Shrimps!!!!

I believe they normally carry the eggs for 30 -45 days in total, though I guess they are well into that before they are really noticeable.

Hi all,

I have made a couple of decisions regarding my shrimp and shrimp keeping in general. Firstly, I am over feeding. I have been putting small amounts of food in every day but then leaving the shrimps to eat to their hearts content. On researching this, I have discovered I should be putting a small amount of food in and then removing any excess after a 5-10 minutes.

I didnt feed them yesterday as they ate the body of the yellow female that died during her moult but tonight I put some tiny pieces of Classic Shrimp Pudding in two egg cups and then lay them on their sides in the tank and let the shrimps feed for about 7 minutes ( they were enjoying it so much, I didn't like to interfere!!)

Secondly, patience is as important in shrimp keeping as it is in fish keeping. I have been stressing about the sex of my shrimps and peering at the females through a magnifying glass to see if they have eggs but to be honest I've decided they will mate when they mate and have babies when they have babies! This leads me nicely to my third point....

I'm gonna get a few more males as I have space because I lost three females to help the process along!!!!

If any fellow shrimpers are interested in trying the Classic Pudding you can get it here and probably in other places too!!!!!


FC76

One of my red females is berried!!!

She was very quiet last night so I suspected she was due to moult, then this morning I haven't been able to find her until just now and she is absolutely brimming with eggs!!!

I'll keep you posted on any developments. Just going to make her a cup of camomile tea and get her to put her feet up! I may pop a film on for her, what do you think - Finding Nemo?! 

My mummy shrimp is keeping quite well hidden but she is feeding so I hope she'll be able to hang on to her eggs and have her babies.

Incidentally, whilst looking at her through the magnifying glass, I spotted some small white dots about 1mm in size, moving around on the glass. At first I thought they might be baby shrimps but on looking on the Planet Inverts website, I've decided they are these dudes!!!

http://www.planetinverts.com/copepod2.jpg

I use the tip of a microspatula which somehow I never handed back in to the chemistry department many, many years ago.
Basically, I just guess.

More or less any substrate will be fine for shrimps. You could even go with coral sand if you want to raise the hardness for shrimps; not crushed coral, though, as I think the particles might be a bit of the large side for them - or at least the bag I bought years ago was. The downside to coral sand is that it is pale in colour, and you are quite right that dark substrates are supposed to enhance the colour of the shrimps.

The Moray 320 has a turnover of 320 litres/hour. What is the exact model of the tank you are looking at? According to Aqua One's website, they do a 45 in the AquaLED range which has a Moray filter, is that the one? If it is, then it's 45 litres (I guess that gives it the name  )which means the filter turns over 7 times the tank volume per hour, which might be a bit much for shrimps. The bigger models of the Moray filter have an adjustable flow but the instructions say the 320 doesn't. Having said that, with a spraybar it shouldn't cause too much of a problem for shrimps. And the 3 section design does allow space for coral in place of carbon.


The dimensions for the AquaLED give a total volume of 51 litres so it looks as though the water volume is 45, unlike my Eheim tank and my betta's Aqua One AquaSpace tank which both quote the volume as including the air space above the water line  . This is a good size for shrimps.

Amano shrimps trail a huge length of poo behind them, though I haven't noticed that with my cherries, just lots and lots of short bits on the tank bottom.

The problem is that, to quote planetinverts, having shrimps in the aquarium hobby is only about 15 years old and not much research has been done into shrimp diseases, let alone on treatments for them.

I'm afraid I don't know about stringy poo in shrimps 

Hi Fishcake,

I found a lady on Gumtree who was selling 10 Cherry Shrimp for 10 pounds. Seemed like a good deal and after all the talk of shrimps on the forum I decided to pick them up. I added them to my tank of 8 female RCS and they seem to be settling in well.

I don't target feed my shrimp as they are in the main tank with my fish. They seem to get enough from the leftovers and algae. I try dropping some shrimp food in from time to time, but my platies have munched it before the shrimp have a look in.

From what I have read, and advice from my LFS, shrimp need very little food and given their sensitivity to water quality, less is definitely better than more!  When I did have 4 shrimp in a separate tank when I was treating the main tank, I would give 3 pellets every 3-4 days and this seemed to be plenty.

I must admit, I love the look of your shrimp tank. The yellow ones in particular look fantastic!

Thanks for your replies!

I think Cod has a good point about less being better than more. I shall probably just add food every couple of days and only such a small quantity that the shrimps and snails should have no trouble clearing it up.

I have found this website, which seems to have good information and advice on it. I'm gonna join their forum as it is dedicated to shrimps so there should be lots of good advice from them.

http://www.petshrimp.com/articles.php

The chap on here who writes the articles says in his general FAQ's that overfeeding is one of the most common mistakes with new shrimp owners.

FC76

I have just finished water changes on 3 tanks. It took ages going through the bucket from the shrimp tank - 15 tiny babies, one a bit bigger and one almost adult sized.

I am not saying this to show off how well my shrimps are breeding but so that those new to shrimps can see what is possible when things don't start well.


Two years ago I bought several batches of red cherry shrimps from different shops. They all died. In desperation I put the last berried female in my quarantine tank. She died there but after the eggs had hatched giving me around 12 baby shrimps.
I persevered with these babies and with help from Natalia they survived and bred. I swapped shrimps with her last year so we both had new genes in our tanks. I bought a berried female a few weeks ago to widen the gene pool again.
I have no idea how many shrimps I now have. It is impossible to see more than a tiny fraction of them at any one time.


The moral of this is: if you are having problems, persevere. Do as much research as possible and take advice from someone who knows what they are talking about. Without Natalia, I would have given up two years ago but her advice gave me the thriving colony I now have.