Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I was looking at one of the shrimp variety pages, and saw a note about Mustafa breeding "sufficient quantities" of a species in order to bring it to the hobby.

That made me curious... how large of a population do you feel you need to have in order to offer it in the store?

And that question made me curious about your setup in general. Have you described it before in any other threads (I tried a search but it's not a very search-friendly question)? What size tanks do you have and how many? Do you have an all out "fish room" like any other breeder might? Do you have rare species not in the varieties page?

I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in what's going on behind the scenes here... it might even be worth an article or a sticky.

My setup is pretty much described here:

http://www.petshrimp.com/articles/keepingshrimp.html

I keep it simple. Very thin substrate (barely covering bottom), dried oak leaves, Najas, sponge filter, done! Nothing fancy or complicated. Most of my breeding tanks are 10 gallons right now, which is the minimum size I use, but I find that to be suboptimal. In my experience, the bigger the better, so in the future (after a big move next year) I will be setting up larger tanks. Since I live in Manhattan, I don't have a fish room per se ( I wish I had that luxury), but the tanks are in two different rooms in my apartment, altogether 33 tanks (largest tank is only 55 gallons). Being in an apartment in Manhattan has been a *huge* limiting factor to expansion so far. Once our move is completed next year, this situation will hopefully change fairly quickly. The goal at some point is to set up at least a few hundred tanks dedicated to shrimp breeding, plus maybe a few ponds. There are so many shrimp species out there that need to be established in captivity. You never know how long they will still be around. Importation is simply not the solution.

And yes, I have species not on the shrimp varieties page. That's not because I'm trying to keep them secret or something. I just haven't gotten around to putting their descriptions up on the shrimp varieties page. I will not put shrimp species up on my website right way, as it would be useless to "describe" them without knowing anything about the species. I need to observe them first, breed them and know pretty much everything about them before I describe them on my website.

Finally, I need to have a population that usually produces *at least* 100-200 young every month before I even offer the species for sale. Otherwise I'd be more "out of stock" than "in stock" for any given species.

Hope this helps satify your curiosity.

Thanks for the insight into your set up and how you add new species to the page. I also lived in New york for a couple of years and know about limited space. Even so, I hope to return in the future because I miss the atmosphere . Best wishes on your move and may you future with shrimp be fruitful for all of our sakes .

Have you thought about enlisting other breeders who might be interested in expanding a population in captivity? If there's a species out there that's in real danger of being wiped out by harvesting, there's a much better chance that 15 people here have room for one more tank in order to greatly expand their numbers, than that you have room for 15 more tanks. Of course a lot of people here are breeding some of these species anyway, but it isn't really an organized effort.

Just off the top of my head, maybe you could also try something like selling a set of one species to someone who agrees to be part of the process. They would then act as part of your "stock" in the future, and some orders would be mailed from them instead of you. They'd get a cut for the breeding, and you'd get a cut for being the storefront (they don't have to worry about pricing, advertising, anything). That'd keep more shrimp in stock at all times. You'd certainly never run out of cherries.

There's probably a ton of risks to think about there though... the person has to be trustworthy enough that you allow them some power over the reputation of your store.

I'm sure you've already thought about this sort of thing, and there are a lot of potential problems that might keep it from being worthwhile. Just thought I'd put it out there anyway.

If nothing else I do think a number of people here would be interested in dedicating a 10g to the harvesting cause, though.

My setup is pretty much described here:

http://www.petshrimp.com/articles/keepingshrimp.html

I keep it simple. Very thin substrate (barely covering bottom), dried oak leaves, Najas, sponge filter, done! Nothing fancy or complicated. Most of my breeding tanks are 10 gallons right now, which is the minimum size I use, but I find that to be suboptimal. In my experience, the bigger the better, so in the future (after a big move next year) I will be setting up larger tanks. Since I live in Manhattan, I don't have a fish room per se ( I wish I had that luxury), but the tanks are in two different rooms in my apartment, altogether 33 tanks (largest tank is only 55 gallons). Being in an apartment in Manhattan has been a *huge* limiting factor to expansion so far. Once our move is completed next year, this situation will hopefully change fairly quickly. The goal at some point is to set up at least a few hundred tanks dedicated to shrimp breeding, plus maybe a few ponds. There are so many shrimp species out there that need to be established in captivity. You never know how long they will still be around. Importation is simply not the solution.

And yes, I have species not on the shrimp varieties page. That's not because I'm trying to keep them secret or something. I just haven't gotten around to putting their descriptions up on the shrimp varieties page. I will not put shrimp species up on my website right way, as it would be useless to "describe" them without knowing anything about the species. I need to observe them first, breed them and know pretty much everything about them before I describe them on my website.

Finally, I need to have a population that usually produces *at least* 100-200 young every month before I even offer the species for sale. Otherwise I'd be more "out of stock" than "in stock" for any given species.

Hope this helps satify your curiosity.

Great!

So will you be able to start to shiping to Canada after your setup??

TKD

So will you be able to start to shiping to Canada after your setup??

Not unless the USPS changes their policy. The USPS does not ship animals internationally, even if the country it goes to allows it. This is because of their "one size fits all" policy, typical of government agencies. This is a policy, not a rule or a law. It is left up to the individual judgement of the post master to decide if they think the package will arrive alive. You can ship Global Priority Mail as quickly as you can Prioriity Mail to most parts of Canada, but the USPS policy has not kept up with this achievement.

Canada doesn't seem to have a problem with this, but some post masters with too much time on their hands do. Busy city post offices will usually accept packages to Canada without caring what is in it. I've sent many packages to Canada putting the genus & species name on the customs form. The postal folks can't tell that from sheetrock unless you stamp "live shrimp" on the box.

Not unless the USPS changes their policy. The USPS does not ship animals internationally, even if the country it goes to allows it. This is because of their "one size fits all" policy, typical of government agencies. This is a policy, not a rule or a law. It is left up to the individual judgement of the post master to decide if they think the package will arrive alive. You can ship Global Priority Mail as quickly as you can Prioriity Mail to most parts of Canada, but the USPS policy has not kept up with this achievement.

Canada doesn't seem to have a problem with this, but some post masters with too much time on their hands do. Busy city post offices will usually accept packages to Canada without caring what is in it. I've sent many packages to Canada putting the genus & species name on the customs form. The postal folks can't tell that from sheetrock unless you stamp "live shrimp" on the box.

So how to you ship the shrimp across the states now?
I see that Mustafa ship's through Priority Mail, so I'm sorry but I don't get your statement that I have in quotes.
What about FedEX or UPS?

If Mustafa could ship to Canada, Mexico and elsewere it would benifit everyone!

TKD

USPS has no problem with shipping fish inside the US via Priority Mail. They just have not caught up to the fact that shipping to Canada is just as fast, unless the package gets inspected. When that happens, they would all die for sure. If the package contains anything worth more than $10 Canadian, the Canadian tax ppeople may snag it, and demand the GST. They notify you by mail and that takes about 10 days. Dead shrimp again.

If you want to ship legally to Canada you must provide a customs form explaining what is in the package and what it is worth. You don't need to do this in the USA.

The USDA has now prohibited the shipping of all snails without a permit, just to complicate things. While tropical fish are peritted to be shipped, the shipment of non-snail invertibrates is not clearly spelled out. Most shippers either call their critters tropical fish, or say nothing at all.

In the meantime it would be too much of a risk for lossing shrimp if the package is to be inspected and/or withheld. Let us hope that the USDA approves the shipping of non-snail invertibrates without permits also. The risk of lossing the shrimp in a shipment outside of the US is just too great at the moment don' t you think?

What a pain in the butt!!!

No shrimp/crayfish from Mustafa for us canucks.

TKD

What lots of Canadians do is get a PO box just across the border in the USA. Of course this doesn't work if you are way north.

TKD wrote:What a pain in the butt!!!

No shrimp/crayfish from Mustafa for us canucks.

TKD

So find a Canuck source

So find a Canuck source

Easy for cherry shrimp and amanos, but hard for most other species. Maybe not in a few years, but right now there are few serious sources in Canada.

[quote="TKDGreat!

So will you be able to start to shiping to Canada after your setup??

TKD[/quote]

Shipping to Canada is not a problem. The problem are the high costs ($65-$85 dollars depending on weight). Unless someone buys lots of shrimp or several people get together to put in a large group order the shipping costs will prove prohibitive. Hence, I don't (yet) offer shipping to Canada. That might change in the future, though, if and when there is more demand from Canadians for rare shrimp.

Generally, having a PO box in the US is the more elegant and cheaper solution to purchasing shrimp/fish in the US.

In any case....this has nothing to do with the original question in this thread, so let's just make this post a "dead end" post instead of branching out into a totally different topic....i.e. no replies to this post.