Soothing Shrimp

"If I did, me and the fish would starve." +1 zillion! So many people write me and ask how to do shrimp breeding because they want to do it as a full time job. Truth is- unless you have a lot of space, money and time- there's no way to make a living at this! Even if you buy the most sought after shrimp today, tomorrow nobody wants to buy it. It's a pie in the sky dream I think almost every shrimper has at one time or another. That's why I say get shrimp YOU like and just have fun. Money ain't gonna happen here. LOL Heck, it's all I can do to try to sell enough to maintain my tanks!

How tall are you?

Two things strike me right off- cover for the tank and/or lower the water a little.

I like the way this gal thinks!

I'm pretty sure no one has done one yet.

Seems to me anything Aqua is fine.

Some great looking shrimp there. You are obviously taking care of them very well. What's your TDS right now?

"I'm sure none of the people you got the shrimp from hold you at fault, or think any less of you. " +1 As stated. Stuff happens.

DK, darkcobra was trying to figure out a good DIY remineralizer for neos. Do you have a recipe you may suggest?

LOL Well I'm glad you are not leaving anytime soon. You both are good people.

...and hit us over the head and is running away.

Hey man, stuff happens, ya know? I'm sorry you lost your shrimp, dude. It happens to all of us at some time or another. Not trying to make light of it, but making sure you know sometimes stuff just happens. I think the cloudiness may have been harmless bacterial bloom. That can clear itself up in a week to two weeks without doing anything. Drastic water changes may have done more harm than good, however all this is speculation. It may have indeed been substrate. Who knows? At least starting anew will give you peace of mind that everything is reset for best results.

Don't know. I know Alpha is reputable and I have hears lots of good reviews about them. However I also have seen them using Michael Nadal's pictures while removing his watermark. I brought that up on the other forum and my thread closed. Probably because they are a sponsor there.

You are very welcome. While I was learning shrimp years ago, I killed I think 6 tanks of shrimp before I finally started to understand shrimping. It's part of the learning curve unfortunately. heh The only shrimp safe fish is said to be otos. Snails do well with shrimp, too. (Except assassin snails.) When you want an entry level RO system, check out here. I have a 100gpd unit I got for under $100. My water pressure sucks, so it takes awhile to fill a 10 gallon container, but it works for me. In the meantime, before going through all that money, why not pay $1 for a jug of RO at Walmart or the local grocer? You'll only have to change 10% of the water once a week. So not a lot of water will be used as you can see. I know you are used to DIY gh boosters, but the advantage to SS or other shrimp remineralizers is that it uses minerals the shrimp are able to use for strengthening their shells, and have good health. Do you have a digital TDS pen? You can get one pretty cheap from Ebay. As far as shrimp food, the cheapest way to go (and one of the healthiest) is to feed blanched organic baby spinach or mulberry leaves. You also can do bee pollen (that tends to raise TDS fast in small tanks though.) There's several pellets and foods marketing for shrimp though that have their own advantages. The most obvious is storage. As for micros. usually we do moss, hornwort, floaters, etc that use the shrimp waste ammonia and nits. and that's it. Simple simple simple.

Great to see you made it! Welcome my friend.

Let me address some of your questions. up to 75 degrees is good. Yes, shrimp can live in 78 and beyond (and I've kept mine in water up to 84 before). The higher temperature you keep your shrimp at, the faster the life cycle, and you run the risk of bacterial infections and faster death. Think of this equation: L + T = K L= Shrimp Life T= Temperature K= constant In order for K to remain the same, L and T are on a tettor totter. If one goes up, the other goes down and visa versa. -- Copper in most foods (and shrimp foods) and fine. Shrimp uses copper in their blood to carry O2, so they must have it for their bodies to work correctly. It is when medications are used- usually for fish- that contain copper that it becomes dangerous or lethal. The ingredient for getting rid of snails in an aquarium for instance is copper. Since it kills snails- which are inverts- it will kill your pet inverts (shrimp) too. -- Shrimp from a bad environment are often not healthy. The thing is- it takes them time to die. So what may look as hardy shrimp in a bad environment, often is unhealthy shrimp slowly passing away. Ghost shrimp from the pet store often don't live very long since most are collected wild and care is neglected since they are to be used as feeders. As shrimpers, shrimp are a little more sensitive than fish. So we take special care to look at TDS, Gh, Ph, Kh, as well as regular fish params. Unfortunately some of these tests are not included in a regular freshwater master kit, and strips go bad quickly giving inaccurate information- so liquid tests are preferred. Some shrimpers use tap with water conditioner, however sometimes things sneak into the tap that fish can handle but are problematic for shrimp. To get around this many shrimpers use RO (even bottled from the local food store) and remineralize with this. There's a smaller size too and also other remineralizers out there. Oblongshrimp on here sells Salty Shrimp gh/kh which may be more beneficial for neos, however I've not tried it yet. Some general params for cherry shrimp: PH: 7+ KH: 0 – 10 GH: 6+ TDS: 100-200+ Water temp: 70-75F There's people who have successful colonies different from those params, but listed is kind of the avg. people do. --- Acclimation is different from acclimating fish. Here's a good link to see how it is done: http://www.shrimpnow.com/content.php/258-Acclimatising-Shrimp --- I see you said planted tanks. Do you use ferts or CO2? Shrimp, in general, do not do well with CO2 or ferts in the water. There are some who have managed it, but most of us do very low tech for the shrimp to do well. --- Cherry shrimp come in many different varieties of colors and are one of the hardiest to learn with since they can take "Oops" a whole lot better than the more sensitive shrimps. (Yellows and Blue Diamonds are very sensitive as far as neos go. I lost hundreds of dollars on yellows, and had to develop my own strain- but that's a post for a different day. heh) Hopefully this answers some questions?

While water conditioner (Prime) will neutralize heavy metals, it won't touch copper if I remember correctly.

LOL What a great intro! Great to see you made it here, gal. We're going to see if we can get you turned into a shrimper yet!

Hey! Darkcobra! Glad to see you made it here. We talk fish here too, so feel free to share you expertise!

..or else you'll ask absolution. hehehehehheee

I know Ravensgate has a degree in photography.

Sure. If anyone else wants the link: http://www.shrimpnow.com/content.php/258-Acclimatising-Shrimp

Boy, that new pair is beautiful! And I love seeing those fry grow.

OKay, we need someone a write up w/ photos of acclimating shrimp via drip. I tend to refer people to another forum's page that explains that in detail and why. I could refer them here provided we have a good write up w/photos.

I'll cross post this, but I often refer new buyers to an acclimating your shrimp page. Provided we have one here, I could send them here to read it.