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Yellow Supertiger: Adaption to external influences?

Everyone dealing seriously with shrimp genetcis may have asked himself yet: How do external environmental impacts affect breeding results? We have often heard from spontanous mutations when new shrimp species appeared on the market. But is that a selling trick only? An excuse and or alibi to not talk open about crossbreeding?

Well, there are some sources which mention external impacts that have lead to genetic mutations. The parameter which might by responsible for a spontanous mutation are:

• water parameter (temperature, pH, salinity)
• light (in visible and non visible frequences like infrared or UV light)
• nutrition
• co-housing and dense population

Here are examples for possible influence of environmental factors:

One shrimp keeper (1) reports in an article about Black Tiger shrimp, that he had a few Blue Tigers orange eye among the offspring when crossing Black Tiger siblings. The Black Tiger siblings originally had the same parents (P): the male of the p-generation looked like a full Black Tiger while the female looked like a ‘normal’ Tiger shrimp. The author explains the emergence of Blue Tiger offspring with the water conditions in his tank because: When useding RO water with a very low electric conductivity (<80ms), Blue Tiger offspring fell; when he changed water conditions to peat water, all the offspring was black.

Besides water parameter it is also discussed if a light or a dark gravel may influence the color intensity of Black Tiger shrimp offspring. This is not proved and one should carefully remember that shrimp adapt color and pattern to their background (for mimicry).

If light influences genetics, is an interesting question too: In crustawelt.de is a thread on Snow White shrimp turning blue after a new HQI-lightening has been installed. (2) And last but not least Mr. Suzuki, known for his Chrystal Red shrimp, said in an interview that he varied pH value to affect breeding results. (3)

Sources

(1) Garnele online 1-2007, 20-22, PDF
(2) article in crustawelt.de
(3) source follows, have to check

Recently, I noticed an increase of German users in international forums like shrimpnow.com. Knowing most of them by nickname from German forums, I wondered about the reasons for this growing user statistics?
These are the possible reasons I could think of

• German breeders like to learn from others and discuss all topics of breeding internationally
• They are looking for approval they do not get (any more) on national platforms because there are a lot of newbies which don`t appreciate their achievements and ask a lot of stupid questions
• The topics and discussions in national forums are less interesting or the quality of answers gets worse
• The Germans are in it for the money: they are mostly interested in doing business internationally; they want to sell and buy high grade or rare shrimp and see the forums as a market place
• The Germans think that nobody can do without them and like to share pictures of their shrimp and offspring over and over again (my house, my wife, my panda bee = shrimp as a status symbol