# My CRS Laid Eggs (Photo)!!!



## theteh (Jan 19, 2006)

I bought 6 CRS about 20 days ago and today I found one CRS laid eggs!! What a surprise! Not sure what I have done but I did a water change and then add a Ketapang leaf (Indian Almond Leaf) into the tank last week. I feed them Hikari Crab cuisine and they absolutely love them. Not sure if the Indian almond leaf has any effect or just mere coincidence? Or could it be due to the high quality diet? I feed the same food to my Tiger shrimps and they never stop berrying too. Again, not sure if it is due to diet or the leaves. Or are they simply very prolific under any conditions?

This is a photo of the female standing on the almond leaf:









Water parameters of this 20L tank are:
pH 7.6
KH 8
GH 16
Temperature: 20-23C
No CO2 supply
black sand substrate
Top filtration with sponge surrounding the intake

Here is a photo of this tank:
Apple Snails

Now I hope that the shrimplets will hatch and survive.


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## erijnal (Apr 5, 2006)

Yeah, it's probably the almond leaf along with the steady diet. Also, since grade-wise your CRS are at the lower end, the shrimp will breed more often, with more offspring than a CRS of a higher grade.

Just goes to show that besides keeping the tank free of ammonia/nitrite, temperature is the next most important factor in successfully keeping these particular shrimp.


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## Neon Shrimp (Apr 26, 2006)

Congratulations and hope the shrimplets will hatch and survive also. Very nice CRS by the way


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## Burks (May 25, 2006)

Congrats! Good to hear that your CRS population may be taking a turn upwards. 

Good luck. We await the progress report.


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## theteh (Jan 19, 2006)

Thanks for all the comments!

I wonder why the lower grades are more prolific than the higher grades? Are higher grates genetically less 'fit' than the lower grade ones?


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## Wood (Jul 27, 2006)

One theory perhaps could be that "high grade" are actually more inbred than "lower grade." Perhaps just because a CRS is "high grade" doesnt mean it is genetically equal to that of lower grade. It also does not mean that a visually "high grade" CRS is otherwise more healthy than low grade. The only thing that differentiates high from low grade is simply color and pattern, nothing else. 

I would suspect that the smaller population of high grade CRS greatly increases the likelyhood of mass inbreeding, especially since their breeding is very controlled by human breeders and they are more likely to be bred with only other high grade CRS. Also lets not forget that the CRS is really a "selective" breed of the bee shrimp, which really eliminates a lot of the genetic variability found in the black variation of the bee shrimp, simlar to breeding only albino humans. 

Over time, breeding only albino humans will increase the risk of inbreeding. Now let's imagine you are breeding only albino humans with extremely white hair. Sorry to insult any potential albino's out there but it was as best an example as I could make similar to that of the CRS (a sort of albino variety of bee shrimp). 

You can of course breed CRS with bee shrimp to attempt to "boost" or "replenish" genetic diversity, but high grade CRS are much more likely to be bred with other high grade CRS to keep the "high grade" variety. One thing that is very true in nature is that there is sort of a "safety measure" taken whenever inbreeding or genetic diversity is not so great. For instance retardation, mutation, etc. It is natures way of only allowing high genetic diversity to prevail in the end, to of course support gradual evolution over time.



The following is from a website I found:

"On 1996/5/17, Japanese newspaper reported.

Mr. HISAYASU SUZUKI has succeeded in breeding true red bee shrimp. He has named the shrimp "Crystal Red" and has been awarded a patent for his new shrimp.

Mr, SUZUKI has been breeding normal bee shrimps, which are banded with black stripes and has spent more than 8 million yen developing methods for breeding them over the past 6 years. Three years ago, he notice a single red bee shrimp in a batch of about a thousand shrimp.
This first red bee shrimp died but three generations of bee shrimp later, he discovered 3 red bee shrimps among the 3,000 he had bred.
He was successful in breeding the 3 red bee shrimp and now has more than 8,000 red bee shrimp in his tanks."


Let's discuss this even more. Post some comments guys, maybe we can actually figure out a way to boost genetic diversity in high grade CRS. Perhaps starting to breed CRS with bee shrimp a lot more, basically starting the CRS chain over, but using a larger genetic pool than the 3 that started the whole thing (if that website excerpt was correct).


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## theteh (Jan 19, 2006)

Wood, thanks for the detailed analysis. I do agree that high grade CRS are actually inbred lines and hence rare and less viable due to problems with mutations and genetic abnormality associated with inbreeding.

If CRS is a result of a single mutant recessive gene (like albino in many animals and humans), then adding bee/diamond from time to time will boost genetic diversity (to avoid mutants/weak shrimps). From what I have read, this is already the current practice by CRS breeders in the Far East.


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## Wood (Jul 27, 2006)

Yea I am sure some asian breeders are breeding with bee shrimp to increase diversity, but I would bet that as far as the high grade CRS are concerned they are not regularly bred with bee's. Most asian breeders are making a lot of money off of US and other western buyers, and I would doubt most of them are concerned with genetics. A US dollar in the far east goes a very long way, and there are a lot of people in every culture around the world that put money first before nature.

Personally I feel like "high grade" CRS are more of a human accessory and not scientifically proper by any means. The grading scale (C, B, A, S, SS, SSS) has absolutely no scientific value and is purely what is considered to be the best as far as visual apperance. Who created this "grading scale" anyway? Why are "tiger teeth" considered "better"? Purely visual, has nothing to do with being healthier by any means.

This is very similar to Discus breeding, except discus breeders do make an very big effort to keep genetic diversity by trading discus with other breeders, etc. I have heard from some very highly respectable US discus breeders that asian discus are not as genetically diverse as the US bred discus, and the asian bred don't have as long as a lifespan and are more susceptible to disease, etc.

I feel that whenever humans ignore the true purpose of genetics PURELY for visual appearance is a big mistake. It is very ignorant if you ask me.


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## erijnal (Apr 5, 2006)

Apparently if you have enough CRS, having bees in the tank won't endanger your future shrimplets. It's supposed to take a very long time for the red trait to be completely wiped out. I forgot the ratio one guy had, but he said he had bees in with his CRS and the resulting offspring was a mix of CRS and bees.

However, I'm sure that no one breeds a high grade CRS with a low grade bee if they're going for visual appeal. At the same time, a higher graded bee shrimp would, on the average, be more genetically diverse simply because there are so many candidates to use to eventually produce high grade bees, while CRS, if the information from that website is true, came from a parent line of only three different shrimp.

So with my train of thought, I'd probably try keeping 5 female CRS per male bee shrimp, and (if I had the time and money), collect offspring from each female, and pair them with the offspring of a different batch of 5 female CRS and male bee shrimp. Of course, I've never had CRS, and my bees died during a heat wave, so someone like mossman or milalic can probably offer their techniques.


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