Bob's tank

[Bob_99]

Hi to all you shrimp lovers,
I bought 10 Super Shrimp in 09/15. I have a 75 gal (brackish water) with green spotted puffers and wanted to raise shrimp and snails to feed the puffers. I set up a 20 gal. long tank for the shrimp and snails. For most of the first year I had no luck. Snails did well, but shrimp weren't reproducing. I couldn't even get algae to grow in the tank. I put in 3 moss balls from the lfs and they did well. I thought it might be the lighting. I'm using a LED light strip with white and blue lights. I turned off the blue lights and within 4 weeks I was growing algae. I had a hair algae problem going on in my 75 gal and took a pinch of it and put it in the shrimp tank. The hair algae really took off and the shrimp seem to like it. I just have to thin it out every couple months.

My shrimp are doing great now. I have 50-60 adult and juvie shrimp. I counted over thirty of those little pink things (larvae) hanging in the tank and have 5-6 berried females swimming around.

At first I did everything wrong and treated it like a regular aquarium. Filter, aerator and heater. After reading some posts on here I removed the filter and recently removed the bubble wand. The tank temp is kept at 74 F or room temp whichever is higher. Salinity ranges from 1.007 to 1.011 depending on evaporation. About every three months I add about three gal of RO water.

I tried taking pics with my Iphone but they're not too good. I know a professional photographer I might be able to talk him into taking some pics. If he does, I'll post them. And, NO, I didn't feed them to my puffer fish. They ate ghost shrimp and are now in another home (I took that tank down).

[KenCotigirl]

Glad to hear of your success. Especially happy you gave up the thought of feeding your shrimp to the puffer fish. Send us photos.

KenP

[Bob_99]

Took some pics with my iPhone. Not very good. I'll get some better pics next week. If you can make them out, It looks like I have some yellow shrimp, also some white (not pink) shrimp. And a blurry pic of some larvae. The female seems to have ten or so eggs.

[Arquisto]

That's awesome! It's interesting how treating the Opae Ula like a regular tank is counter intuitive and the best way is really to let things be.

[Mustafa]

Thanks for the post Bob! Great tank and shrimp! Did you purchase those shrimp originally from Petshrimp? I've never seen yellow/orange Supershrimp anywhere else. This would be the first time if your shrimp aren't from Petshrimp.

[Bob_99]

Hi,
Yes, I purchased 10 shrimp from Petshrimp, order #599 on 09/2015. All 10 were red. I was thinking about setting up another tank with just the yellow/orange ones to see if they breed true. There is at least one or two that look like they're starting to make eggs. I actually watched one of the red ones expel eggs under her tail last week. The attached pic is the underside of a berried female crawling on the glass. Can anyone count the eggs?

[Arquisto]

Setting up that other tank to breed out those lines seems like a great idea, hope you got room for it!
Hope you manage to get a really stable line of yellow and orange ones from that.

[Bob_99]

Just set up a 2.5 gal. for the "yellow/orange" shrimp (see pic). I had a 75 gal brackish tank and used the water I had set up for doing water changes to start this tank. I also put an algae covered shell in from my 20 gal tank to help get things started.

[Mustafa]

Great idea to have a separate tank! How many orange/yellow ones do you have? I actually managed to separate two females and a male in their own tank and one of the females is about to release larvae in the next 5-10 days. If the larvae make it we'll find out soon if they breed true. I sure hope they do. I'll start a separate thread for that soon.