My shrimp journey

heather_rose2001 · Post by **heather_rose2001** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:11 am

First off I would like to say hi to all and to thank you for all the info I have recieved from this site over the last several months. Some of you are my shrimps lifesavers Im hear to tell ya.

I got my shrimp bug about a year ago and I have become very (ok)extremely addicted. I would like to introduce you to my shrimp and give some details as to my progress with them.

I started with Red Cherries- which have done very well in my hard tap water, I have berried females all the time and babies galore.

Tiger shrimp- well I was surprized at how well they are doing as I had heard their not an easy shrimp to breed, but I have tons of babies and I am in the progress of preparing another tank to transfer some of them. A few weeks ago My females stopped carrying eggs, I seem to think my heat was abit too high so I have turn off all heat to that room and it has dropped the temp in their room, so Im waiting to see if they will begin to carry again.

I have about sixty green shrimp but to date I have not seen any berried females, they are in a 20 gallon, alkaline, hard water with temp at 73. If anyone knows what I could do to improve their condition so they will breed, please let me know. Im pretty sure I have males and females.

Snowball shrimp- I have three, 1 female and 2 males, I have had them in a 10 gallon for months but she never carried eggs, so 2 weeks ago I transfered them to my 20 gal. green tank and last night I noticed my female is berried, whoo hoo. I have more of these shrimp arriving in a few weeks, thanks Mustafa.

I have 1 C grade Crystal, had more but as sad as it sounds they were my experience Crystal shrimp, and I have learned alot from them.

7 A grade Bees, One female berried. 13 Crystal reds 1 berried, the other females are too small to breed yet.

Christmas eve disaster, I had several babies from both of these female all over my tank but I tested my ph and it was a tad high for my liking so I added 2 drops of muric acid diluted down into my tank, well Christmas I saw only 2 babies and after that day I saw no more. I was sick Im here to tell you. Now whether the acid did this or not I truly can not say, but I cant think of anything else that could have dont it, I also had Tiger babies in there as well and it did'nt affect them, go figure.

Ok tomorrow I am expecting 30 S grade Crystals and 2 s grade Bees.
I have converted my 55 gal tank to suit the needs of these shrimp, but I really need to know one question, my ph is holding at 6.5 thanks to the Sphagnum peat and the oak leaves. My kh was low do to the Muric acid that I added to 50 percent off the water and then filled it with r/o. Kh was very low but I slowly added my tap water til I was able to raise it, so now My kh is 3.98, I was told I shouldnt have a problem with ph swing with it at that degree. Ok now for my question, With all that I have done my hardness in that tank went from 160 to 200, I have heard moderatly hardness is good for them, but is this too hard for them and their offsping to survive?

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 8:58 am

I got my shrimp bug about a year ago and I have become very (ok)extremely addicted. I would like to introduce you to my shrimp and give some details as to my progress with them.

Hello and wlecome heather_rose2001, I think you have found the only thing that can help with the shrimp bug is to learn mroe about our shrimps and raise them as best we can so they can multiply

I have about sixty green shrimp but to date I have not seen any berried females,

I too have some of these shrimp and am waiting for them to breed, it has been about two months and they have just started to develope saddles. I think if they have clean water conditions and are feed well they will mate when the time comes. How long have you had yours and do you know their age?

Christmas eve disaster, I had several babies from both of these female all over my tank but I tested my ph and it was a tad high for my liking so I added 2 drops of muric acid diluted down into my tank,

Sorry to hear about your loss. I try to not use chemicals and additive unless absolutely necessary. I live in California so the tap water is hard and basic which is perfet for my cherries. I use R/O water for my CRS and other shrimp that require soft acidic water. I then mix these two different water to get the water conditions I need, R/O to make water more acidic and soft and vice versa with the tap water.

Ok now for my question, With all that I have done my hardness in that tank went from 160 to 200, I have heard moderatly hardness is good for them, but is this too hard for them and their offsping to survive?

IMO I think that once you have conditions where the shrimp are healthy, feeding and reproducing, the key is to keep the water clean! The baby shrimp will not tolerate amonia in the water so make sure the filtrations and water changes and kept up. I try not to worry too much about the kh because after a while it gets too out of hand. For my tanks R/O = soft and tap water = hard.

I hope you have fun inspecting your Crystals/Bees tomorow and keep us updated on your 55 gallon and all those precious shrimp

lampeye · Post by **lampeye** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:39 am

Muritatic acid was most likely the culprit. If it was simple hardware store muriatic, it would contain some metallic impurites (which would, of course, be in their more dangerous reduced forms). Since it is a cleaning product, purity is not a priority.

If you want something you can add to acidify water, go onto a killie forum and look into treating water with peat or peat extracts. It would be much less risky. I have used pool acid in the past, but only in a separate tank and only to recharge a cation-exchange resin. The acidified/softened water was then filtered heavily with activated carbon before aquarium use. This was only used for sensitive fish species, not shrimp, however; I can't give that method a gold star for safety when it comes to shrimp.

heather_rose2001 · Post by **heather_rose2001** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:18 am

Hi Neonshrimp & lampeye,

Thanks for your replies.

I agree, its been alot of heartache, but also alot of joy, the lastest being the eggs on my female Snowball lastnight.

So far My ammonia levels have stayed at zero, I do water changes but not every week. I feed them twice a day and its always fun watching them cause I have almost all 60 right in one spot its pretty cool. I have had 9 of the greens for about 4 months I guess, the others about 6 to 8 weeks. Several of them are developing saddles others have them, Im hoping they too will breed now that their all in the 20 gallon, If not I will move to a 29 gallon. As far as age I have no Idea but I have small ones and full grown adults. Some are emerald green, some light green, red, brown, and 3 of them are the most beautiful blue.

Lesson definaltly learn, I will not add anything chemically unless absolutly needed. As far as hard water and r/o, I am doing same thing
thing as you mix and match, it was just that I added more tap to raise kh that ir raised gh and I am not certain if thats too hard for them or not. I see many say soft acidic, but have heard from others that moderatly hard is good for their shells, and if thats the case I would like that tank to be moderatly hard. Im wondering if I should do like a 20 -25 percent water change today, but my tanks ph is at 6.5 and my r/o ph is 7.0, so do I raise ph for a bit to lower hardness? Decisions, decisions. what would you recommend? I have my other Crystals in there for several days now and they just seem to be grazing all the time.

I hope you have fun inspecting your Crystals/Bees tomorow and keep us updated on your 55 gallon and all those precious shrimp

Thank you, as you would know Im very excite.

go onto a killie forum and look into treating water with peat or peat extracts.

Because of the big tank I have taken 5 gal. paint strainers and put Sphagnum peat in them and floating on top of tank, may look unattractive to some, but I could care less as long as my shrimp are happy, besides it really is'nt bad not in a 55 gal.

Thanks again,

Shauna, aka heather-rose

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:50 am

Welcome Heather Rose!
Lets hope those snails hatch!

heather_rose2001 · Post by **heather_rose2001** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 12:34 pm

Hi Badflash,

I have high hopes for these, they look pretty good. I have them floating in my Discus tank in their bags. How long do you think it might take?

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 12:52 pm

Im wondering if I should do like a 20 -25 percent water change today, but my tanks ph is at 6.5 and my r/o ph is 7.0, so do I raise ph for a bit to lower hardness? Decisions, decisions. what would you recommend? I have my other Crystals in there for several days now and they just seem to be grazing all the time.

I can't tell you what to do but I do water changes on my CRS tank every 3-4 days to keep the water CLEAN. The slight shift in pH will not be a problem if doing 20-25% change and having clean water at the right temperature is key in my opinion when it comes to CRS.

Post by **Mustafa** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:42 pm

Hi heather and welcome to the forum!

The correct water parameter are still being investigated by pretty much *everyone* in the world who is into keeping shrimp. My suggestion would be to keep things the way they are and not worry too much about specific parameters as long as your shrimp are doing fine. My experience is leading me more and more towards the conclusion that shrimp are very adaptable to water parameters (ph, hardness, conductivity etc.). What kills them most of the time is ammonia and/or nitrite. Various shrimp seem to have various sensitivies to ammonia/nitrite, too, although all shrimp are generally *very* sensitive. The annoying part is that unmeasurable levels (with our home test kits anyway) of ammonia and/or nitrite can kill shrimp. You see your shrimp get lethargic, stop eating and drop dead one by one. You measure ammonia and/or nitrite and see it's "zero." But it's not. That's why a functioning and undisturbed filter bacteria fauna is so essential. I'll have to update the "water parameters" section in my shrimp species description to reflect this. This area of shrimpkeeping, as most areas, are devloping and subject to change due to new experiences/information at any time. We're all zeroing in on "the truth" in the end.

Sudden changes in water parameters *can* wipe off baby shrimp even if the adults do fine. That's probably what the acid did. However, one has to be careful with peat, too. Some companies add fertilizers (insane amounts of ammonia, nitrate...etc.) into their "100%" peat without mentioning it on the packaging. If you filter your water through such peat and use it in a shrimp tank you will kill your shrimp.

I will probably soon write an article about water parameters and the importance of ph and TDS/conductivity, which should be very informative and useful. Suffice it to say for now that people probably have had better success at lower ph levels with some shrimp species (such as crystal reds) due to the fact that ammonia is less toxic at lower ph levels. But if you have a functioning filter fauna then you don't have to worry about ammonia anyway. Currently I have CRS and Sri Lanka dwarf shrimp babies at ph levels of 7.3-7.4 although both shrimp (or the wild forms as in the case of CRS) are naturally found at ph levels of around 5.5 in many natural biotopes. I have had babies at those levels before but convinced myself that it must be a fluke as they come from low ph biotopes.

Annako · Post by **Annako** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 11:12 pm

Hello! Even though I do not have much to say on this board because I am very inexperienced, I welcome you. I find this place very useful also, and I appreciate those "rules" because it keep all that rif-raf outta here that make most forums counterproductive. I really got into shrimp about 5 months ago and the shrimp bug has hit me bad. Who could have guessed that buying feeeder shrimp to clean p after my axolot lead to a whole tank swarming with red cherries and a pokemon effect with shrimp, "gotta catch em all".I am glad you are having so much sucess! I wish you better luck on your green shrimp, for those are my favouite and I would love to have some one day. Congrats on your snowballs having babies!

Terran · Post by **Terran** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 12:29 am

Annako wrote: I am glad you are having so much sucess! I wish you better luck on your green shrimp, for those are my favouite and I would love to have some one day.

Yeah Green shrimp are probally now one of the Shrimps I want most because they look so great with the Red Cherry

but yeah welcome and good luck heather_rose2001

heather_rose2001 · Post by **heather_rose2001** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:21 pm

I'm back with good news, first off my berried Snowball shrimp, well I

can see the eyes in these eggs as of yesterday, well Im assuming their eyes as They dark spots in them, so I am hoping it wont be long til they hatch.

I recieved my S grade Crystals Thursday and all arrived alive and are doing very well, even after a scare

. I had decided to go ahead and do a 20 percent water change and even tho I had checked my r/o a week before I didnt check it before this change

, well after this water change my shrimp were freaking out and trying to escape

, so I immediatly checked the water and the ph was 7.6

, all other water parameters were good so I ran up and checked my r/o water and it turned out it needed the filters change. I got this done, well hubby

got it done for me and I did another water change and all the shrimp immediatly calmed down and all seems quite well with them now, Whew.

Lastly after moving my

green shrimp to the bigger tank almost three weeks ago I finally have three berried females. At first I couldnt believe what I was seeing

as I had been waiting for that to happen for months, but apparently they was not going to mate in the ten gallon.

I tried a search but could'nt see one for removing babies from the adults, Is it best to remove them for their survival? Or should I say, will the adults eat the young?

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:55 pm

Congrats all the way around!

No need to remove the babies. The adults are not cannibals. You need only worry about that with Palaemonid Shrimp. CRS, RCS, Green shrimp, etc. leave their babies alone.

Thanks for the observation on the green shrimp. I'll move mine to a 20 long.

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 5:04 pm

Thanks for the observation on the green shrimp. I'll move mine to a 20 long.

Yes, thanks for the tip. I was wondering why mine had not breed yet. Does anyone know if it is an issue of over crowding or is it just tank size?

heather_rose2001 · Post by **heather_rose2001** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 7:32 am

Thanks you two, I am pretty excited.

I personally dont think its overcrowding in my case. I only had 9 greens and 3 snowballs in the 10 gal. and nothing was happening. So when I was getting the new shippment of greens in I decided to move them all into the 20 gal.. Now the new shrimp I recieved are too small yet for breeding, but it is the shrimp I have had in the 10 gal. that are berried now. The snowballs had been in the 10 gal. even longer than the greens with no success, and now my only female is berried. Should be getting more of these real soon.

I also had 30 Crystals in a ten gallon and at the time none of them carried eggs, so I moved them to bigger tank and I saw quite a few of them berried. Because I was not able to keep a low enough ph in that tank and was having losses I removed these shrimp back into the ten gal. until I made the decision of which to put them into ( 29 or 55 )gallon. Well during this time only one bee carried, and now that I have put them into the 55 gal the other female is now berried, I noticed lastnight, Whoo hoo.

I thought I was done getting shrimp,

but I do have a spare 29 gallon, and I did see some cool shrimp in this forum, and I did put 2 and 2 together, and now Im on the hunt for Indian zebra, hehe. Is this what they mean by addiction? If so I need a fix.

I believe these shrimp will love our tap water, so it should not be too hard to get ready for these, if I can find them.

Neonshrimp · Post by **Neonshrimp** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:27 am

Congratulations on the berried females

!

Because I was not able to keep a low enough ph in that tank and was having losses I removed these shrimp back into the ten gal. until I made the decision of which to put them into ( 29 or 55 )gallon.

Is breeding shrimp your main goal right now? The reason I ask this is because I would think it would be difficult to see your shrimp in a 55 gal display tank. If breeding is working for you than that is great, I am actually thinking about a larger tank for breeding when I find the room

Im on the hunt for Indian zebra, hehe.

I have to agree that these are one of the better looking shrimp. When I first got mine I thought it was some type of super striped bumblebee

And yes they do love the hard tap water