Shrimp Shock!

[PineSong]

I actually just got frightened.

The first week in January I put 4 yellow neo shrimp in my fry tank. The tank has a pile of cholla logs and is full of guppy grass. Most times I feed the fry I would see 1-2 shrimp but on more than one occasion when I removed guppy grass I saw all 4.

Today I removed most of the guppy grass so I could net out fry. I noticed that one of my shrimp was pregnant and I was happy because so far, they have all appeared male/slender and I thought I'd had bad luck and gotten all males. I decided to stop netting because I did not want to stress the pregnant shrimp.

I sat down to watch them and gave them some Shrimpee pellets to make up for all that netting.

And I counted 7 shrimp. But they all look adult sized. How is that possible, that I never saw baby shrimp or "teen" shrimp and between Jan 7 and now my original 4 made babies and the babies grew up that fast?

I thought I was hallucinating. Left the room, came back, still 7 shrimp. 

I'm kinda scared to go back in there.

[Guppysnail]

Congratulations if you do a flashlight check after dark I’ll bet you will really be shocked. 🙂. 

[Torrey]

Your guppy grass works for more than guppies!

[JettsPapa]

Congratulations on the shrimp success.  There's nothing supernatural going on.  Shrimp are just very good at hiding, especially when they're young.

[jwcarlson]

I netted about 30 babies when moving original six from 10 to 37 gallon.  Then found another 5 that had hitchhiked to my 75 and just yesterday another three in the slowly drained (for watering plants) 10 gallon.  Most all these were VERY young with about 10 being a little bigger.  Only had them since Christmas and thought only 4 of the original 6 were still alive.  Apparently they can reproduce pretty quick. 

[PineSong]

On 2/13/2022 at 6:35 AM, jwcarlson said:

I netted about 30 babies when moving original six from 10 to 37 gallon.  Then found another 5 that had hitchhiked to my 75 and just yesterday another three in the slowly drained (for watering plants) 10 gallon.  Most all these were VERY young with about 10 being a little bigger.  Only had them since Christmas and thought only 4 of the original 6 were still alive.  Apparently they can reproduce pretty quick. 

That's the weird thing--I have never seen any babies or children or teens of these guys. I have stared into that tank for an hour today and I see nothing on plants or cholla that looks like baby shrimp or juveniles. I guess it might be better that way because instead of being sad or freaked out that "only" three babies survived to adulthood I am just blown away that I have three extra shrimp. 

Before finding these new shrimp, I had just placed an order for several red shrimp. I thought I would try a larger starting batch and a standout color since I could never see any shrimp in this tank, lol.

[eatyourpeas]

I never understood why @Guppysnail called neos "little terrorists" until I experienced a shrimp explosion first hand. They have totally taken over the Vampire crab tank! 

[Guppysnail]

On 2/13/2022 at 11:53 AM, eatyourpeas said:

I never understood why @Guppysnail called neos "little terrorists" until I experienced a shrimp explosion first hand. They have totally taken over the Vampire crab tank! 

Tiny terrorists take over  the world 🤣

[PineSong]

On 2/13/2022 at 11:53 AM, eatyourpeas said:

I never understood why @Guppysnail called neos "little terrorists" until I experienced a shrimp explosion first hand. They have totally taken over the Vampire crab tank! 

2 months later...I'm now learning this first hand. I moved the whole yellow shrimp "colony" of seven to my 20 tall when I broke down the tank they were in to make room for my 29. 

Hair algae is getting out of control in the 20 tall even though I took out over a cup of it last week (!!!!!) so I faced reality this weekend that I was going to have to put my hands in there and remove a lot of it manually, then modify my feeding and sunlight.

I sat there looking into the tank to map out my strategy for removing big clumps when I realized there was nowhere I could put my hands where there were not shrimp. Flat rocks covered in globs of algae? Shrimp in the algae. Corkscrew val with egg-sized clumps of hair algae between strands? Also shrimp in the algae. Filter? You guessed it. Shrimp in the algae. There must be 30 or 40 shrimp in there between teens and adults. I've still never seen a baby shrimp, so for all I know I'm looking at dozens of them, too.

I'm kind of scared of shrimp touching me and I'm definitely scared of hurting them so I did not put my hands in--I'm guessing that I am gonna have to get over that. 

[Minanora]

ORD... Congrats on the population boom!

You can use plant tweezers to remove the algae. Shake it about and most of the shrimp will come out. I always put the stuff I pull out into a specimen container with water in it just in case there are still hitchhikers. I currently have a specimen container hanging on the side of my 75 with 6 tiny shrimp in it and about 100 detritus worms that I cleaned out of the shrimps sponge filer. I'm eventually going to net the tiny shrimp out one at a time... They're just super tiny so I'm not in a rush.