Cherry Shrimp Tank Maintenance...

[Martin]

Good morning all!

I started a red cherry shrimp tank to try my hand at breeding and one of them recently hatched eggs.  I hadn't thought of it before this, but how do you guys do tank maintenance with the shrimplets?  I'm afraid I'm going to accidentally suck one up or crush one.  Should I just wait for a bit for them to grow a little?  Thanks in advance!

[jwcarlson]

I don't have a dedicated shrimp tank, but there's a rather large cherry shrimp colony in my planted tank.  I toss my plant trimmings into a 5-gallon bucket and they're in the basement with a grow light on them as "spares".  There are absolutely shrimp in it that have hitch-hiked.

When I do water changes in that tank I don't gravel vac, but if I decide to, I do that part of it into a bucket and let it settle and then net out shrimplets.  They're not particularly easy to see.  For the rest of the water I have a semi-permanent plumbed in Python that drains down into the basement sink (by gravity, not with faucet attachment).  In that sink I have a square clear tub that I use as a "settling basin".  I'm sure shrimp can get blown out of it, but I've caught a couple in it after water changes.  I just drop them in the plant bucket.

There's absolutely no way you're not going to eventually suck one up unless you're using something very finely meshed over the end of your siphon.

Edited March 31, 2022 by jwcarlson

[JettsPapa]

I siphon into a white bucket, and then check for shrimp before dumping it.  There usually aren't any, but when there are I just get my small shrimp net, dip them out, and put them back in the tank.

[Martin]

Thanks guys,

Would you recommend I wait a bit for them to grow a bit before I try?  They are less than a week old... wasn't sure if that kind of potential trauma would shock/kill them.

[jwcarlson]

On 3/31/2022 at 9:30 AM, Martin said:

Thanks guys,

Would you recommend I wait a bit for them to grow a bit before I try?  They are less than a week old... wasn't sure if that kind of potential trauma would shock/kill them.

I don't think shrimp are as fragile as people are led to believe (at least in my experience).

I transferred a small sponge filter from my community tank into my 75 trying to get the cycled started.  I wasn't in a hurry and I was just kind of putting ammonia in a little willy nilly.  Tank temp was 85.  I just dropped the filter in.  A week later I tested the water ammonia through the roof, nitrites turned the Co-Op strip off-scale pink/purple within a couple seconds.  I caught some motion and saw a shrimp tumbling through the tank as the 350 gph power head blasted it around the tank.  I netted it out and plopped it back in the community tank and then found another and another and another (about 15 of them) in the 75.  

And that's how I learned that shrimplets LOVE the course sponge filters like the Co-Op sells.  It's like a little shrimp apartment building.  And I plopped them from a 78 degree tank into an 85 degree poisonous mess of a tank with ~4 ppm ammonia and who knows how high nitrites and they survived for a week.

[JettsPapa]

On 3/31/2022 at 9:39 AM, jwcarlson said:

I don't think shrimp are as fragile as people are led to believe (at least in my experience).

I believe you're right.  I was talking to a neighbor a while ago.  She ordered some shrimp in the mail.  She said water was dripping out of the box when she got it.  The water had almost all run out of the bag, but the shrimp were still wet . . . and alive.

[dangerflower]

On 3/31/2022 at 7:30 AM, Martin said:

Thanks guys,

Would you recommend I wait a bit for them to grow a bit before I try?  They are less than a week old... wasn't sure if that kind of potential trauma would shock/kill them.

If I know for sure there are tiny babies and I feel like I can safely postpone a water change, I'll wait, because they're so hard to find in the bucket when they're so small.

I was doing a water change in my betta's tank a couple weeks ago and had no idea that shrimplets had recently hatched in there until I saw a bunch of them zooming around in the dirty water bucket 😅 

[Widgets]

If you really need to do a water change you can use an airline with an airstone to slowly siphon water out of the tank. It will be slow, but the shrimplets should be safe.

[Patrick_G]

I put my little round shrimp net over the end of the siphon. 

[Streetwise]

Dealing with shrimp fry and duckweed is my most ongoing nuisance, although I have gotten better over the years. I shake the duckweed to try to get the upside-down shrimp to swim away.

I’m currently using my Askoll 20 as a shrimp and snail tank, and slowly moving some shrimp there. I’ve started just netting out duckweed and shrimp from smaller tanks and dropping them in the 20, so I can see what is going on, but then I have another phase of duckweed removal.

[CT_]

To add to what everyone above said.  I think you can wait for the first generation to grow up enough to spot but after that they're not going to be breeding in sync and I think you have to either not clean or accept some losses inversely proportional to the amount of effort you spend to save them.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I stuff 30 ppi sponge in the inlet to the siphon. I do a 20-30% water changes every 1-3 weeks. I never scrub the side or back walls of a shrimp tank, I only clean the front glass so I can see. I top off  the tank weekly. I have also experimented with cheese cloth. I have a lot of sponge around and my wife and kids are always stealing the cheese cloth for crafts. I use the sponges as my cycling sponges for new tanks so that's the only time I clean the sponges. They love to rifle through the mulm so I leave it.