Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Thanks Badflash
Is there any chance you can ID my shrimp? (male/female/which form)
Here is a pic:-

I have only had it three days, but it seems to be doing well - destroying my plants!

Give up on the plants. They will rip up & eat just about anything. I'd say you have a male from what I can see. Those dark blue arms are usually a sign as far as I can tell. I won't really know myself until I see some eggs or ovaries.

This is likely a blue claw but too young to be sure. I have one like that but when he molted there were orange claws. The true Blue Claws are adults and have arms about twice as long.

Thanks for your ID Badflash,

I have been keeping him well fed - I found out by a process of trial and elimination that he needs/eats 10 shrimp pellets a day (I feed him one every hour and its gone within a few minutes) plus the odd piece of chicken etc. Up until yesterday there was just 'Graham the shrimp' in the tank, so I went and bought 5 endlers and put them into the tank. this morning I woke up to find they had all been eatan

Hes only 3 inches long (body only) I was very surprised that he'd eat them all - I had been keeping him very well fed. What would you suggest are good tankmates now? I have never really been very keen on koi, so any other suggestions would be great (taking into account that hes going to be growing alot!) I wouldnt mind him eating a few fish as yours do, but I didnt expect him to eat them all in one night!

I think ive bought a monster

Feeder guppies work. I think your endlers just died and he ate the bodies. I have a 40 gallon tank with 6 3-5" shrimp and the endlers are still there & having babies.

I like anything that eats garbage and moves fast. Large Aplles Snails are good.

I like anything that eats garbage and moves fast. Large Aplles Snails are good.

LOL

What kind of apple snails do you have that move fast.

TKD

Baseball sized ones.

The 40 gallon breeder is now at what I hope is optimum. 1 blue claw macro, and what I think are two females, or at least one female. I'll know soon enough if the big guy decides to make sushi out of the other small shrimp. He seems to really like one of them, so I'm pretty sure that means it is a she.

Here is a shot I took today after the water change today of the happy couple. The water is still a little turbid:


This is a front shot of the big guy. Body is ~6", arms are about the same.


All the rest are in their own 10 gallon tanks as they were getting arms & legs ripped off. I'll see if I can't find a good home for these others.

One of the big blues lost and arm for no reason I could see as he was in a tank by himself. The first molt nothing happened, still just one arm. After the 2nd molt there appeared a little bud that grew into a oddly shaped bent arm. Today just before the water change he molted and bingo- there was a perfectly good arm about 1/2 the size of the other but pretty fierce looking.

Hi Badflash,
Nice pice of your tanks

Im having abit of trouble with my M. Rosenbergii - I tried some more fish - four Zebra Danios, as they are cheaper than endlers and are about the same size - he ate every one of them. I even saw him eat the last one - he grabbed it with his claws whilst it was swimming along and then stuffed it into his mouth - it was still moving its tail as it ate him. I dont undertstand it - I keep him well fed and everything. He even ignores the shrimp pellets etc that i give him in favour of the fish

I dont know what to do now. I was hoping to keep him with at least SOME fish, but it looks like hes going to be gobbling up anything I put in there.

I cant decide if I should keep him now - as he would have to be on his own in the tank (unless I can find another M. Rosenbergi somewhere here in the UK - which is unlikely) I havent got room to have another tank aswell as his. The other alternative is to take him back to the pet shop and buy loads of cherry/tiger/green shrimp and breed them instead.

What do you think?

Oh, btw, at what size do females start producing eggs?

I have no problems keeping endlers with them, so maybe you should try them. I feed mine a combo of shrimp pellets, sinking goldfish pellets, and sinking "attack!" cichlid food. I also feed the scambled eggs cooked in the microwave. Whole milk, no oil. I also put in cooked dandelion greens and they munch on them.

Let him get hungry & feed him the same stuff for a while. He'll eat it eventually. Put in a Koi to eat what he doesn't until he starting eating fish food. Once he eats other stuff you can try putting in fish.

Females are supposed to start having eggs at around 5 months. Mine are just 4 months old now, so I should be about a month away. Maybe closer as the female is pretty friendly with the male.

How big are they at four/five months old?

Thanks for your suggestion, but I did originally try five endlers (see earlier post) and he ate them all aswell. I only bought danios this time to save abit of money, and see if anything had changed - which it hasnt. He does readily accept shrimp pellets, chicken etc but I guess he just prefers live fish

My guess is that they would be around 6-7" at 5 months for the male. and probably 3-4" for the female.

I don't know why yours is such a fish eater except that maybe that is what they gave him, so that is what he knows how to eat. If you cut out the fish for a while and get him to eat other food he may do less damage. My endlers breed way faster than my shrimp can eat them. I've had these since they were post-larval and fed them on goldfish and cichlid food the whole time so they prefer that. I also give them a little raw chicken once a week. Most animals will go for the easy meal once they know it is food.

Try some feeder guppies once you have him eating pellets. You can get loads of these for cheap. Once you get a handle on how many of these he eats, you can move them out and put in something else.

Zambat wrote:I cant decide if I should keep him now - as he would have to be on his own in the tank (unless I can find another M. Rosenbergi somewhere here in the UK - which is unlikely) I havent got room to have another tank aswell as his. The other alternative is to take him back to the pet shop and buy loads of cherry/tiger/green shrimp and breed them instead.

May I ask where you've seen green shrimp in the UK? I'm after some of these little fellas.

Cheers

Shrimp&Snails wrote: May I ask where you've seen green shrimp in the UK? I'm after some of these little fellas.

Cheers

This is best asked and answered through a private message.

So, my prawn hasn't molted for 3 months... but before that it was about once a month. He expanded into a giant after the last molting. I took it from a 10 and put it into a 40g tank (it was my last post on this thread). Anyone got any idea when the next molting will take place? It's about 6" body, 15" including the arms and claws. Also given that i feed it quite often, it never really goes hungry, in fact it refuse food sometimes, water is a constant 75F and i change 5 gallon once a week.

Once a blue claw (BC) reaches full maturity their growth just about stops. The doc's I've seen have molting at 4-6 months, but growth is very slow. In the wild the 1st blue claw emits a hormone that supresses the other males from morphing to a blue claw. They (the Orange Claws) grow much bigger than the BC before they ultimately become blue claws. If they survive the molt, they then kill the smaller BC.