fire Red Culls with a picture. Not sure if you noticed, the above two pics were my culls in the internal breeder box. Look at the shrimp just below the rili, that shrimp was pretty red except maybe a small dot on the back that's a bit translucent. Don't be shy when culling, either cull hard or you'll cull long.
 
#16 ·
I would totally give them to you, but I'm not very good at packing, well... I've never really sold anything.
UPDATE: I just culled out like 80 more males... most of them have red spine/ but don't have much of a solid body, just areas with red. Most of them are the ones that hang on the back wall. I've noticed they haven't looked so good ever since I put in a giant yellow filter sponge, which most of the culls stay on, does that affect their color? It seems like I barely have any shrimp left lols.
 
#19 ·
Yup, the yellow sponge is probably the reason why. After I put them in the guppy tank for 4 hoursish, some of them are VERY red. That's 8 out of 80ish though. And it's good to know I'm not going down Soothing! :icon_mrgr
 
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