New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

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brian8357
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New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by brian8357 »

Greeting to all! Just joined this forum tonight and thought I would introduce myself and tell you the tale of my Cherry Red Shrimp/water Locusts :shock:
About 8-10 months ago I bought one of those Fluval 8 gallon dwarf shrimp tank kits. Not my first tank btw... I have a 20 gal long and a 55 gal live planted freshwater tank. The 20 long I have had for 25 years. Now back to the shrimp... I did the research and found they are the best way to get into this aspect of the hobby. One thing I read was if you have your tank parameters right they will probably breed. That I have found to be an understatement! I started with 15 Cherries and to date, I have taken 80 back to the LFS that I got the set up from, given a friend 30, and as an experiment to see if they might help a hair algae problem I was having in my 55, 60 went there... that is 170 of them... and while they are hard to count because of constantly moving, I have at least 300-400 in the Fluval tank :o These things are out of control! If anyone here wants more details I have a lot to say...LOL!

Brian
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by Mustafa »

Welcome to the forum, Brian! :) Congratulations on your success with the red cherry shrimp. Depending on your local water supply it can be very easy or extremely difficult to breed any shrimp (even the "easy" ones) in any great number. You seem to be one of the lucky guys out there with a decent water supply. Just make sure that you do not make any drastic changes as die-offs can quickly get you from several hundred shrimp to just a handful, or none at all. And by quickly I mean within days and weeks. Having said that, it seems like you're doing alright so far, so no need to change much.

Again, water supply is a huge factor (e.g. NYC and San Diego have hugely different water supplies and require different treatment), so what may work for Brian with his water may not work for someone else and vice versa.
brian8357
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by brian8357 »

Mustafa wrote:Welcome to the forum, Brian! :) Congratulations on your success with the red cherry shrimp. Depending on your local water supply it can be very easy or extremely difficult to breed any shrimp (even the "easy" ones) in any great number. You seem to be one of the lucky guys out there with a decent water supply. Just make sure that you do not make any drastic changes as die-offs can quickly get you from several hundred shrimp to just a handful, or none at all. And by quickly I mean within days and weeks. Having said that, it seems like you're doing alright so far, so no need to change much.

Again, water supply is a huge factor (e.g. NYC and San Diego have hugely different water supplies and require different treatment), so what may work for Brian with his water may not work for someone else and vice versa.
Thanks for the welcome :-) As for my water supply, I agree totally. I happen to be on well water. It is hard and somewhat acid. The acid could be a problem, but the live plants seem to calm that down quite a bit. The shrimp tank is at about 7.2ph. The hardness factor is a plus for these little guys due to the calcium disolved in the water. As I said in my initial post, I have been active in the fish hobby for 25 years, so I hope I have learned some things :lol: Truth be told, I brought the Fluval tank kit home, set it up, sucked 5 gallons of filth water out of my 55 gal live planted tank to seed the shrimp tank/filter, snipped off some cuttings of plants and stuck them in, topped it off, let it run a day, and went and got my first shrimp the day after. They all survived so I got afew more, then a few more, then the breeding frenzy started and has not stopped. The plants need to be cut every month due to growth! I do have a few die when molting, but the others just chow down on the dead and the cycle carries on. The 60 I dropped in my 55 are breeding and some babies are surviving... they are under my UGF plate growing, and in my cannister filter growing... the last time I cleaned my filter I had to use a shrimp net to catch the 10+ that poured out of it...not to mention the others I found in the different levels of media in the filter. These little critters have wiped out a hair algae problem in my 55... I was leary of putting them in there due to having a YOYO Loach that I bought to eat snails, which he did... the rest of my fish in that tank are just tetras. All have ignored them and again, they are breeding... this is just crazy! In talking with my LFS guy, "Don't mess with what is not broke!"
Jamie
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by Jamie »

WoW! Congratulations !

So from what you are saying, your shrimp are currently thriving and breeding in Hard water, how hard is it ?

My water is VERY HARD and I would like to start breeding, however I have read it is not ideal to breed Red Cherry Shrimp in Hard water.

My stats;

Tank Stats Pre water change;

pH - 7
Gh 214+ (19 drops, 7 more than scale goes too)
Kh 214+ (14 drops, 2 more than the scale goes too)
Nitrate 30-40
Phosphate - 2
brian8357
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by brian8357 »

Hey Jamie, thanks for the congrats! To be honest, I have no clue what level the hardness of my water is. I don't have the test kits for that info. I only test for ph, nitrites, and nitrates in all my tanks. I have a friend who works at a plumbing supply/repair shop and he has told me for the last 30 years about how hard/acidic the water is in our area. So, all I know is that it is hard water. Boiler coils can clog with calcium deposits in just few years around here. I know many people in this hobby have a small chemistry lab for testing water, but I am not one them.

I bought the shrimp tank because it was new/cool to the fish keeping hobby, and I thought the little water bugs were cool to watch :-) I had no idea that I would end up with a potential infestation :shock: Now while I like the lil critters, I am grounded enough that I will not be buying some of these things with rare colors at $50-100 a piece... ferchrissakes they are 1 inch long shrimp...LOL! I have no interest in salt tanks for that very reason... way too pricey

It sounds like you are doing far more research than I did. If you set your levels right, I am sure you will be overflowing with shrimp in just a few months!
Jamie
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by Jamie »

Heya,

No worries, the congrats are well due !

I hope I can have as much success as you, sounds like we live in similar water parameters, LIQUID ROCK ! hahahha
jbjust
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by jbjust »

Has anyone successfully bred Red Cherry Shrimp in a breeding trap? I have males and females together in a tramp and feed them an algae tablet daily, but there do not seem to be any females bearing eggs. When they were free in the tank, they bred quite well. However, I now have Frogs in my aquarium so I cannot set the shrimp free. The water quality and temp are fine.

Thanks
brian8357
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by brian8357 »

Thought I would upload a few pics of my water Locusts :-D oh and one of my baby...my 55 live planted tank :-)
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brian8357
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by brian8357 »

Oh and btw, the water locusts LOVE freeze dried Tubifex worms :-D They are gorging as I type!
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Re: New to the forum/Cherry Red Shrimp...

Post by Mustafa »

Thanks for the pics! Great looking tanks and shrimp. It just goes to show how important low kh (and thus pH) is. Despite having relatively hard well water, the fact that your water has a very low kh (and pH) makes it possible to grow all those plants and breed those shrimp. You said that the acidity may be an issue, but that's actually works for you. If things get too acidic in a tank, you can always add some calcium carbonate rock to buffer things, but it's MUCH harder to deal with highly basic water straight out of the tap. Because of the high alkalinity it's pretty much impossible to breed shrimp (and most fish) in straight San Diego tap water, for example. Anyone claiming to breed fish and/or shrimp in "hard, very alkaline" water just doesn't realize that they have a long established tank and the kh and pH values have gone way below what comes out of their tap, even if they do 10-20 percent weekly water changes.
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