babies.... yaay!!!

[link81]

fairly new shrimp tank, tank has been planted for about a month and a half, and i bought 4 blue shrimp (i think blue pearl) about 3 weeks ago, one of them was berried when i bought her. one shrimp died about a week later so i was a little worried about the other 3.

My momma had her babies a couple of fays ago, last night i counted 13 babies..... quite possibly more on the substrate. Its a fairly light sand i got from the neighbors back yard. I use it in all 3 of my tanks, 1 cichlid, 1 genaric in my cons room and the shrimp tank.

The shrimp tank is a 1.6 gallon hex that will more then likely end up on my desk at work.

looks like i'm going to have to either fix my 10 gallon thats cracked or set up my last 20 gallon for the colony.

i would put some of them in my sons tank, don't think the pleco, cory cat or danios are going to bother them too much, but from what i hear gouromis are pretty much a no-no.

[Mustafa]

Congrats! This is how it all starts. You get a few shrimp, they have babies...you're excited as heck...you make plants to expand. Then you get interested in a new species. Before you know you have multiple shrimp tanks running. Yes, there are probably more young in the substrate. Keep in mind that young shrimp are more sensitive, so many of your young may just "disappear" over time even if your adults do fine, but keep at it. As long as you don't overfeed, you should get the hang of it after a while.

[link81]

I don't feed them at all. Theyres a couple leaves I the tank and they're always digging at something so I'm not too worried about them eating. Have fed them flakes before but they ignored it. So I stopped. Every once and a while I'll put a "tiny" pinch in just to make sure. Maybe once a week or so. Looks like I might have to get my spare 20 cycling. Just need plants for it. I want it to be heavily planted. Think I'm hooked. I almost like them more then my cichlids.

[Mustafa]

You're actually instinctively doing what's best for them. The fact that the shrimp ignore food is the best indicator for the fact that they don't need to be fed. Unfortunately, there are tons of foods out there with "attractants" so that even shrimp who seem to have more than enough food in their tanks storm the food. This, of course, causes issues with pollution and, later, mystery shrimp deaths.

Yes, it's easy to get hooked. I used to have mostly cichlids before, too. While I still love cichlids, I gave preference to shrimp tanks many years ago.