Hawaiian Volcano Shrimp

[Neonshrimp]

I will take your work for it. Can you acclimate them to a fresh water tank if done slowly?

[dhavoc]

not that i know of, and besides they are plain jet black.

[Neonshrimp]

Jet black may actually look cool in some setups

[Westwood]

this is the first tank

20_LG_600_redshrimp_Tank.jpg (8.74 KiB) Viewed 3721 times

Hi all i Had these and Bred them for my own personal Use my excitement was they where amazing little Creatures at the time i couldnt get out of bed i was injured pretty bad and had many nightmares.
I used a 20 G long with a Tank divider for 2 gallons of the 20 . this tank was awesome had plants sand and my 100 became 500 in no time . they where fun and i had good dreams . I used a Hang on back penguin and it was on the other side of the devider a heater and Plants i also fed them and Gave them water changes . these little guys deserved the care Please do take good care of yours there Presious .

Posting pictures here I hope it is ok .
I lost all of my shrimp due to a Fire and now have set up a new 20 long with new system since the Fire destroyed the tank i had befor and killed all my shrimp .

the place i bought them is Now asking WAY too much there using them as Seahorse food . GRRRRR Westwood

[Mustafa]

pipipi are not nerites, they just look like them and are marine surge zone grazers.

They are nerites, just the saltwater variety. There are tons of saltwater nerite species out there.

[CrabbyShrimp]

Well, I'm finally getting around to starting this tank, getting the components together. Picking a substrate and I think I'll go with sand (I seem to remember hearing that opae ula could get stuck under gravel and crush themselves- or maybe that was only brine shrimp. Damn, it doesn't matter, sand looks nice anyway). I have a buttload of white sand in the garage but I rather think that black would look more attractive with their red coloring, either weay they would stand out nicely. For those of you with established tanks, what say you- does black or white substrate compliment them better?

You know, when I was a kid, I had an ideal image of a fish tank- it would have hideous neon rainbow gravel with one of those 1950's style rainbow pagodas and a rainbow castle with glow-in-the-dark plants. I like to think my tastes have improved Although, I still think a vibrant pink glofish would go nicely with a neon pagoda... tacky has its own form of beauty!

[Guba]

I gotta give a vote for black sand. I think it would make the shrimp feel more at ease. Although some of the members here have posted pics of tanks w/ white sand and I must say they looked pretty nice!

[CrabbyShrimp]

Thanks for the sand input
Okay, I just tested my water (will be used in the making of the tank) and was surprised to see that it is on the acidic side- between 6.2-6.8. The place I'm getting the shrimp from reccomends that the pH be more akin to 8.0. Any suggestions on how to best raise the pH for these little guys (I was thinking pH up)? Or, are these shrimp "hardy" enough that they will handle that big range???
Also noted that alkalinity was between 40-80 ppm, which my test strip deemed "not desirable" for a saltwater setup, and low/moderate for a freshwater one- they being brackish, I don't know what to think of that

[CrabbyShrimp]

Well, problem solved. The secret is simple. The distilled water I bought (because David at fukubonsai suggested it for his 5 gallon tanks) wasn't so great- acidic pH , just what opae ola don't favor, would've had to mess with it to get it rignt. The solution: new water source. Water from a limestone well with an 8.0 pH. Funny, I always hated that water because it's hard, turns out it's what the opae ula ordered, since they sometimes live in limestone sinkholes To quote from the US Fish and Wildlife:

"The limestone sinkholes are the O`ahu analogs of the anchialine ponds found in the lava fields on the Big Island of Hawaii. Like the anchialine ponds, these sinkholes support a unique aquatic ecosystem centered around the rare opae ula shrimp."

http://www.fws.gov/arsnew/regmap.cfm?arskey=13886

[Mustafa]

It does not matter what you use to make up your brackish water for these shrimp. Commercial salt mixes have everything to create the right environment, including the ph buffers for the right ph. So, if you use destilled water or tap water, it does not matter. Tap water, depending on the source, just adds more minerals to start out with. I have used all of the above (including very soft NYC water and rock-hard San Diego water) to make up the water for my H. rubra.

[southerndesert]

The more I read about these shrimp the more interested I get....Sigh

Good info and thanks for the thread.

Bill

[Mustafa]

The more I read about these shrimp the more interested I get....Sigh

Good info and thanks for the thread.

Bill

You have been transformed into a true addict. Mission completed...hehe.

[dhavoc]

go for it Bill, they are alot easier than your sulawesi's..... i finally got my hand on a bunch of the metabataeus (larger carniverous species) and they are a blast to watch. they move very quickly and dart around and out from their hiding places to get food. they supposedly eat opae ula and the larvae, but i have yet to see them eat one of the many sharing their tank. they both go for crushed flakes with gusto and i think you can get by feeding them just that. from what others have observed though, the opae ula wont breed readily with the metabataeus around. will try to get some pics with a decent camera/lens (just picked up a cannon D40 tonight and need to learn to use it- coming from a rebel XTi so not too different, i hope).

oh, and back on the subject, any water is fine if you use instant ocean or similar of the shelf products, like mustafa said. just remember when you top off evaporation to use ro or distilled, if you use tap (and have hard water) and dont do water changes (most guys here dont do any) eventually you will add ALOT of minerals to the tank. i did that with my previous setup (1/2g per week evap on a 2.5g tank) and over a year or so they had a hard time molting.

[southerndesert]

Well I have now set up a 10 gallon for Halocaridina Rubra and will adding shrimp after the tank has matured..... Busy re-reading all the back posts and any suggestions or updates are more than welcome.

Cheers, Bill

[southerndesert]

OK here is what I am doing...

I had a well matured 10 gallon tank about 1 year old and empty save for some snails, removed the Pond and Ramshorn snails leaving the MTS and will be allowing them to acclimate as I add salt over the next several days. I did allot of research on setting up a brackish tank including here and learned that using a well matured FW tank is fine if much of the water is first replaced with R/O and then salt added over a several day period and can actually have much of the beneficial bacteria acclimate as well. I plan to keep my water at around 1.010 to 1.012 and fortunately MTS are reported to survive and do well at this salinity level as well allowing my substrate cleaning and aerating team to continue to do their job, we will see if they indeed do live and still prosper.

I have coarse sand substrate with lava rock and a small sponge filter with slow air as not to make the water move much....

I am not sure if any type plant will be added and from what I have read there are none to speak of in these shrimp's natural environment.

I have never kept a brackish tank before so this is really interesting stuff to me and I am very interested to see what grows bio film wise on it's own in this environment. My question is this, will many of the algae and or other "critters" survive this new environment of is introducing some wise. I never could find a definitive answer on that one. It would seem fine from my reading to let it be and the tank will do it on it's own.....

Now I suppose pioneering into brackish aquariums will lead to more brackish species... Mustafa this is all your fault! Thanks

Bill