Berried female after 3 months

[myprecious]

Hullo everyone,
It's my first post, though not my first visit here. Just wanted to share my joy with you as today I've spotted a berried female in my 31litre aquarium. I've had my shrimps for 3 month now, and I love them indeed. I've only partially followed Mustafa's instructions: yes, I do feed them every 2 weeks, but I've installed a heater (temp. 24C) and a filter, which I turn on from time to time. I've also changed 1/3 of water once. Recently the macroalgae started dying - I removed about 90%. I read somewhere that too much light may be the cause, so I removed one bulb leaving only one 8watt at 10000k. This may be just a coincidence, and perhaps the changes have nothing to do with it, but a few days later:) suprise, suprise: a berried female.
Cheers:)

[Mustafa]

Congrats! The thing with shrimp in general is that the more established the tank is, the more likely they will breed. Tanks take time to become established (and longer if people mess too much with the tank). I'm pretty sure that whatever you did lately had nothing to do with the shrimp getting berried. As for the macroalgae getting too much light...I doubt it (they do grow under the sun out in nature..in relatively shallow water, too). There are various reasons why the macroalgae may not do well...one major one is that the pH may be a little on the hight side. Don't try to change it, though. When the tank is established enough, there will be enough biological activity to lower the pH slightly (unless your substrate is all crushed coral or all aragonite sand). In any case, keep updating!

[myprecious]

Thank you for your feedback Mustafa. The macroalgae had been doing great until recently. After 3 months they became white/colourless and started emitting intensive scent of rotting plants. I don't think pH changed by itself?

[myprecious]

I've tested the water in the tank with some test stripes - pH seems to be ok but GH is apparently quite high - but how accurate are the stripes? Anyway, if the conditions in the tank were not right there wouldn't be any berried shrimps, right?

[Mustafa]

Test strips can be highly inaccurate. Also, conditions in the tank can be right for shrimp but not so great for plants. As long as your shrimp do ok, I wouldn't worry too much about the macroalgae. You can always get some more in the future, to see if it will finally grow, as your tank becomes more and more established.

[myprecious]

My mother-to-be has only 3 eggs left (out of 7 or 8 she had when I spotted her).

[Mustafa]

Unless the larvae have already hatched (which I doubt, as it usually takes at least 30 days for the eggs to hatch) the female may have just "lost" or rejected the eggs. As I already told MelWong in her thread, that's completely normal for first time (or sometimes second, third time) berried females. You may still get a few larvae from this batch of eggs, though. Keep us updated!

[myprecious]

Unfortunately one egg left - don't see any larvae, though at least 30 have passed.

[Mustafa]

It's possible that that one egg eventually hatches. I've had a single larva floating in newer tanks in the past before. If not, then just wait...this won't be the last time that your shrimp will be carrying eggs.

[myprecious]

No hatched eggs this time:(

[Mustafa]

That's ok. There *will* be a next time. That's for sure. Just continue exactly the same way. Don't change anything! (except maybe getting rid of the filter..that may actually help).

[myprecious]

Good news! Another mother-to-be appeared in my tank:)

[Mustafa]

There ya go! She's rather "fully" loaded, too. Now the wait for the larvae begins...

[myprecious]

Just an update: my berried female is doing fine:) - she's got lots of eggs.

[Mustafa]

Awesome! There should be larvae floating around just in time for the new year...if your tank is established enough for the larvae, that is. Lots of times the adults can do fine, but larvae never seem to emerge from berried females. But if you follow the methods detailed here, time cures the problem and at some point you'll have a tank with regular reproduction.