Got shrimp?

[PanTech]

Hey guys, awesome thread!
I live for shrimp, I think theyre the coolest, most helpful little aliens in the world.
Right now I have about a dozen amano shrimp in with my 2 axolotls. Amano shrimp are great for your algea troubles but theyre also really good for your leftover bloodworms...they go after that stuff like crazy. Also when the females are ready for breeding they release some kind of phermone(or something like that) that drives the males crazy...THEY LITERALLY DANCE AROUND YOUR AQUARIUM! I've been breeding my 2 female amanos. Theyre really not that hard to breed if you want instructions I would gladly provide.

I also keep bamboo shrimp. However I only keep bamboo shrimp (Atyopsis moluccensis) with my C.orientalis because my wild type axie managed to hunt down an adult...

Shrimp are great for their personality, cleaning, and food supplement but I only suggest feeding your own captive bred shrimp or from a reliable source...pet store shrimp are kept with fish for the most ...and i just wouldnt risk it.

 

[blueberlin]

Hi all!

Amano shrimps (Caridina multidentata) are big and i've heard that they're best algae eaters, but adult specimens sometimes hunt for fish and big Amano shrimp can kill and eat Apistogramma cichlid, so CFBN will be no problem for such big and agressive crustacean.

Whoa. How big do they get, then? The ones I have are about 2,3 cm - a tiny bit over an inch, I'd say. I keep them in a breeder tank with guppies, platys, diverse sorts of snails, and a catfish.

I went to an aquatic store today and they had a few different types of shrimps. They had some bright red (cherry?) shrimps and some that had a Japanese type name Nagamoto or something similar. I asked about keeping them at room temperature but the guy at the shop said they were all tropical and need temps of around 25 degrees. I was hoping to get some to keep with my axolotls, for however long they last!

I don't really have room for a seperate breeding tank (obviously I would quarantine them first)...

Here we have two types called red. One is red fire, and I believe they are very dark red with white stripes, the colors are very solidly pigmented. They cost about 5-6 euros apiece. The ones I have are called red cherry and are pretty see-through, and they cost about 2 euros apiece at the pet shops. I forgot about temp requirements in my list of selection parameters above. Mine are in unheated tanks. Besides the breeder tank, I initially set up a tall vase (from Ikea, holds over 30 liters of water). It fits anywhere, it's just a vase. Here a pic, although this was when I first set it up and now it is almost a solid mass of plants and mosses, plus I exchanged the root for something that does not stick out above the water [edit: the pic is too big and gets squished here sorry. Just click on it if you want to see what it really looks like.] :

I also forgot to mention what I feed them. I mainly use fish flakes, the powder type for fry. I also give them paprika powder (the spice), a slice of cucumber or a frozen pea, an uncooked noodle.

I've been breeding my 2 female amanos. Theyre really not that hard to breed if you want instructions I would gladly provide.

I would indeed be very interested in knowing how to breed them. Probably best to write it in its own thread, so it's easier to find later.

-Eva

 

[Kerry1968]

Thanks for the help, the shrimps I saw were definately NOT called Amano (thanks for the idea though), oh well I'll have to back and see what they're REALLY called. They were cheaper so that's why I was wondering about them! (3 for £5)

 

[evut]

Hi! Really not a pointless post obviously :happy:

I'd like to ask Azhael and other shrimp keepers if you could perhaps post some photos of your set ups and some descriptions. I would be very interested to see what conditions really work for the shrimps (water quality, temperatures, substrate etc.).
I am going to move my 4 Cynops pyrrhogaster into a big tank soon and I'd like to keep cherry shrimps with them. I would like to get everything right for both the newts and the shrimps.
I have read everything I could find on the internet about shrimps but obviously having a caudata-shrimp tank is quite different.

Thanks everyone for sharing you shrimp wisdom!

 

[eljorgo]

Yes red fire is very different from red cherry. Red cherry adults can stay half red and the rest translucent, The red fires come to a very dark red with a kind of "white" stripes among them, as Blueberlin said. Red fire costs around 5€ a piece and red cherry's around 0,40€ here, from breeders.
I don't keep amano at the present, but I have a friend that haves them for 2 years (very impressive) and they have reached a monstrous size like a bambo shrimp around 5-6cm. And were bought around 2cm +-.

PanTech: It´s really surprising you managed to do that. I have talked to the most experienced shrimp breeders of Brazil and they didn't pass the larvae from 3 instar. Really "amazing" you have manage to do it all way till semi-adults/adults.

 

[Kerry1968]

I got 3 shrimps! They are called Yamato shrimps in the shop (I think!) They are in a little tank and have some bloodworms to eat. They are great to watch!

EDIT: I've just discovered another name for these shrimps is Amano! My apologies!

 

[Nathan]

I agree with all Pete said regarding ghost shrimp, but would add that ghost shrimp do fine and continue to breed at room temp or even cooler. The commonly available species Palaemonetes paludosus ranges as far north as New Jersey, certainly well out of the subtropics. I have made an attempt at raising my local ghost shrimp, P. kadakiensis, but no success so far. It ranges into the frigid upper midwest.

I would also add that ghost shrimp are a bit more omnivorous than Neocaridina and shouldn't be trusted with very small salamander larvae. I have seen them prey on scuds and mayflies similar in size to salamander hatchlings.

 

[Azhael]

In my breeding colony there are both deep red shrimps with the characteristic dorsal stripe, and others that are significantly less red or almost not red...although i´ve noticed they all change their colour a lot.
Anyway, here is a picture of my shrimp tank Evut, and an extra picture of some of my lovely tiny home-grown new generation feasting on vegetable cookies (along with some adults).

 

[evut]

Thanks Azhael, that looks really nice. What's on the bottom of the tank, please?

 

[Azhael]

It´s a very thin layer of gravel, like 1cm deep or so.

 

[benh]

Thanks for your reply azhael - this is turning out to be a very cool topic, informative and some lovely photos!
I . want . Shriiimmmpp.
More pics of tank set-ups please! They all look great

 

[stavroske]

I have too, And I'm pretty pleased with them! You can even use them in your larvea tank as cleaners. Very usefull!!

 

[Bellabelloo]

My tank looks much like Azhael's. I have a layer of marbles as a substrate because they share their home with the guppies.The spaces under the marbles are good for the smaller shrimp to lurk in. Every now and then I get a bit more java moss for them as this tends to slowly get eaten.

 

[evut]

The substrate question is bothering me a lot now - I'm re-doing the tank into which my Cynops pyrrhogaster are going - would sand be ok for the shrimps? I've read many times here that gravel is risky for caudates.
If you post pictures of you set-ups here, could you please also mention what you keep in them apart from the shrimps? Thanks

 

[Azhael]

In my case the tank pictured is exclusively for shrimps(with the exception of snails) so no risk of any caudate eating any gravel hehehe. It also has a heater which i would never use in any of my caudate tanks.
I´ve seen pictures of shrimp tanks with sand, and the shrimps i´ve introduced to my dobrogicus tank seem to rather like the sand in there. They are also breeding, the female in the first picture of the first post is now berried, but i suposse when temps drop they´ll stop breeding. That´s why the shrimp tank has a heater though...to make sure they breed year-round xD

 

[eljorgo]

Azhael,these shrimps breed all year around since the temperature is bigger than 20ºC. Under it (12-18ºC) no breeding is accomplished. Also the gravel doesn´t matter at all. It only matter if you want yo see your shrimps in full colourations. In that case you use dark substrate around 1 to 2mm in diameter. Evut sand like i use for them in my C. e. popei is no problem.
I´ve even put them in a small pond from june to september outside without even one change of water (TPA) with amonia levels reaching 1 , and there were just happy :happy:. Inicially i have deposit 3 females and 1 male. In september I took out around 300individuals. Some were very small and i couldn´t bring them so one of these days i looked there and i have a considerable number of them yet. This all to say they are really super easy to breed and keep and they are very resitent to all, So just get them, they´ll accept all :happy:.
J.

 

[flan123]

What about the ones known simply as "Freshwater Shrimp"?

 

[eldaldo]

I must be death himself because I bought four of these for my corydoras tank and within two days they were all dead. The cories didn't eat them (they are much too fast for the cories anyway), and i honestly have no clues as to how they died. my water here is very hard, but that's all I can think of. Can anyone tell me the water parameters they keep theirs at? the temp in my cory tank is usually between 24-26 degrees, that should be fine right? The ph is a little under 7. there are absolutely no nitrates of any kind because of an excessive use of hornwort and anachris. hmm, my water hardness is actually 20kh which is really high. THat must be it. I guess I should start asking how to soften my water . . .

 

[benh]

My local aquarium shop had some shrimp in - they were red, but tiny. I've forgotten what the guy said they were, but apparently they didn't get any bigger. I'm assuming these weren't Red Cherry Shrimp? I'd imagined them to be a bit bigger... I might be wrong? To feed my Axie every now and then with though, he'd have to eat loads!!
The shop also had Alpine Shrimp? This was bigger, more like the size I thought Red Cherry's might be.

 

[Azhael]

Eldaldo, cherry shrimp are very forgiving about water conditions, but i think that perhaps the KH might be the problem.

Ben, when i first saw my cherries i was very surprised to see how small they are. I expected them to be about twice as big xD. Large females might reach an inch, but the rest are quite smaller. They are a very tiny appetizer for an axolotl, but for smaller caudates they are a nice mouthfull.

I was taking pictures yesterday and i thought i´d post this one of my biggest and brightest female carrying eggs. Note that the plants are full of algae but that´s something that should change soon.