My Odd Bunch of Neos

[Jennifer V]

Happy Saturday Nerms!

After waiting a year to let my tank settle in, I finally have my first bunch of Neos and couldn't be more thrilled so I thought I'd share some photos of these weirdos. They are culls from a local seller -- I decided to start off with culls in case I did something wrong and they didn't make it. They are all oddly colored, but I adore them. Out of the eight, I have three berried females so I'm curious to see what colors come from them, if any. The originals were Orange Sakura, Cherry Red and Blue Dream. @Guppysnail I think I remember that you have had some interesting colors come from your skittle colony? 

Anyone have any experience and know if I'll get any highly colored babies in my future? 

Thank you to those of you who talked me off my ledge when I forgot to get a drip acclimation kit when I got them. You were very helpful and they seem you be doing well! 😊

@ange

@CT_

@Odd Duck

@JettsPapa

@Gumbo99

@H.K.Luterman

@Choogie

@Patrick_G

 

Edited April 24, 2022 by Jennifer V

[Jennifer V]

Caught another male on camera. He's the only bluish one of the bunch. 

Edited April 24, 2022 by Jennifer V

[Jennifer V]

Another berried female. She's kind of brown with yellow stripes. 

I know I'm not the best photographer but still fun to show you my group. 

[Guppysnail]

I love skittles. It’s like getting different shrimp every week. Some even turn up better colors than the parents. Congratulations 

[Andy's Fish Den]

I have a tank that I would throw all the shrimp I would cull out of my blue dram and bloody mary colonies, and after  year or so, there are some good looking shrimp in there. I have even pulled some out and put back into my main colony for breeding. I know people have said that if you mix colors they will become brown ugly ducklings, but I have not found that to be completely true, I do see some brown ones in there, but I would say the brown ones only make up less than 5% of the shrimps in there.

[Tihshho]

On 4/25/2022 at 10:19 AM, Andy's Fish Den said:

I have a tank that I would throw all the shrimp I would cull out of my blue dram and bloody mary colonies, and after  year or so, there are some good looking shrimp in there. I have even pulled some out and put back into my main colony for breeding. I know people have said that if you mix colors they will become brown ugly ducklings, but I have not found that to be completely true, I do see some brown ones in there, but I would say the brown ones only make up less than 5% of the shrimps in there.

I have a cull tank that gets a lot of mixed varieties in it. When it was reds, oranges and rili's I never had an issue with browns popping up on the regular. The issue is when you mix in lines that are either closer to the wild form or from a chocolate line. When I started adding in blue diamonds and jade greens, the browns became more prominent. I actually did a bit of testing on this with culls in some control tanks. I setup three 12" cube tanks and placed cherry females as the control female and introduced a male sakura orange in one, a blue diamond male in another, and a jade green in the third. The first generation of the combos of each had interesting results. The cherry/orange combo produced a mix of reds and oranges of different hues in the f1 control. The cherry/blue diamond combo produced a mix of light reds, blue diamonds and 50% of the offspring being light brown and dark brown. The cherry/jade combo produced light reds and browns with browns being over 50% of the f1 offspring of that pair. Females that were introduced were pulled young as culls from the main strain colony (not the cull tank) prior to saddling and were left in the tank alone for a month and a half prior to introducing the males as I wanted to be sure that there wasn't a sign of a saddle being generated from mating with a cherry male from the tanks they came from. All of the males were culls from their respective colony tanks (non cull.)

[Guppysnail]

On 4/25/2022 at 10:19 AM, Andy's Fish Den said:

if you mix colors they will become brown ugly ducklings, but I have not found that to be completely true, I do see some brown ones in there, but I would say the brown ones only make up less than 5% of the shrimps in there.

I mixed all colors. For awhile I had a decent amount of brown coloration. After the population evolved further I got ones better coloration than original lines and now I get very few wild brown variation.

[Jennifer V]

On 4/25/2022 at 8:50 AM, Tihshho said:

I have a cull tank that gets a lot of mixed varieties in it. When it was reds, oranges and rili's I never had an issue with browns popping up on the regular. The issue is when you mix in lines that are either closer to the wild form or from a chocolate line. When I started adding in blue diamonds and jade greens, the browns became more prominent. I actually did a bit of testing on this with culls in some control tanks. I setup three 12" cube tanks and placed cherry females as the control female and introduced a male sakura orange in one, a blue diamond male in another, and a jade green in the third. The first generation of the combos of each had interesting results. The cherry/orange combo produced a mix of reds and oranges of different hues in the f1 control. The cherry/blue diamond combo produced a mix of light reds, blue diamonds and 50% of the offspring being light brown and dark brown. The cherry/jade combo produced light reds and browns with browns being over 50% of the f1 offspring of that pair. Females that were introduced were pulled young as culls from the main strain colony (not the cull tank) prior to saddling and were left in the tank alone for a month and a half prior to introducing the males as I wanted to be sure that there wasn't a sign of a saddle being generated from mating with a cherry male from the tanks they came from. All of the males were culls from their respective colony tanks (non cull.)

Wow! What a cool experiment! Thank you so much for sharing! 

[Jennifer V]

I have shrimplets! I noticed that the bright yellow berried female I have no longer looked berried, so I searched around and sure enough, there are babies in the tank. This is beyond thrilling! I managed to catch one on camera. 

It's been a few weeks since I got my bunch so I feel like it might be time for a water change. Maybe like 10 percent? I have treated water sitting in a bucket at temp, but I'm terrified to pull the trigger and actually do the WC. I don't want anything to hurt my colony, although I know not doing any changes would also eventually impact them, event though I check parameters every couple days and they are very stable. @Torrey I think I remember you saying that WCs are vital no matter what the parameters are doing or not doing? 

Thoughts? 

[Tihshho]

For new-to-you-shrimp water quality is key. Once the colony is established, healthy and not stressed Neo's are tanks. I find mine tend to do better with less water changes, and I'm a heavy and often water change advocate. After sometime, you can experiment with the shrimp to see what they like and what provides your colony the most success. 

My shrimp tanks are Shrimp and Snail only primarily, though now each of the neo breeder tanks has at max 3 juvie ancistrus only because putting the dominant juvies there allow the younger ancistrus I have to not get picked on and able to get food.

[Jennifer V]

On 4/29/2022 at 7:10 AM, Tihshho said:

For new-to-you-shrimp water quality is key. Once the colony is established, healthy and not stressed Neo's are tanks. I find mine tend to do better with less water changes, and I'm a heavy and often water change advocate. After sometime, you can experiment with the shrimp to see what they like and what provides your colony the most success. 

My shrimp tanks are Shrimp and Snail only primarily, though now each of the neo breeder tanks has at max 3 juvie ancistrus only because putting the dominant juvies there allow the younger ancistrus I have to not get picked on and able to get food.

That's what I've heard, that less water changes are better for shrimp. The tank just has shrimp and a few bladder and ramshorn snails in it and since we only have a few shrimp right now, we only feed them every two or three days so I was assuming that we wouldn't need as many water changes in general anyway. But I'm like you, I religiously change the water in my puffer tank every week so it's hard to resist the urge to do a water change in the shrimp tank. Do you drip the new water into the shrimp tanks? Or just make sure it's at temp and add it like normal? 

[Torrey]

On 4/29/2022 at 12:25 AM, Jennifer V said:

I remember you saying that WCs are vital no matter what the parameters are doing or not doing? 

I lost my entire colony when I got covid in 2020 and was unable to do water changes for a few months. The water showed depletion of key minerals: magnesium and calcium were nearly non-existent. Water quality (ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, pH) stayed stable... 

Talking to some local shrimp breeders, the strongest hypothesis is the plants, snails & shrimp consumed the minerals and the colony crashed due to mineral deficiency. The plants absorbed the nutrients released by the shrimps' deaths, and didn't show the deficiencies to the same degree they would have, if the shrimp had not died. I never got an ammonia spike reading on my tests from shrimp deaths, probably because I didn't test the water before the plants had absorbed the ammonia (hungry plants).

My new set-up I am remineralizing water and doing daily dosing of ferts (break the weekly dose into 7 parts, so same amount of ferts divided into 7 parts) to reduce stress on the shrimp.

This also means I don't have to use a dechlorinator for my shrimp tank or my turtle pond, which some research is indicating may be healthier water for shelled creatures. I do know that I have more copepods in my water column when I am able to either use aged water or distilled /ZeroWater that is remineralized.

1. Yes, I do drip new water into my shrimp tank regardless of size of water change because one dead colony was traumatic enough.

2. I am seeing an improvement in plant growth, and reduction in any kind of algae (and elimination of cyanobacteria) with daily fert dosing... even if I miss a day.

3. I am already seeing an improvement of snail shell growth, so another indicator that consistent water quality benefits all my inhabitants.

[Tihshho]

I only drip when acclimating new shrimp to the fishroom and slowly introduce new water when they are still settling in. After a few generations I go to my standard drain and fill method.

As for lack of trace elements, this is a good point @Torrey, but I think it has to do with more than just the water. With the right substrate, you can still get dissolved traces elements that can support systems with minimal/zero water changes. If we're talking a bare bottom tank with just a filter this would be more of a prevalent issue than a tank with a mineral based substrate. The other concern with that too are what the competing sources are for said minerals. A tank with shrimp only (no snails and no fish) would use up the minerals slower than a tank with more competing fauna. I've noticed I have issues with mineral imbalances in tanks that have pest snails and I'm actually working on remedying it myself. 

[Jennifer V]

On 5/1/2022 at 7:05 PM, Tihshho said:

I only drip when acclimating new shrimp to the fishroom and slowly introduce new water when they are still settling in. After a few generations I go to my standard drain and fill method.

As for lack of trace elements, this is a good point @Torrey, but I think it has to do with more than just the water. With the right substrate, you can still get dissolved traces elements that can support systems with minimal/zero water changes. If we're talking a bare bottom tank with just a filter this would be more of a prevalent issue than a tank with a mineral based substrate. The other concern with that too are what the competing sources are for said minerals. A tank with shrimp only (no snails and no fish) would use up the minerals slower than a tank with more competing fauna. I've noticed I have issues with mineral imbalances in tanks that have pest snails and I'm actually working on remedying it myself. 

Great info! Since I have all of these shrimplets now, do I get a product like Bacter AE for them? It appears that all of my berried females are no longer berried and I'm seeing quite a few shrimplets swimming around. The tank is very heavily planted but I'm wondering if I need something more for the babies? 

@Torrey have you used Bacter AE? 

[JettsPapa]

My shrimp do just fine without adding Bacter AE, so while I wouldn't say it won't help them, it's certainly shouldn't be necessary.  If this was a new tank my answer would be different, but since you said yours has been running for a year there should be plenty of biofilm.

[Torrey]

On 5/2/2022 at 11:19 PM, Jennifer V said:

Great info! Since I have all of these shrimplets now, do I get a product like Bacter AE for them? It appears that all of my berried females are no longer berried and I'm seeing quite a few shrimplets swimming around. The tank is very heavily planted but I'm wondering if I need something more for the babies? 

@Torrey have you used Bacter AE? 

I used it with my old colony, to promote biofilm growth on bamboo skewers.

Basically, I set up a less stinky repashy style production, and changed skewers out each day.

I have seen way more microfauna in the tank this time, and the shrimp seem quite happy with overnight green bean and occasionally carrot offerings every other day (with no change in water parameters), so I probably won't invest in another AE for a tank over 2 years old.

[Tihshho]

For dedicated shrimp tanks I find that there can be a time that a tank will go stale with age. Production drops and quality starts to go down. I thought it was due to inbreeding. After the 2 year mark, I generally reboot colony tanks with new substrate and within a few weeks things go from a crawl to to darn fast. Not sure why, but it's something I've noticed with my shrimp tanks. Due to that I don't think I'd ever stop having bacter AE around. 

[Jennifer V]

On 5/5/2022 at 6:26 AM, Tihshho said:

For dedicated shrimp tanks I find that there can be a time that a tank will go stale with age. Production drops and quality starts to go down. I thought it was due to inbreeding. After the 2 year mark, I generally reboot colony tanks with new substrate and within a few weeks things go from a crawl to to darn fast. Not sure why, but it's something I've noticed with my shrimp tanks. Due to that I don't think I'd ever stop having bacter AE around. 

Ok that's great to know because I thought I may have made a mistake by buying it but I don't think it hurts to add a tiny bit maybe once a week? 

[Jennifer V]

On 5/1/2022 at 7:05 PM, Tihshho said:

I only drip when acclimating new shrimp to the fishroom and slowly introduce new water when they are still settling in. After a few generations I go to my standard drain and fill method.

As for lack of trace elements, this is a good point @Torrey, but I think it has to do with more than just the water. With the right substrate, you can still get dissolved traces elements that can support systems with minimal/zero water changes. If we're talking a bare bottom tank with just a filter this would be more of a prevalent issue than a tank with a mineral based substrate. The other concern with that too are what the competing sources are for said minerals. A tank with shrimp only (no snails and no fish) would use up the minerals slower than a tank with more competing fauna. I've noticed I have issues with mineral imbalances in tanks that have pest snails and I'm actually working on remedying it myself. 

I did my first WC the other night and based on your encouragement elected not to drip the new water in. I just added it very slowly. I did about 10 percent and all the shrimp still seem happy. I even still saw some shrimplets, so looks like I made it through without upsetting anyone. 😅 Phew! I was a nervous wreck about it but it'll get easier. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 

[Jennifer V]

I'm seeing more and more little shrimplets of various sizes zipping around. They are so hard to photograph! Anyone have any tips about how to take nice photos of these little guys? Here's my best catch of the night. 

I did a 20 percent WC tonight. The nitrates had climbed to ~40 😳. I think it's because I've been leaving the dead and decaying java fern leaves in the tank for the shrimp so it looks like I need to do some pruning. I only feed them a tiny bit every few days and there are only shrimp and snails in the tank so the dead leaves are my best guess as to why the nitrates would be so high. 

Does anyone know when shrimplets start showing coloration? Some of the larger shrimplets, which are about two weeks old, look to me to be a bit reddish. 

[JettsPapa]

I can't help you with the question about the photography, and not really very much about when the baby shrimp color up since it varies.  I've found that blue shrimp often have most or all of their color very young, while other colors may not color up until they're close to being adults.

[Jennifer V]

On 5/17/2022 at 7:38 AM, JettsPapa said:

I can't help you with the question about the photography, and not really very much about when the baby shrimp color up since it varies.  I've found that blue shrimp often have most or all of their color very young, while other colors may not color up until they're close to being adults.

So I'll just have to be patient to see how they come out. It's very exciting because they are skittles so it could really be anything. I'm hoping for some that aren't brown but I'll take whatever I get. Also, I'm going out of town for a couple days and forgot to get a timer for this tank. Is it better to leave the light on or off? 😬

[Solstice_Lacer]

I would say leave the light off. My tank lost power for a couple days and was fine. Multiple days of continuous light sounds like an algae bomb waiting to happen.

[Jennifer V]

On 5/17/2022 at 5:00 PM, Solstice_Lacer said:

I would say leave the light off. My tank lost power for a couple days and was fine. Multiple days of continuous light sounds like an algae bomb waiting to happen.

Ok great! That's what I opted to do because I think you're right, lots of light equals lots of algae. 

[Torrey]

My tanks are all on timers. So much easier to get healthy and consistent growth that way.

For photography:

1. Make sure the front glass is cleaned, scraped on the inside and wiped clean on the outside. Let everything settle for an hour after cleaning, so the filter can clear things up.

2. Turn off all out of the tank lights. Sometimes it helps to have an LED flashlight to shine on the shrimp from an angle that isn't reflected into the camera

3. Switch to "pro" on your camera. Select the 100 ISO, and use a tripod so you don't get any movement (makes images blurry)

Here's my camera's autofocus:

Versus "Pro" mode at ISO 100 (shorter focal length, sharper focus, and less light gets in the aperture)

See how the camera focused on the tree and moss in the autofocus, but I got a clear closeup with ISO 100 and the background got blurry?

 

If possible, get the camera against the glass, to minimize refraction. You are going to get refraction from the water, no matter what. May as well minimize it as much as possible, so a specimen container, or coax them to the front of the tank (I use the bamboo skewers, coat them in food, and wait for the shrimp to come check it out. I sat still for an hour to get a dozen awesome photographs)