Shrimps!!!!

I have sand in my cherry shrimp tank, and the decor is redmoor wood with hornwort draped through it, a plastic twisted root ornament with java fern, and a piece of bogwood with attached bolbitis. The main mess in the tank is due to nerites - they love scraping the surface off the wood and there are lots of black pellets under both bits. Once it is safe to put the big four back in the 180 litre, the amount of snail poo should decrease dramatically.
When I do a water change, I move all the decor to one end, suck the bits off the sand, then move the decor and clean the other end. Then empty the bucket with a translucent white plastic jug looking for shrimps. Yesterday I rescued 3 juveniles around 5 tiny babies. The main problem I have is 'persuading' the shrimps to move out of the way! They don't hide, they stand their ground, especially when I want to remove hornwort leaves off the bottom, they are very possessive of those.

I also have problems with pygmy cories in the same tank refusing to move. The sundadanios are no problem as they just swim round the tube away from the open end.



Baby shrimps are quite hard to see. Cherries are very pale when first hatched, I have to check the jug for tiny (1 to 2mm) pale peach things moving on the bottom. I have probably poured a lot down the drain in the two years I've had them just because of not seeing them 

You must both have lots of patience 

As I keep telling my kids, patience is a virtue! (They don't listen though.)
Since my shrimp tank is only  23 litres and i'll only be changing 5 litres per water change, I'm hoping that the whole clean the tank, find the escaped shrimp, place the escaped shrimp back in the tank procedure won't take too long. I may, however, be  being wildly optimistic about this!

I'd definitely start with red cherry shrimps, they are the cheapest (though not cheap!!) and hardiest.
Leave the others until you have succeeded with red cherries.

If you follow this thread :
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=5939
there is a very interesting article about a supplier of the rarer and more expensive shrimps. It states :

"Water chemistry does need to be considered prior to purchase because these shrimps are acutely sensitive to not just poor, but also incorrect water.

Softness and acidity is the prime concern, and an ideal pH value should be somewhere between 6.2 and 6.8. Hardness needs to be low, with as little as 1°KH and no requirement for anything over 6°GH. Sticking these guys into hard, alkaline waters is a surefire way to kill them off."

This seems contrary to what would be expected, but since this guy is a total shrimp specialist, I guess he must be right.

My 2 nearest MA both have the same water supplier as me and they've both said they use mains water, so if thats the case would their shrimps be ok in my tanks?

I was just wondering WHY these rare shrimps need soft water, crustaceans normally need reasonably hard water, it piqued my curiosity ............. my cherry shrimps are fine at pH 7.3 and quite hard water which is what I would expect most shrimps to like. Curious 

Liquid rock water, ph between 7.2 and 7.4 and nitrates between 20-40 depending on the tank

okey dokey,  I was going to start with cherry shrimps

WOW!!!!!!!!!

The shrimp thread is doing well!!!

So, progress report!!

Water change/tank clean completed. I decided to remove ornaments from one end at a time and then clean the gravel. I used my siphon with it's usual trapping attachment on.

I didn't find any babies but I did find snail eggs, which I washed down the sink!!   The shrimps all kept out of the way and when the tank was refilled from the big tank ( I can siphon straight from the big tank into the little one) the shrimps had a fab time zooming about and investigating.

I've managed to count all the blues and yellows, two reds and both the chocolates but one of the choccies is looking a bit slow but I think she may have just moulted as there was a brownish skin on a moss ball. I think I may have a couple of males in there but as some are still small it's hard to tell.

One bit of behaviour I did witness that sort of worried me was between a yellow female and a small red who I think is male. The red was on the yellows back and the yellow was bucking around and looking very distressed and then just curled up into a ball. The red seemed to be cleaning the yellow but after the yellow was still it walked off!!!  It has me mystified!!!!

Incidentally, my water parameters are PH7.6, GH 21gd, KH 6-10gd, Temp 25.

FC76