New Member, bee shrimp, questions

[poufsmom]

Hello everybody, my name is Lisa and I live in South Africa. Fancy shrimp (or any shrimp) are an unknown entity in the fish hobby here, so when a pet store I know got some recently I jumped at the chance to try some. I got 6 bee shrimp and put them in a mature 40L/10G tank with fine pool filter sand. Our water here is soft and my tanks are all neutral to slightly acid. It is now a couple of months later, and spring has arrived, so I was excited to find 2 pregnant females! Unfortunately that was over a month ago, and despite the eggs turning dark brown and then disappearing from the females i have no babies. The one problem that i have identified from internet research and am correcting is plants - i had a huge mass of ambulia in the tank which i am removing and replacing with a log with java fern. I am deliberately not vacuuming the substrate except for any large pockets of mulm, and i have only done this once after one of the shrimp died a few days ago. I am aiming to breed fancy shrimp to try and supply the market here a bit, especially considering the store I got them from does not want to buy from the importers as the price is prohibitive and the shrimp are not selling. I have some questions that I hope you can answer for me here to help get things going properly!

1) Dechlorinators - I am currently using Aquasafe, but am considering adding aquasafe NH/CL formula for ammonia and chloramines. I know that seachem seems to a favourite with shrimp breeders, but it is not commercially available here and we often have problems with ordering chemicals online - Agricultural Department regulations. Any other recommendations?

2) Purified water is another option - I can get from my parents who have a purifier which removes everything from bacteria to heavy metals, chlorine, chloramines, etc. Is it a good option? It is NOT reverse osmosis.

3) Diet - I essentially feed tetramin tablet food alternated with bloodworms. Am being careful about overfeeding. Anything else recommended?

4) Wood - have read that wood provides a medium for bacteria for baby shrimp food. Again any pieces that will be used are from other tanks, are well aged mopani and were originally boiled before use.

5) Parasites/diseases - For about 4 years I have had a colony of wild river shrimp originally caught from a stream near where I live. They have never lived in the tank where my bees are, but do i need to worry about any parasites they may bring into my system as a whole? I will post about them in the gallery forum, they look like most "ghost shrimp" i have seen described.

6) Finally, from the shrimp profiles on this site I believe I have bee shrimp - here are 2 pictures of mine, please correct me if I am wrong!
Thanks all!
Lisa

[adimeatatime]

Hi Lisa and welcome to petshrimp.com!!

I'm sure someone with experience raising bee shrimp will be along to try to answer your questions. I don't keep bees but I did want to say hi and welcome.

[Mustafa]

Hi Lisa! Welcome to Petshrimp.com!

Some answers:

1+ 2: RO/Purified water is preferable to most tap water since most tap water has one, several or all of the following: chloramine, ammonia, nitrate, phosphate. I would measure for the aforementioned parameters to gain some clarity. If you are absolutely sure that there is no nitrate, phosphate, and you have only chlorine in your tap water, you are one of the lucky few. All you have to do is fill up a container with tap water and wait 24+ hours (or better use an airstone to aerate the water). This way the chlorine gasses out. You don't need any dechlorinator. If you use purified or RO water, make sure that you go buy some crushed coral, thoroughly wash it and filter the RO/purified water through the crushed coral. Put some of that crushed coral into your tank, too. Another alternative is to buy bottled water (spring water) and use that for water changes.

3: Tetramin tablets are ok, however they fall apart quickly and the tiny pieces can disappear between the gravel and literally rot there and pollute the water. Since the tablets are not water stable they also leach a bunch of nutrients into the water, which feeds invisable (and sometimes visible) bacterial blooms. Shrimp are very sensitive to that. Buy some very hard-pressed "algae wafers" or "pleco wafers". Those won't fall apart immediately and it will take longer before they leach significant amounts of nutrients into the water. Feed sparingly.

4. Ditch the wood. It's just an unnecessary and potentially dangerous source of organic carbon (rots slowly, uses oxygen, feeds bacteria etc...etc...all bad for shrimp). Boiling etc. does not help.

5. In this case you don't have to worry about any parasites/diseases. Your shrimp are several generations removed from the wild. Whatever parasites/diseases they had died out. Those aren't "ghost shrimp" like the American "ghost shrimp" by the way. You have "Caridina sp." (most likely one of the many Caridina nilotica group species in Africa) and most people call "Palaemonets spp." or very small (and small clawed) Macrobrachium spp. "ghost/glass shrimp." Those are very nice shrimp, by the way. If you treat your bee shrimp like you treat those shrimp you should be just fine. Although individual species of dwarf shrimp can be more or less sensitive than others, the general guidelines for keeping and breeding them are very similar. Your "river shrimp" look very similar to my Sri Lanka dwarf shrimp, which is also (if things haven't changed lately) in the Caridina nilotica group. What's the maximum length of the shrimp in your colony? How many eggs do they usually carry? Do you see babies right away or maybe larvae for a few days? Although your river shrimp lack fancy coloration, I absolutely love them.

6. Yes, you have a bee shrimp. The ones in the pictures below are both females

By the way, how is the climate in the part of South Africa you live? Does it get perceivably cold in the winter? Did you ever measure the winter water temperatures in the river where the local shrimp live?

[poufsmom]

Hi Mustafa (and adimeatatime), thanks for responding!

Regarding all the answers and more questions -

Water: our water quality is generally dodgy, so I am definitely going to go with purified water. In terms of the coral, how much should I be putting in a 40L/10GAL tank? And will it affect the water hardness and pH? Over what time period could I expect that to happen? Should it be changed or replenished at any point? And (please excuse ignorance) what is the purpose of coral for the shrimp?

Filtration: I am currently using corner filters with activated carbon, coarse gravel as biomedium and filter wool. One of the tanks which hopefully will be used has a simple sponge filter. Anything else you can suggest?

Snails: are apple snails considered good or bad in terms of helping keep tanks clean?

Climate: we are officially subtropical, in summer the days often get to over 40C, in winter it drops to near freezing at night but no snow. I am concerned how to keep tanks cool in summer though, I know bee shrimp don't like high temperatures.

River where the wild shrimp came from: it was on a farm a few kilometers from where I live, I never saw the habitat myself, the farmer (who used to breed fish) gave me a bag full that he caught from the river. I found the spot on google earth, the co-ordinates are 29.37'45"S 30.28'38"E for interest's sake.

The wild shrimp: I do believe they are Caridina nilotica, thanks for the tip, I have looked them up online and a lot of the colour patterns I see look like what mine were developing. To be honest I'm not sure about the breeding, they have been used as "tank cleaners" and i never paid too much attention to larvae, but they do carry large numbers of eggs which seem a lot smaller than those I observed in my bee shrimp. Maximum length I've seen is about 1inch/2.5cm length.

Once again thanks for all the help, I'm really hoping to make a go of breeding and the advice is invaluable!

Lisa

[adimeatatime]

Hi Lisa,

I use a small fan on any of my shrimp that require the water stay cooler. I have found this to be pretty effective.

In my shrimp tanks I use sponge filters along with an airstone. I noticed my dark headed bumblebees would get bluish after the lights would go off so I added the airstone. I use a flashlight to look at them after the lights are out sometimes. I have added hob filters to my shrimp tanks too. I covered the inlet like this:

InletCover (3).JPG (171.63 KiB) Viewed 1554 times

I took all of the large snails out of my shrimp tanks. Seemed like they would just run over the babies that got in the way. Also, I didn't want anything in the tank that would compete with the baby shrimp for food either.

Hope this helps.

[poufsmom]

OK thanks will try the fan if necessary - we are already getting days in the upper 30's (celsius!) so i'm starting to get concerned, especially as one of my females is berried again. I'm going to try setting up my own sponge filter, I have noticed that my friend's cherry shrimp spend most of their time feeding off the sponge filter in his tank, they seem to really like it.

Will post updates when babies arrive - am really excited about this project!

Lisa

[Mustafa]

Water: our water quality is generally dodgy, so I am definitely going to go with purified water. In terms of the coral, how much should I be putting in a 40L/10GAL tank? And will it affect the water hardness and pH? Over what time period could I expect that to happen? Should it be changed or replenished at any point? And (please excuse ignorance) what is the purpose of coral for the shrimp?

Just put in a nice handful or so. The amount does not matter...you can underdo it but not overdo it. Of course it will affect the hardness and ph, that's the whole point. Coral is mostly calcium carbonate (and a bunch of other trace elements) and it adds these minerals back into the purified water. Don't worry about having a certain hardness or ph. Just do the above and everything will be fine as long as the tank is mature. The only time you need to replenish the coral is if it visibly becomes less over time (it dissolves over time).