advice of shrimp breeding

[Gnomecatcher]

I wanted to ask all the successful shrimp breeders out there how they manage the genetics of their colonies. I've seen some people do colony mixing with other people, and swap part of their colony with multiple people to increase the genetic diversity.

Is the only importance of this the health of the baby shrimps? Obviously a colony that grows only by interbreeding will eventually become more sensitive and subject to disease. But can you also get much better coloration in the babies by doing this?

I see that the only problem with culling the colony in order to get better color is that you periodically reduce its size and reduce the genetic diversity of the next generation.

[Tom Barr]

As long as the start colony has good diversity, there's less rick. As you keep selecting for specific traits and interbreeding, the risk goes up, so you out source and buy some more shrimp with traits you like and cross them with your interbreed shrimp etc.

[Tom Barr]

Also, over time, more and more lines are developed independently and similar traits are selected for.
These can then be later crossed to increase diversity and genetic strength.

So the 1st few NEW fish or shrimp we see often die easily, followed later by stronger stock and then finally after a few years, pretty strong stock.

Same for Discus and many other species.

[Gnomecatcher]

Oh good, that makes sense. So if you wanted to develop nice, strong stock, could you keep maybe 4 or 5 tanks and develop different lines and select similar traits, and then periodically divide each colony and combine the separate lines?

That would be a lot of work and time, but it would be fun to see how it turns out.