Can an old dog learn shrimp tricks? A new shrimpkeeper's journal

[Guppysnail]

I love all the different colors that pop up. That dark blue is a beauty! I would not over worry about the white ring. Some of mine do that. It just means the shell was slightly thin/soft and cracked in the wrong place. The only time I had an issue the separation was a very wide ring. The shrimp could not get out of her molt. Your pleco is super cute 😍

[Jawjagrrl]

I didn't share a photo of what's happening to the plants yesterday, but they sure look like they are being eaten to me, but I know a lot more about terrestrial plants than aquatic ones.

These are planted in fluval stratum (not the lily) and get easy green weekly. Mybwater is pretty hard (300gh) but they have been doing well for months, the only real change is more shrimp.

[Jawjagrrl]

On 3/5/2022 at 8:59 PM, Guppysnail said:

I would not over worry about the white ring. Some of mine do that.

She had a worse ring in January and successfully molted and looked a lot better until a few days ago. This is the only one to ever have this issue.

Which reminds me of something interesting I didn't post yesterday. The chocolate one molted (while berried, which I didn't think they did) and the molt was not completely white/clear like my others. Thought she had died and the crayfish had a feast until I looked more closely. Have you ever seen residual pigment like this? I thought it was pretty cool! It looks like she lifted the hatch of a super futuristic flying car and stepped out 🚀

Edited March 6, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[Guppysnail]

On 3/6/2022 at 9:53 AM, Jawjagrrl said:

She had a worse ring in January and successfully molted and looked a lot better until a few days ago. This is the only one to ever have this issue.

Which reminds me of something interesting I didn't post yesterday. The chocolate one molted (while berried, which I didn't think they did) and the molt was not completely white/clear like my others. Thought she had died and the crayfish had a feast until I looked more closely. Have you ever seen residual pigment like this? I thought it was pretty cool! It looks like she lifted the hatch of a super futuristic flying car and stepped out 🚀

Yes both with a few remaining eggs and color. Best I’ve been able to figure is it usually happened to me after a large water change. I’m guessing it’s a very slightly premature( like hours or a day )molting and the few remaining eggs never have eyes so I’m assuming infertile. These are my best guesses from observation so I’m not even certain they qualify as educated guesses 😂 there is a picture of one near the last page of my journal. That one was a snowball shrimp so never has color though. 

[Jawjagrrl]

So... I've had my original shrimp since October, many were already adults. Guess it's not surprising to start saying goodbye to a few. In recent weeks I've lost my original red females (haven't seen Mary in several days) and my orange female. I wondered if something in my parameters was off given I am losing females after releasing clutches, but OG is a month older and has had at least 4 clutches and is doing great! One of her babies just had babies last night, and I've got little ones in several colors there.

My QT tank has two of her WT offspring that have turned out to be Male. Debating trying to move out as many of those to this setup? They do well with my little chili endler colony that arrived last week and provide entertainment for one of my 4footed pets as well.

The chocolate shrimp released a clutch recently, but I expected the kuhli loaches, crayfish and other shrimp to probably eliminate most of them. These guys were moved here as "less desirable" as they were all a very dark green, almost black. But as they have matured, I see beautiful dark blue and chocolate, so lay need to rethink that!

So everyone interested in neo genetics has seen charts like this one that I was using to Male uneducated guesses about what crosses in my tanks might produce:

I can only guess what in my original group of red cherry, bloody mary, yellow, orange, green jade, blue dream and snowball produced the chocolate female in the Endor Tank. I would have expected brown, WT or maybe dark blue. But I started spotting shrimplets yesterday:

White (sorry for autofocus fail)

Blue ...

Brown... (caught on the fly, sorry for blurriness)

And... orange?!?

My husband is thrilled even as a non-nerm, and I'm enjoying seeing him take interest and peering in to this setup I built for him to create some "buy in" as I felt MTS coming on. I can see him getting more engaged by the big project that will have it's own journal, hopefully starting today. In the meantime, enjoy our shrimp successes!

Bonus pic:

To give people that haven't kept shrimp an idea of how small shrimplets are - there is a tiny crumb of shrimp wafer in the substrate, which is fluval stratum. There is a blue shrimplet to the left of it. The blurry fish above the food is an endler.... that is only 5 1/2 weeks old! Was happy to see it and the adult Male were far more interested in the wafer bit than the shrimplet, who was initially feeding from it and jumped out of the way and let them have it.

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[Jawjagrrl]

So while I've been scheming and learning (NERMing?) on everything going on with the twin tanks, things have been busy in Shrimp World! Babies are starting to have babies now, and I've said goodbyes to most of my original adult females except.... OG! That girl released MORE babies 36 hours ago and still looks great. I have no more red or orange females of breeding age, but I'm still getting babies this color from someone, perhaps OG or her wild type daughter:

The babies in the Endor Tank seemed to be slowly diminishing...until I did weekly maintenance. This is a marineland portrait tank with a marine tank style back filtration compartment, and I had boosted that a bit with some added filtration. I pulled out the filter and WOAH!

There were no fewer than 10 shrimplets on the filter floss! So they got moved back and are hopefully too big to fit through the filter holes. Maintenance is today, so we shall see. Interesting to see a chocolate shrimp produce light blue, red, deep blue and chocolate offspring.

But I've been contemplating the main shrimp tank. It has done phenomenally well, perhaps TOO well. Happy shrimp, happy endler males and VERY happy bladder snails and scuds. The scud population has really surged lately, perhaps because I have been feeding more to see if it would stop the plants from being chewed up.

This tank sits next to my original tank in our kitchen, the one that had the most planning, but somehow brings us the least joy.

I've been watching a lot of Cory's older content and it struck me when he would mention having a favorite tank and how that likely meant needing to work on the other tanks to make them just as rewarding. And so I am wanting to shake things up...

The 5 gallon currently houses 2 endler males, 7 chili rasboras and one surly plakat betta named McQueen (Steve, to us, Lightnin' to the kids). Everyone does ok, but I suspect the rasboras would be a lot happier without Steve around. I wanted them with the shrimp in the beginning, but didn't because of different temp needs. 

But I wondering if it wouldn't work better if the shrimp and endlers moved into the 5 and Steve got the 2.5 to himself. He would LOVE the scud hunt for quite some time. The crypts and the lily in the shrimp tank are likely getting used in the 75 setups so the tank will get an overhaul anyway. Lots more room for shrimp and less stress for the rasboras without Steve's occasional rampages.

I do have concerns that I will destabilize things though by moving everyone around? Parameters are similar, but not identical.

I've never done an overhaul on a planted tank before - any advice? 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[Jawjagrrl]

Been awhile since an update, busy with the big tank projects with this nagging at the back of my mind. Scuds and leeches had totally overrun the setup, destroying plants and impacting the health of the shrimp colony. Lots of wild types and juvie skittle colored ones - even two red rilli! - but I no longer have any of the original adults at this point except a possible blue female. This was what a piece of leftover moss from my 55 looked like 5 minutes after adding it. In two days it was a few threads! This can't wait until the 75s are done!

I had considered catching out all the shrimp and moving my betta in here. Then I got a better idea? When I saw clown killies at AH while ordering SAEs. They are good with shrimp and can hunt scuds until the tetras move out of the 3gal.

I went so far as to catch out the endlers. By the time I caught the last one, I was down to 4 plants and 1 buried rock because of how much I had to take out! 

Long story short, this quickly became a rebuild project for the afternoon. Pulled the plants - both crypts had produced a baby with it's own good roots, so I removed them to trim up and replant. Now I had murky soup (why did I start this at lunchtime?) and unhappy shrimp. Took awhile to be sure I got them all out (a couple adults made it through my water changing rig!), but I got to assess what I had after 9 months of shrimp keeping.

I had previously removed 10 dark green juvies to the Endor Tank which have exploded with babies - blue jelly, chocolate, and a persimmon color that matches the chili endlers in there. I probably have more in that setup now than the original colony, even with kuhlis and a crayfish in residence.

I had also moved 6 wild types and one dark green to my no-tech lemonade dispenser that have done well, but no babies yet. A female was berried but lost/dumped the eggs. I've had some ph swings there despite having good kh values - may have to do some water changes. 4 more of the same type adults were added from my catch, probably the last of OG's babies.

So that left me with this mix of wild type, red, blue, yellow, rilli and other crosses.

It should be more - time to deal with all the competition in the tank! I ended up stripping it completely. I bagged some of the substrate, a mix of gravel and aquasoil, capped with fine sand. Planted the two crypt babies and one adult after trimming the worst of the leaves, a couple bacopa trimmings, some of my converted terrestrial moss along with the woods that were there before and mulm that came with the water I kept.

I had bought a tiny HOB filter weeks ago that I had planned to use to update the internal filter (like a built in HOB that hooks to the inside lid). The filter as designed sits right under the light, blocking half the tank and was the perfect algae factory. I had been cycling the sponge in another tank for a month. Wouldn't you know I couldn't get the thing primed to save my life? Kicking myself for being so impulsive as I looked at my shrimp in the specimen container and wondered how long they could hang out in there.

In frustration (and hunger - it was 3 by now) I replaced the old one and rigged up some new filter floss for it. I realized the effort it took to get all the green dust algae off the plastic had scuffed it more than expected - I bought this in 2013, it's run longer than I ever imagined for a cheap box kit bought on impulse. Maybe this becomes a hospital tank one day.

Added a sprig of pogostemon and water sprite for floaters (still some duckweed, but much less) and a pair of my pearl-like ramshorns and a red root floater.

Got the shrimp back in, and they seemed to be enjoying a mostly scud-free space, still exploring when the lights turned off at 7. Hopefully with all the bagged substrate, hardscape, etc., the cycle will be retained.

Meanwhile Steve is looking on intently (he loves scuds!) from the next tank over. His expression seemed to say, "hey! I thought that was going to be for me!"

I still have a shoe box sized container with the rest of the old substate, half eaten plant leaves and HUNDREDs of scuds. I'd like to continue keeping them, just not in any of my current tanks... what is needed to house them? They seem all but indestructible. 

Killies arrive tomorrow... fingers crossed they travel safely.

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 10/30/2021 at 2:51 PM, Guppysnail said:

type in brown planarian pictures on google

Ew! Those things are gross! 😝

[Minanora]

I love your shrimp journal. The color variations are so neat. My "cull" shrimp in the 75 are making babies so I'll be curious to see what colors start to develop.

[Guppysnail]

On 5/31/2022 at 3:32 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Ew! Those things are gross! 😝

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They are studied for their ability to grow into as many new planarians from being chopped into pieces and so many other fascinating things. 🤫 SHHH to watch them gives me the heebie jeebies though 🤣. 😝

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

What creeps me out is they look like they have eyes.

[Jawjagrrl]

On 5/31/2022 at 3:32 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Ew! Those things are gross! 😝

I now have the grey ones thanks to some pond plants I added 😞 The leeches aren't much better, but they are all in my scud colony now along with a bunch of bladder snails.

[Jawjagrrl]

On 5/31/2022 at 3:42 PM, Minanora said:

I love your shrimp journal. The color variations are so neat. My "cull" shrimp in the 75 are making babies so I'll be curious to see what colors start to develop.

So they are holding their own in the 75 then! Great! It's tempting to try them in my tetra side - in theory there will be so many hiding spots. I spotted a shrimplet in the lemonade jar last night(!) but it was being chased by an adult. I had cut way back on feeding since there are only 11 adults and a TON of algae now 😞 so I am wondering if they are be predated. I've got at least one berried female that got pregnant in the jar after moving her last week, so I know there are at least 2 females in there. 

It's the shrimp in the Endor tank that have surprised me - about 10-11 dark green, almost black "culls" have created amazing colors, brighter now than what's in the main tank.

 

On 5/31/2022 at 3:51 PM, Guppysnail said:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They are studied for their ability to grow into as many new planarians from being chopped into pieces and so many other fascinating things. 🤫 SHHH to watch them gives me the heebie jeebies though 🤣. 😝

I can't bring myself to allow a snail to come to harm by my action/inaction, but I seem to have no such limit regarding the planaria when i pull out the trap occasionally. I test how much vinegar they can handle before they become part of the septic field...

On 5/31/2022 at 4:14 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

What creeps me out is they look like they have eyes.

you have a point there! It's the head shape for me. I have them in my betta tank atm, and they will climb the glass for snacks at the surface. My betta hunts everything, and even he sees those and says, "no thanks!'.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Jawjagrrl

[Jawjagrrl]

So it's been about a week and the shrimp tank overhaul seems to be mostly a success. I tried to bank the substrate more than is possible with fine sand and the crypt roots keep getting uncovered a bit, but so far they have not displayed the typical temper tantrum I would have expected from disturbing them, especially cutting babies off from parents! They are happy to not be eaten by 10,000 scuds anymore. Shrimp are happier too, so hopefully we'll start seeing more youngsters again - especially the rilli.

Killies arrived safely - all of them smaller than the adult shrimp except the dominant male. It took a few days for them to stop hiding completely and are starting to connect me with feeding time. They have been receptive to the fine crush krill flake, coop fry food and especially repashy powder. Hard to get good pics of them just yet, but will post a bad one for now.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Jawjagrrl
Added photo