Hello

[Integrate]

Hello. I just joined after a while of lurking and I want to say this is a fantastic forum. I've learned many things from reading over the old topics.

A little about myself. I live in Canada, and I have kept a fair amount of different shrimps. I recently got a crazy idea to start breeding shrimps it will be available in Canada.

I'm currently trying to breed 'Rainbow Shrimp' (which is probably Caridina cf. babaulti. I have the green form in the batch, too). I am also trying to breed wood shrimp in hopes of doing the impossible, and I have a few ghost shrimps, amano shrimps, bumble bee shrimps and cherry shrimps in the breeding setup. My shrimp varieties are limited due to the lack of shrimp suppliers in Canada.

Now I have a few questions:

What do you guys feed your adult shrimps?
I feed mine (names may be a little off):
Hikari Algea Waffers
Hikari Micro Pellets (or something like that)
Wardley Shrimp Pellets
Wardley Liquid Fry Food (for filter feeders)
Wardley Flakes
Wardley Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp
Two Little Fishes Sea Veggies Green

Now the problem is my shrimps ignore the Algea Waffers, Shrimp Pellets, Brine Shrimp, Sea Veggies, and will rarely eat the flakes. Putting these foods in will result in the foods just sitting there for days until little by little it is finnaly eaten up. Any suggestions to induce appitite or new foods that they will voraciously eat?

Second Question: What do you feed your fry, expeacially the free floating brakish kind?

After a little reasearch, I now know how to prepare some green marine water. Other than that, I have no idea what to do for zooplankton or that other plankton (although the algea should account for that). I think I might add the Wardley Liquid Fry Food, which is made up of egg yolk, but I want to know what other brands of foods are there. I want to know the brands of Artificial Rotifiers, and real rotifiers/plankton that are dead and packaged. So far, I have never seen any of these things in the fish stores that I have visited. Can anyone suggest some brand names?

Third Question: How do i raise Rotifiers?

I know nothing here.

Thanks in advance .

[GunmetalBlue]

Hi Integrate and welcome.

The one thing some of us use that I didn't see on your list is Hikari Crab Cuisine.

May I ask how the liquid fry food works out for you, for the filter feeders? I've never tried that - does it just run through the the tank's filter and back out again? Is it difficult to keep the water parameter up when using? I have tried a product called Cylop-eeze for the Bamboo shrimp, which they seem to like a lot. But I use it more or less before a water change... the product does not separate and dissolve readily and is a bit difficult to use IMO, and worry about it fouling up the water.

My shrimp used to ignore commercial food too, as long as they had plenty of algae. But after growing into a large population, they now welcome the extra food since the algae supply is getting outstripped. By the way, I would suggest being careful with how long you leave food in. Instead of leaving uneaten food in there for days, it's best to remove it and add fresh on another day. If not, it can easily foul up water and I'm sure you already know how sensitive shrimp are to poor water quality.

Someone else might be able to help with question 2 and 3 - I've no experience in that area. I've noticed more people now, expressing interest in attempting to breed larvae that requires brackish water. Hopefully that means more people will start succeeding and sharing the knowledge and pitfalls that come with it.

Best wishes on your breeding program - please keep us updated on things you learn in the process!

-GB

[chlorophyll]

Personally, I think there's no need to feed all those different kinds of things. A standard flake food would suffice, an donce they get use to that as their staple, they'll go for it.

I feed Tetramin granules (which is basically the same formula as a standard flake), OSI brand Spirulina flake, and that same spirulina flake finely ground for filter feeding shrimp. Also I have non shrimp-only tanks where the shrimp mostly get leftover Hagen (Nutrafin?) Livebearer flakes.
On occasion I'll feed wet frozen blood worm or mysis shrimp. Not necessary, but I like to offer it sometimes.

I haven't yet reared the more common hobby shrimp larvae. They're considerably smaller than the giant (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) prawn larvae that I have reared before. For smaller Amano larvae, I've heard of people trying live microalgae culture, bottled (not live) microalage, and artificial rotifera (I assume 'Azoo' brand). For M. rosenbergii I've used home made enriched egg custard which is basically beaten raw egg with various finely ground matter (ranging from raw squid chopped super fine with a food processor to ground up fish hobby foods), and fish oil, blended up, then quickly microwaved to a very light custard. Kept refrigerated or frozen, grated through fine sieves to fit the current size of the larvae, fed as a liquid suspension with pipette or eyedropper.

I think rotifer culture is a good idea and am going to try that soon myself, but have never done it or seen the results with shrimp larvae. Here's a quite informative link.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/ ... reeder.htm