Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Well, I might jumping the gun a bit here. But this is the first time I've seen my female red cherries actually carrying the eggs. Before they have always gone from nice saddle to poof disappeared.

Amazingly I saw this after I had decided to remove all my endler livebearers out of this tank. They have been leaving the shrimp alone (and this is a very heavily planted tank, I just removed about 8.5x11 inch piece of java moss from the tank). But I finally am getting rid of the agressive gourami that has successfully killed off all my other fish in my main "fish" tank.

So now there are no fish (unless I missed a small one) in this tank to bother any shrimplets that may come. Do people recommend isolating the egg carrying females? I am a little concern about maintaining the best water conditions since I am currently leaving for days at a time (no regular intervals of course) to job hunt, and I do not have anyone trustworthy to make regular water changes. Anyone have recommendations?

I'll try posting a picture as soon as I get it hosted. I'm still not having the best luck getting a close/tight photograph that is also very clear. Although shooting from above the water instead of the through the glass seems to be better:)

Hi Opo, I'll save the congrats for when it becomes a more sure thing, but am happy for you that you are finally seeing eggs on the swimmerettes.

Thumbs up on removing fish. No, you don't need to isolate the egg carrying female, she should be fine. And if/when the shrimplets are born, the RCS will not harm or try to eat the shrimplets either. Only if it is about to die or dead do shrimp do this to other shrimp.

More simple shrimp tanks have the ability to practically run on their own - especially now that it has less load from the removal of other inhabitants. Perhaps you could just change the water before you go. Unless they're getting heavily fed, which I would doubt since you are away, nothing too dramatic should happen, I don't think.

Keep us posted on how this goes!

-GB

I agree with GunmetalBlue totally. If you have a good chunk of javamoss you can feed very little and being out for a few days, or even a week won't be a problem. If you can do a water change once a week and do not feed much, all should be good. These guys are really tiny and eat far less than you think. If you put a bright halogen light shining on the side of the tank on a timer, you'll get some algae going that will hold them over nicely.

I was getting ready to leave for the next few days for job hunting and I noticed that all my snails had congregated on the algae wafer I had popped in during the morning.

Then I looked closer... and Saw a small shrimp! YAY! Only 1 seen so far hopefully there are more:)

Opopanax wrote:I noticed that all my snails had congregated on the algae wafer I had popped in during the morning.

I don't want to rain on the party, but if you keep popping in algae wafer and leaving them in your tank all day your shrimp will die sooner or later. Those wafers are a lot of food compressed into a small package. When they sit there in the water they release all their chemical ingredients (read the package for what's in it) into the water, even if they do not fall apart. These ingredients accumulate in the water very quickly and kill your shrimp after a while. If you test your water with the usual test kits your results will look "fine" but they are not.

The best thing is to just feed a tiny piece of the wafer so that the shrimp can finish it off within about half an hour. If they take much longer, you have to give them a smaller piece next time. Once your shrimp population grows you can increase the size of the wafer piece.

This will keep your shrimp happy and healthy and as a nice side-effect will prevent snail population explosions as the snails are slower than shrimp and the shrimp will have finished off the small piece before the snails can accumulate on it.

That good advice. I rarely feed algae wafer except when I'm going to be gone for a few days.

Algae eating shrimp do not need to be fed every day. If you are going out for less than a week, don't worry about feeding them. If you have java moss in the tank, they will find stuff.