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Breeding Cherry Shrimp | |
rickyz Fingerling Posts: 26 Kudos: 19 Votes: 0 Registered: 04-Oct-2005 | Hi, i would like to know more about the cherry shrimp. And breeding them any help would be appreciated. |
Posted 26-Jan-2006 11:27 | |
illustrae Fish Addict Posts: 820 Kudos: 876 Registered: 04-May-2005 | It's really quite easy. Buy a half dozen or so shrimp, put them in a tank, and in 3-4 weeks, there should be baby shrimp. For optimal breeding conditions, put them in a tank by themselves. I have a breeding colony of upwards of 30 shrimp in a 7.5 gallon tank, so the tank clearly does not need to be very large at all. They will appreciate a heater to keep the water around 78°F, and a sponge filter or a sponge over the intake of your filter will keep the water moving, but not too much, and will prevent baby shrimp from getting sucked up. Cherry shrimp are algae eaters, though they'll eat any kind of detrius in the tank. They will appreciate plants and caves to explore, and Java moss provides excellent cover for baby shrimp, and traps all kinds of stuff for them to eat. A few drops of marine Iodine (Kent makes a good one) added to the water helps keep inverts healthy and may help them survive molting easier. It really is just a few drops, though. One or two per gallon is plenty. You don't need to feed baby shrimp anything special. They are born as miniature versions of adults and will eat what adult shrimp eat. I usually break up a variety of normal fish foods like shrimp pellets, algae wafers, and normal flake food. Hikiari also makes a food called "crab cuisine" that has calcium that is necessary for shrimp to build new shells, so I usually use this as a staple to their diet. Make sure you don't feed them too much, though, It's very easy to overfeed them, and that can cause a lot of water-quality problems. Just a pinch a day is enough. They'll clean it all up. Water changes can be tricky. Baby shrimp, and even young adults are easy to suck up with a gravel vac. Fortunately, shrimp produce very, very little waste, so you should only have to do this once a month as long as you're not overfeeding. Regularly clean your filter though! For more frequent water changes, put a sponge or screen over your siphon tube to prevent suck-ups. And that's about it. I started with 5 shrimp about a year ago, and now I have so many I can't count. I see females carrying yellow clutches of eggs under thier tails every day,a nd every few weeks, I catch glimpses of tiny baby shrimp in the moss. They are really funny to watch, and a shrimp-only tank is really not as boring as it sounds. Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean... |
Posted 26-Jan-2006 11:27 | |
sham Ultimate Fish Guru Posts: 3369 Kudos: 2782 Votes: 98 Registered: 21-Apr-2004 | I'm working on this task myself. Except I only found 2 cherry shrimp to start with and lost what I think is the female so I'm waiting to see if the same store can order more in for me or I'll have to order them online when the weather warms up in a few months. I have a 5g with 2 pieces of driftwood, a couple round rocks, a few crypts, and floating plants. 1 piece of driftwood is mostly flat with a slight curve to form a cave underneath where molting shrimp hide and the other piece is tall and branching to help the shrimp use the top of the tank and get onto the floating plants. To feed them I pull algae from my other tanks and add it to that tank. The only other thing in the tank is trumpet snails. It's very hard to raise shrimp in a tank with fish. Even fish that won't eat the adult shrimp(which are fairly small already) will eat the babies. I've got a few ghost shrimp, rainbow shrimp, and wood shrimp in my 90g that occasionally manage to multiply mostly due to the moss wall and pile of hornwort in 1 corner that provides hiding places for the young but it's not very common. |
Posted 26-Jan-2006 11:27 | |
So_Very_Sneaky Ultimate Fish Guru Posts: 3238 Kudos: 2272 Votes: 201 Registered: 10-Mar-2004 | Not to interrupt this thread though, but it seems some very knowledgeable people here. Would Cory Hasbrosus eat cherry shrimp do you think? Thanks! Come Play Yahtzee With Me! http://games.atari.com Http://www.myleague.com/yahtgames |
Posted 26-Jan-2006 11:27 | |
sham Ultimate Fish Guru Posts: 3369 Kudos: 2782 Votes: 98 Registered: 21-Apr-2004 | Definitely not the adults. They might grab babies though. Baby shrimp are only the size of about brine shrimp or even smaller. You can barely see them and if cories can get ahold of it they'll eat brine shrimp. The adults though should be fine but may hide a slight bit more than in a shrimp only tank so that they don't get bumped into by the hyper cories. My rainbow shrimp mostly hung onto driftwood and thick planted areas so the pandas wouldn't mow them over when flying along the substrate. |
Posted 26-Jan-2006 11:27 | |
rickyz Fingerling Posts: 26 Kudos: 19 Votes: 0 Registered: 04-Oct-2005 | Hi, yesterday I saw a female carrying eggs but some where like out of the bellie, like she was dropping them. My questions are: 1. Do the babies born inside their mother like guppies or she deposit the eggs. 2. Do the heterandria formosa and Poecilia Chica eat them. 3. Like how many babies I can expect from her. 4. The female doesn't have much color shes like clear like a lot of the cherry that I have but they are still juveniles, do all the cherry shrimp get the red color that I see in the pictures. Thanks, |
Posted 07-Feb-2006 21:19 | |
illustrae Fish Addict Posts: 820 Kudos: 876 Registered: 04-May-2005 | The female shrimp lays her eggs and collects them all up under her tail. It should look like a little yellowish mass under her tail. She will occasionally fan them with her swimmerets. The eggs gestate and hatch under her tail over a period of 2-3 weeks. You'll notice the eggs growing and changing shape and even moving once the babies are hatching. Then the mother will let them go and they are on their own. They are very difficult to see for another week until they are larger and start to get their pink color. This is very stressful for the female shrimp, and she may not eat during this time, and she will probably molt right after the babies are released. Having any other fish in the tank besides maybe ottos will increase the stress of the female and she may not carry the eggs all the way through gestation and drop them prematurely. This is why for breeding, a shrimp-only setup is best. Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean... |
Posted 08-Feb-2006 17:12 |
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