How do you care for yellow shrimp?

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 8:20 am

Hi all,

I have been offered some yellow shrimp from a friend who has more than he expected. I will be getting four so it will not be crowded in their new home.

Thing is I was told they are like RCS in care and behavior. If you have yellow shrimp please share your experience and advice.

Thanks.

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 10:00 am

hi, in my experience they are slightly more sensitive than RCS. Despite being technically the same species, perhaps that particular color strain is a little more susceptible to adverse conditions for whatever reason. I say that because I've had RCS breeding merrily for over a year. Yet this summer when I tried to start a yellow shrimp colony, they died over and over. I tried with three different sources of yellow shrimp (one in Asia, two in US) all with the same result: slow deaths. I had no immediate deaths due to stress of transit or poor quality animals, but they would live in my tanks for a few weeks to months before dying off one by one.

I was very frustrated and bewildered because like I said, my RCS have been breeding like there's no tomorrow. So I did a lot of searching, and discovered my local water report states our tap water has trace amounts (~0.5 ppb) of things like arsenic, asbestos, and industrial disinfectants. So I decided to run a power filter in that tank, along with the sponge filter. That power filter only contains activated carbon, which I am fastidious about replacing. This has allowed about 70% of my final shipment of yellows to survive

Not only are they surviving now, but all 3 females are currently berried. I'm still waiting for the first sight of yellow babies, it should be any day now.

I'm playing with the idea of switching entirely to deionized water, reconstituted for hardness and alkalinity. My tap water is fairly hard and alkaline (pH = 8.0, KH = 8 deg, GH = 14) so I will bring the treated water back up to those parameters. I believe RCS, so most likely yellows as well, thrive under such conditions.

Other than being more vigilant with my yellow tank, I treat them exactly as I do my cherries. Because they're so rare right now, and based on my experience with no long-term survival in my water, I figure it's better to be safe than sorry with these guys. If for no other reason, I'd already wasted $200+ worth of yellow shrimp and can't continue to afford those kind of losses.

hope that helps!

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:04 pm

Hi Baby_Girl,

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences with the yellow shrimp! Sorry to hear about your losses

But it is great to hear you are expecting little baby shrimp soon

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:19 pm

I forgot to ask if they can tolerate higher water temperatures like the RCS? It is still warm where I am and I just want to be prepared.

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Sat Oct 20, 2007 2:26 pm

You're most welcome, and thanks for the well wishes and condolences. I was pretty distraught over the repeated loss of the yellows, but am happy that I seem to be on the right track finally.

BTW I believe survival of my yellows went to 100% or close to it, following the addition of a high-quality activated carbon. The few losses I had from my last shipment were pre-carbon. So that in itself may be all I need, though exposing them to toxins before the carbon removes them disturbs me. After water changes, my green shrimp always swim all over the place. I guess I should just run a power filter with carbon on my bucket of 'shrimp water', thus removing those compounds before exposing the shrimp to them. (Duh, that idea just occured to me while writing this)

I currently keep my yellow shrimp at 75 degrees F, but have had that heater set to 78-79 before. They didn't seem to notice the difference. I think up to low 80's these guys ought to be OK, since they are tropical in origin? Plus, being tank-bred they are probably more adaptable than wild-caught shrimp. At mid-80s Fahrenheit, I suspect dissolved oxygen begins to be a limitation? Plus the proportion of toxic ammonia is higher at warmer temps, but your nitrifying bacteria should be eating all that up before it affects them?

I need to purchase a stand-up magnifying glass so I can take pictures of the yellow babies once they show up. Hope to be sharing those soon

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:05 pm

yippee! I saw my first yellow babies today. They are still only ~4 mm in length, some are still quite transparent, so I'd guess they're only a couple days old at most. They look exactly like RCS babies, only yellow (surprise, surprise

). After trying for months to get to this point, though, they look absolutely precious.

Seems my yellow shrimp woes are over, knock on wood.

I don't know whether their sensitivity was due to my water, or the particular groups of shrimp I received, or a combination of both. I did not anticipate any kinds of problems getting yellow shrimp to breed, given my previous and continued success with RCS. If someone has any thoughts on this, please share.

Neonshrimp, I'm pretty sure you won't encounter the problems I did. Or at least I hope not. Everyone else I've talked to who breeds yellows has not had any problems, so maybe it was just me. But I thought my experience might be enlightening for someone out there.

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 4:35 pm

But I thought my experience might be enlightening for someone out there.

It's sure helped me, thanks

. A big "Congrats" with the new babies!

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 6:34 pm

Thanks, mate! Should I pass out some yellow cigars?

I'm glad my story helped you. I was afraid I was rambling.

Post by **Mustafa** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 11:46 pm

Yellow shrimp are not really more sensitive. It really all depends on how long your tank has been running and how well the tank flora and fauna is developed. If everything is in equilibrium pretty much all species of shrimp can be kept and bred with success.

In lots of cases red cherry shrimp are the first shrimp that people buy. These shrimp usually end up in already established tanks in the cases where people report successful breeding with these shrimp. However, when the same people get bitten by the "shrimp bug" and decide to add more shrimp, even if it's the same species like the yellow shrimp, they establish a brand new tank and wait for the shrimp to arrive. Even if the tank has been cycled, it does not mean that it has matured. Mature tanks are the key here with any shrimp.

There are actually lots of people out there who establish and cycle brand new tanks for red cherry shrimp and just can't get the shrimp to breed or even survive.

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 4:42 pm

you know, Mustafa, I think you might be right. I did start my yellow shrimp colony in a new cycled, but un-established (immature) tank. After failing with two batches, it finally dawned on me to move them to a mature tank which had housed fish and several RCS for over a year. I simply swapped the tank inhabitants so that the fish got moved to the new tank and the yellows got the older tank the same day. The fish liked the move I'm sure, since it put them in a new habitat with lower dissolved organics (DOC's). And the yellows benefited too from a mature, established tank. Even though I had been supplementing them with a tiny amount of fish food every other day or so (being very careful not to over-feed by monitoring nitrogen compounds daily), I suspect it was not enough natural 'good' food for them.

Yellows were not the first shrimp I got after having success with RCS. I got greens as my second shrimp project. They went straight into an established tank because I had an empty tank, kept cycled with snails, set up and running with months before their arrival.

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 5:53 pm

Mustafa wrote:There are actually lots of people out there who establish and cycle brand new tanks for red cherry shrimp and just can't get the shrimp to breed or even survive.

By 'establish' a new tank you just mean it's cycled and habitable right? I'm guessing if the tanks were actually mature and established with periphyton, the cherries would have been able to survive and breed?

Is there ever an incidence where dwarf shrimp would survive in a tank, appear to be healthy and well-fed, yet never breed?

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 6:45 pm

Sure. Young tanks are like that. Cycled and OK but no good growth of biofilms & that sort of stuff. It also takes a new bunch a shrimp a while to really adjust to your water conditions. It took me several months before my population of cherries started to take off.

I just moved a group of cherries to a well aged 40 gallon tank, but this one has much harder water due to me using plaster feeders for my snails. The shrimp went a month quite happy but no babbies. Now all the females are brerried or about to be so.

Post by **Mustafa** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 10:30 pm

Baby_Girl wrote:By 'establish' a new tank you just mean it's cycled and habitable right? I'm guessing if the tanks were actually mature and established with periphyton, the cherries would have been able to survive and breed?

A tank is like a little ecosystem. Microflora and microfauna needs to establish itself over time (it can take months in completely new tanks), not just to supply the shrimp with food but also make sure that the water is clean and habitable and at an "equilibrium" without any extremes.

Imagine a newly formed volcanic island in the ocean. It's just a hot piece of rock without life. After it cools down all kinds of small plants and animals start moving in and make the island habitable for larger plants and larger animals. This takes time. If you throw a herd of goats on that island right after the first few plants established themselves, the goats will eat the plants and starve to death. You also can't just keep feeding the goats (via helicopter

) as the goats would turn the island into a big latrine and suffocate on their own feces as there are no micro-organisms and plant-life yet to take care of the goat droppings and turn them into biomass (such as plants).

However, if you wait a few years and the island has flourished with more (and lusher) plant and animal life (including micro-organisms that take care of things like goat feces) a herd of goats can comfortably live on the island forever. The island will turn into a mini eco-system. Such processes happen in an aquarium on a smaller scale...much smaller scale.

Baby_Girl · Post by **Baby_Girl** » Sat Nov 03, 2007 10:33 am

that's a wonderful analogy, Mustafa. Thanks

lampeye · Post by **lampeye** » Thu Nov 08, 2007 8:37 am

I got my first yellows about two weeks ago. Yesterday, I noticed a couple acting a bit hyper, and, sure enough, they were males. A quick tank-census turned up a berried female. That was fast!

Compare that to my first experience with cherries - it took several weeks for any to get berried up, and I had the occasional loss in the first week or two.

One change may have been due to this thread. In a rare case of 'better to be safe than sorry," I plopped a bio-Chem Zorb puoch into the tank two days before they arrived. I don't know if it really helped, or if my learning curve took an upswing...