11 months in and still no babies

[JoeG]

Well it will be 11 months in a couple of weeks and still no babies. I have a 5 gal tank with 30 shrimp, they are a lot bigger than they were a year ago and they are still nice and active. Quite a few have the black saddle but they have had that for months. I’ve never had a lot of algae in the tank but there are definitely green patches here and there on the lava rocks and the back and side walls. I feed a shrimp pellet once every other week and remove what hasn’t been eaten after about an hour. I’ve noticed the past few feedings that there is more left. I think this is due to the fact that there is more algae for them to eat. The lights are on for approximately 12 hours per day. There was a night light on in their room but I removed it about a month ago (I had read somewhere that it is better to have total darkness at night). I let the water level go down about 1/4” to 1/2” before I top it off with distilled water. Any suggestions on getting them to produce? Thanks for any help.

[Varanus]

Well you seem to largely be doing everything right. My only advice would be to try to not feed at all for a few months and see if that encourages some breeding/egg production. You have visible algae so there is no worry about the shrimp starving.

[Nellyville41]

What Varanus said. Feeding them every other week is a lot. I too have never seen full blown algae on any of my two tanks. Just tiny specs on the glass and some now on the rocks. I would say just continue to wait it out. My tank at work only reproduced once but I think that’s partly due to only having one female in the intital 10. The one at home reproduced 3 times now. Would of been 5 but 2 of the moms dropped all the eggs. But yeah just wait it out and hopefully it’ll happen sooner than later.

[i<3Opae]

My tank went through more than a year without babies due to too much nutrient in the tank, once that was gone, breeding has been steady.

[JoeG]

Thank you all very much for your replies. I will stop the feeding indefinitely now and see what happens. It’s good to know that others had a long wait and that eventually it just happens.

[mike.d]

I'm someone who suspected that the light at night was messing up reproduction.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6414

I can't be sure, of course. But I covered the light the last time I saw a berried shrimp and about a month later I counted 10 larvae. (I keep it covered at night all the time.)

Now I only see 3 larvae but I have 2-3 baby shrimp that attach to the glass. They're barely bigger than a larva, white, and if you look close you can see a tiny fan tail. I don't know if covering the light had anything to do with it. Either way these guys are good at hiding and there's lots of places to hide in my tank. I just know I didn't see larvae until I covered the light. At this point, I've had my tank set up for about 18 months.

[shootist2004]

try showing them some porn movies...............

[AnotherKevin]

I also agree with the other comments about not feeding if you have visible patches of algae.

Over feeding pollutes the water and stresses the shrimp.

[JoeG]

Update: we are 17 months in and still no babies. Shrimp are doing well, they have lots of algae covering the lava rocks and three sides of the tank. They swim around and are nice and red. I’ve seen molts and a lot of them have saddles but still no babies. I did add a little spirulina about a month ago thinking that they possibly were missing some kind of vitamins or something that may be keeping them from breeding. I fed the spirulina by spraying a shell with water, sprinkled the dry powder onto the shell and then letting the whole thing dry over night. The next day I added it to the tank and it was eaten within an hour.

Photos of the tank showing the algae growth:

Is that light green, fluffy algae a good algae? It always has lots of air bubbles (you can see that under the rock cave in the second photo). In the front of the tank is a pebble that has a very dark green algae, the kind I normally see in my fresh water tanks.

Here’s hoping that with spring and the longer daylight we might get babies someday.

[Varanus]

Again, if you have that much algae its probably best to not feed anything. These shrimp seem to breed best under very spartan conditions.

[JoeG]

That feeding of spirulina will be their last until all the algae is gone! Thanks for the reply.

[Opaela]

From my exp, the key is two aspects:

1. Leave them alone and avoid disturbance as much as possible.
2. make sure your water parameters are correct. Likely ph is off or salinity is off or even temperature(70+)

Another bold guess( just bs )
(3).You might have wrong kinda of algae growing in your tank... Your pic looks off to me.

[JoeG]

Opaela thanks for the reply.

1. The shrimp are in a room pretty much to themselves all day. I’m in there maybe at most 1 hour per day and they are sitting on a bookcase in the corner of the room. No water movement to speak of.
2. I really don’t check the parameters but I did check the salinity a few weeks ago and it was at 1.013 and the temp in the room is a pretty steady 68 deg f during this time of year. In the summer it will be around 72.
3. As for the algae I was wondering if they are actually eating it. It does seem to fluctuate from area to area with it growing on some sections of the rocks and then seeming to disappear on other sections of the rock. I think I will post the second picture in another post and ask if anyone has a similar type of algae and if the shrimp are able to eat it.

Again thanks for the reply.

[Mustafa]

Again, if you have that much algae its probably best to not feed anything. These shrimp seem to breed best under very spartan conditions.

What he said. ^^^^