My Supershrimp Journal

[Mustafa]

There is definitely a spring rush going on right now.

These shrimp most definitely start getting more reproductively active once the temperatures rise.

[Flippers]

More babies this week! I counted 14 floating babies and saw another berried female today. I got a picture with a berried female and a baby floating in the same frame. Blurry but exciting!

Now I'm just waiting for my work tank to start growing.

What is that rock?? Where did you get it?

[Oople]

The rocks in the tank are coral rubble collected off the beach many years ago.

[Oople]

Baby snail!

[Oople]

I saw the first berried female in the work tank!

[Mustafa]

Congrats on the baby snail and berried shrimp! So what happened? You should have larvae/young by now.

[Oople]

Sorry I’ve been away for a while. The work tank larvae survived and now there’s about 10 more shrimp in the tank. Haven't seen any more berried females or larvae since though. Actually, I haven’t seen any shrimp reproduction in either tank this year. I’ve had so much hair algae in the home tank and I’ve not fed it for over a year. I’m nervous about over feeding and I’ve only fed the work tank maybe 2 times in the past year. The snails have exploded in my home tank. I got them last year hoping they would help control the algae but no luck. I’m starting to pull out the gravel because it looks like it’s deteriorating but it’s taking forever with tweezers but will eventually pull it all out and replace with aragonite sand.

[Oople]

I take it back. I may have had babies this year and not realized it. There’s a clear size diff between the original adults and the 1-yr olds. And I just saw a couple that were half the size of the 1-yr olds.

[Oople]

Started my 3rd tank tonight! It’s my 2nd Mustafa Method tank and took my mossball and a couple pieces of coral from my work tank to help kick start. The countdown begins...

[Dylan]

What are you using for the upgraded work tank? I really like the tall cylinder tank!

[Oople]

The shrimp have been in their new home for a couple days and doing well. It’ll take me a while to take out all the gravel from the old tank with a tweezer and get the last few tiny ones that hid in the gravel.

Dylan, my work tank is actually a half-round. I Think it might be by Tetra, and I think it’s marketed for bettas? I got it on Amazon.

[Mustafa]

Very nice looking tank! I'm becoming very partial to black substrates. The contrast with the red of the shrimp is really nice.

[Oople]

It's been a couple years since I started the black rock tank. I struggled with hair algae before, so didn't feed this tank until last year -- a rice-grain sized flake, 2x in the last couple months. This week I saw a baby floater. This is the first one I've seen in this new tank with minimal feeding so it's really exciting. Snails have been multiplying like crazy, but this is the first opae. I've been removing snails 1-2 times a year because they creep me out.

The white tank is doing fine too; same feeding/non feeding pattern. I don't know if it's my imagination but I swear there is a higher percentage of red shrimp in the black tank vs the white tank. I wasn't particular about which ones went into which tank, but noticed the color difference this week. Has anyone else seen a difference in their tanks?