u/Sinxerely7420

https://preview.redd.it/64dv6wjutvah1.png?width=2160&format=png&auto=webp&s=58ae2d4a6578477793113115d9d5e03ef0f0d895

Before anyone freaks out, WE'RE OKAY NOW, we are financially stable and we are not scraping by anymore.

But we had an incredibly rough few days where the family pretty much depended on Prolific for putting food on the table. I managed to keep us afloat thanks to this website ❤️ Prolific has paid for our breakfast and suppers and made sure nobody went to bed hungry. Yesterday, we managed to eat mac and cheese with ground beef and it was our most filling meal for a hot minute.

With all the bullshit happening in the world, I try to cling to whatever offers us a positive outlook and Prolific was essentially an oasis in our drought. THANK YOU SO MUCH PROLIFIC for helping us eat!

Update post from this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AquaticSnails/comments/1u9dfnw/is_badaboom_learning_im_not_a_threat_or_is_that/

While her shell is healing to a decent amount on the outside (the ''crack'' no longer sticks out from what I can tell, there's no change in shape when I apply mild pressure), Badaboom is now completely unable to sink. She's developed a spot around her crack (where it typically gets exposed to air) while she floats, and she can float for 24 hours a day if I let her.

An air bath today was able to help her sink and there was a MASSIVE amount of air that rushed out of her shell, but the moment she climbed up to siphon some air again, she became completely unable to sink yet again. :/ Whatever happened to her internally could be from the fall. idk. She was not that way at all before.

Should I keep going with the air baths?? She doesn't like me handling her at ALL now unless she's fully stretched out (which only happened once today, which was after her air bath) because I think she associates my touch with being messed with... which, yeah, who can blame her. You can *tell* that she's extremely uncomfortable too. Barely touched the food and calcium I maid out (while Badabing, who is normally MUCH shier, absolutely devoured the carrot, broccoli and smoothie tums pieces). I really don't think we're at a ''should I euthanize Badaboom'' path but you can tell she doesn't feel well. Poor girl.

So for context: My two snails are in an EXTREMELY temporary setup after learning they are not pure mysteries but a channel apple X mystery hybrid. For now they are in a 2.5g setup (In which I vaccum out the waste multiple times a day, do a 100% water change every day, house them with a large silk-based decoration and use a filter that does around 2x the setup's volume). I do not want to keep them in this at all, but it'll have to do, they've been absolutely tearing down my plants.

Badabing so far has remained relatively unproblematic, but Badaboom decided to explore (as the setup is an open-top, it's a storage tote and I cannot find the lid) and fell onto the floor, giving herself a hairline crack on her shell. I genuinely think that if my floor was tiled and not carpeted, she would have needed euthanasia.

So long story short, I've been tending to her every need. After today's setup clean, I handled Boom and checked out her internals as she went out of her shell (Everything looks really good so far with no sign of damage on the lung, I was worried about that). For some reason she could NOT get enough of me? She would have stayed on my thumb all day if she could, and responded to my touch in a curious way (Very gentle strokes around where it hurt, to check how deep the crack is -- When she first got injured, she flinched and retracted in her shell, but this time she did not care at all). I dunno if this is ''dumb snail'' behavior or if she's realizing that I'm not some kind of snail-eating monster? (I wouldn't go as far as trust because idk if snails have a complex emotive system like that but for contrast, Badabing is always MUCH shier no matter what and it was a huge pain to sex him)

So I honestly, sincerely thought that jaguars would go the 1-shot jumpscare way like with tigers. I really didn't want to deal with having a dog as I am misophonic with barking, and I REALLY didn't want to travel for ages after getting one-tapped... I shall eat crow on all that! You need to be attacked twice to be knocked down, and they don't stay pissed off when you shoot back at them (unlike per example bison or cape buffaloes).

Jaguars are honestly probably my top favorite game right now. Even funner to hunt IMO than the capybaras and spectacle bears, and I've been having a blast hunting them too. I like that they have the niche of an aggressive predator without taking the place of tigers. I am MORE than happy to have been proven wrong. :)
(Still really find almost all the GO fugly though, except for rosewash and umbrafade. The rest feel like more like some teen's OCs than... y'know, jaguars.)

EDIT: As a side note I definetely feel a much smoother performance. I used to not be able to go through foresty areas in my maps at all so I always hunted on vurhonga, where I at least could play at 30 fps. Right now I am in a DEEP forested area in Peru and I'm at 40 fps! That was one of my biggest complaints in this game and I am SO glad to know that this aspect of things is foxed on my side.)

I have a large bag of nutritional yeast that I take as a nutrient boost, and I was wondering if species like corydoras would benefit from them too. :) Mine haven't had repashy in a little minute and I always worry about them receiving proper nutrition. Would nutritional yeast infused repashy go well with them, assuming they would like the taste?

(Nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast that gives extra fiber and nutrients when used as a supplement, and they also are a main product behind some vegan based cheeses/cheese sauces since they naturally have a cheesy taste!)

I was supposed to get blue velvets initially as strong blues are my favorite shades of blue, but instead ended up with blue jellies when I first got my shrimp. I decided to replicate the loom of velvets while keeping the transparency of blue jellies by selective breeding and aggressive culling!

I soft culled ANY shrimp that didn't fit my very strict criteria:
- Uniformly blue body that doesn't have any uneven coloring or striping
- Absolutely no red rilli related markings, including tiger stripes, superman markings, a tancho red, or very lightly tinted tail fans
- A naturally healthy animal, so that my colony can be maintained minimally and still thrive
- A transparent body with visible organs, saddles and gills, to match the blue jelly criteria and to make disease detection much easier on my end
- For males, a naturally strong pigmentation, and for females, a naturally large saddle and longer abdomen for easy brood care
- An increased longevity is a bonus, but not *absolutely* mandatory.

At first it was TOUGH. I've had several outbreaks of muscular necrosis, most of them being my fault while I navigated through my breeding practices. I've lost some very valuable breeding females that way and some of my males had to be hard culled to prevent further suffering. I also at one point experienced a male ''drought'' where I had LOTS of girls and only I think 3 ''breeding-grade'' boys at a time, which made selective breeding difficult when it came down to avoiding excessive inbreeding. I discovered a couple very interesting mutations along the way, which is why I'll hopefully purchase some outcross jellies later this summer.

- It was possible for me to breed short bodied shrimp if I wanted to do so. that is *not* what I want to breed as I am strongly against purposefully breeding traits that impact quality of life of the animal, but I tested out a brood to see if it was genetic or a fluke. ''Shortie'', my short bodied female, ended up losing her one and only brood and contracted mild muscular necrosis. She was a soft cull in the end. I think the short body is a spontaneous mutation, but I don'T know the exact cause. It could be from the inbreeding I've been forced to practice.

- I've seen a couple rilli-type mutations in my colony. I've seen some very unusual red rilli markings, my most unusual one being VERY lightly tinted tail fans, and tiger striping that tends to happen on my males. On some other shrimps, I've seen some carbon mutations, and one of my soft culls has a black patch on the right side of the 1st abdominal segment!

I've gone far enough in my selective breeding where my shrimps have consistently looked VERY similar to blue velvets while still genetically being blue jellies! I've very recently culled my colony one more time, and out of 26 shrimp, only 5 were soft culls and they were very difficult choices. I think I'm on my way to completely eliminating any red rilli genetics and everyone is looking amazing. My boys are a deep blue even as juveniles, which I am absolutely elated about, and we have one eggnant mama that should produce some amazing offspring! Most of the juvies are the offspring of ''Grandma'', who was my absolute best producer, the largest shrimp of my colony (She was just HUGE!), and recently passed from old age at almost 2 years old. Hopefully she stamps her offspring with her hardiness!

Overall -- My colony is finally bouncing back, has maintained some very desirable traits for me, will shortly receive fresh blood... and very soon will also be gifted a 20 gallon horizontal tank, where they can truly flourish and develop their numbers! I cannot be any prouder of my mamas and their sons and daughters. :D

TLDR: I worked hard to breed some deep blue jellies and it worked out despite massive obstacles!