Cherry shrimp hatchlings? Daphnia eggs?

[iggiethegecko]

I'm new to breeding red cherry shrimps and daphnia (and raising axolotls for that matter) and was looking for some advise from the experts!

I just acquired some axolotl eggs (10 days old) and am trying to start a daphnia culture so I'll hopefully have new born daphnia ready for when the axis start to hatch. The cherry shrimps are more of an ongoing project for when the axolotls start to grow bigger.

I got the red cherries a week ago, they're a mixture of about 6 adults and 6-8 smaller juveniles. The pet shop had some happily breeding away and shook a plant and gave me a bag. I've had some problems with water quality, ammonia seems to have shot up since I added them to the tank, so I've been doing 30% water changes daily to sort this. The shrimps seem to be doing fine and not too affected at this stage (nice red colour and constantly eating). However, I was looking closely at the tank yesterday and noticed quite a few pin prick sized white dots swimming around. The bigger ones seem to have a one dot body with 2 tail like dots, (sort of like mickey mouse head/pyramid shape if that makes sense). Are these likely to be baby red cherries? Just wondering whether I need to be more vigilant in saving my water from the water changes just in case.

The daphnia are just a bag I bought from the pet shop, I'm not sure how successful I'll be with getting enough baby daphnia in the beginning, so will give it a week and get a brine shrimp hatchery for the baby axis if necessary. The daphnia are just in shallow tubs with a bit of java moss at the moment, I haven't noticed any dead ones yet and have seen them breeding. Yesterday a lot of them were swimming around with black bits on their backs, which I understand are eggs. My question is do the eggs remain black in the water? I have noticed a few black dots sitting in the bottom of the tubs and I'd quite like to keep these separate, if they are eggs, for ease of sorting the babies from the adults.

Sorry for the long post, I have checked out the daphnia breeding article on here and done a fair bit of online research, but struggling with knowing what I should be looking for when it comes to eggs and newborn red cherries. Just want to make sure I have live food for my babie axies so if anyone can help with any of my questions I'd be really grateful :happy:

 

[BioNut]

Daphnia Answer

From my experience the signs of eggs or ephippia is never a good sign. Do not worry too much. If something is off with my cultures this is the first sign of imbalance (i.e. you have time to fix it). Lack of food, poor water quality, too much alkalinity, or heavy amounts of dissolved minerals may be your problem.
Through trial and error I have found the best way to raise daphnia is to feed only fresh green water which does several things (in the presents of light being the key). The suspended algae utilize building toxins in the water column and reduce dissolved metals. It also helps to buffer the water into a more alkaline zone that daphnia love. On top of all that it is the most nutritional food source for daphnia. Filter, food, buffer, all in one. You cant beat that. roud:

 

[Jennewt]

Shrimp answer:

Baby shrimp will hatch out looking like tiny miniature adults. I suspect you are seeing something else swimming in the tank. Your description sounds a bit like copepods, but that's just a guess. See photo of copepods and other common tank critters:
Caudata Culture Articles - Aquarium Invaders: Photographs

My other piece of advice regarding shrimp is that they do phenomenally well in Walstad tanks. This type of tank is cheap and easy and rarely has problems with ammonia. If you aren't familiar, try googling it.

 

[Red Eft14]

I work in a petstore where we sell cherry shrimp as pets and we keep them in a 10 gallon with graval and driftwood covered in algea and they breed often and custermars told me that they will breed easily if the Ph level is normal.