Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Congratulations, they look great .

You can also use this photo to play "Where's Waldo the shrimp?"

Congrats on your success with these!

I always seem to snag a couple of cherries each time. If you look closely at the january 1 post you'll see waldo's cousons. harder to see due to the bad lighting.

Very nice crop of young ones, looks like you have a regular crayfish factory running smoothly. Now it's just a matter of selective breeding to produce the best color. I"m hoping the orange dwarfs will do as well when they get rolling. How much/often do you feed the young ones to prevent cannibalism? I'm assuming they're separated from the adults?

ToddnBecka wrote:Very nice crop of young ones, looks like you have a regular crayfish factory running smoothly. Now it's just a matter of selective breeding to produce the best color. I"m hoping the orange dwarfs will do as well when they get rolling. How much/often do you feed the young ones to prevent cannibalism? I'm assuming they're separated from the adults?

I feed them twice a day. Having loads of apple snails in the tank is a definite plus as there is little leftoover food. Apples are also more sensitive to water conditions, so they act as canaries for the crays.

The adults don't seem to bother the babies. It looks like sibling cannibalism is the bigger problem. I remove as many babies as I can get during the water changes every week just to make room. As many as I pulled out today, there are still that many in the tank.

Lets hope I can keep this production up. Color morphs are a numbers game. You need lots of babies to get lucky. So far so good barring another disaster. If this keeps up they way I hope I can prooduce loads.

My plan is to convert the "pond" to a big grow-out tank once I find homes for the M. Rosenbergii.

I feed them twice a day. Having loads of apple snails in the tank is a definite plus as there is little leftoover food. Apples are also more sensitive to water conditions, so they act as canaries for the crays.

Are there other snails that are sensitive enough to use as canaries?

Neonshrimp wrote: Are there other snails that are sensitive enough to use as canaries?

None that I know of. The Asolene spixi remains relatively small though and breeds relatively slowly. The crays do a good job of eating the babies, so I keep a separate tank for hatching them. These eggs, unlike most apple snails, are underwater, so no special hatching care is needed other than good water and lack of critters that find them tasty.

If you have other questions, PM me or post in the "other Inverts" section.

Thanks badflash, will do

The Asolene spixi remains relatively small though and breeds relatively slowly.

Umm, relative to what?
I have 15 of the striped critters in the 30 with the crayfish and zhangjiajiensis, and there are at least 6-7 egg clusters in the plants. I have noticed fewer ramshorn eggs though, apparently the spixi's do eat most of those.
If/when all the spixi eggs hatch, I'll have about 10 times as many spixi's as I do now. I dropped a couple dozen peas into the tank, and they were all eaten within 24 hours. I expected them to last a bit longer than that...

You need more crays!
I get no rams, pond snails or spixis, but the crays sure do. Just about everything in my tank want to eat spixi eggs too.

The relative part is compared to a regular apple snail. They seem to be the ideal tank mate for dwarf crays to me. Nothing goes to waste. With Spixis and the Mutant Hornwort Jason sent me, things stay pretty good.

The babies look excellent badflash! It would be great to be getting that many babies weekly! I really like the color of your babies too.

I have another female with eggs almost ready to hatch. These things really do breed fast compared to larger crayfish!

One of the babies from two weeks ago came out to get his picture taken.
Now we're getting somewhere!

Beautiful Soon you will have a whole tank of this color

Thanks!

That is soooo pretty!

Very nice. That's the color I am shooting for.