Archive for April, 2008
There has be a lot of talk lately on a few of the message boards I frequent about difficulties breeding Tiger Shrimp (Caridina sp.). Why are there so many people having trouble breeding this shrimp?
Like Cherry Shrimp (Neocaridina heteropoda), Tiger Shrimp will live in most water conditions found in the home aquarium, but unlike Cherry Shrimp they will not breed prolifically in most conditions.
Optimal Tiger Shrimp Breeding Conditions:
- pH between 6.0-6.5
- Moderately Soft Water
- Water Temperature between 72-75
Here is how I have one of my Tiger Shrimp breeding aquariums set up:
- 10 Gallon All Glass Aquarium
- 2” ADA Aqua Soil Amazonia II
- Oxygen Plus Bio Filter (Sponge Filter)
- Small piece of drift wood
- Java Ferns
- Assorted Mosses
- MTS (Malaysian Trumpet Snails)
- Ramshorn Snails
Water Parameters:
- pH: 6.4
- Temp: 74
- Hardness: 2dkh
Care:
- Weekly 10% water change
- Top off with Reverse Osmosis Water
- Feed once, sometimes twice, a day
Foods:
- Hikari Crab Cuisine
- Omega One Shrimp Pellets
- Blanched Vegetables
- 100% Spirulina Flakes
I have found that when Tiger Shrimp are kept in optimal conditions that breeding will occur freely, and often. All of my shrimp are fed small amounts of food daily, and sometimes twice a day. I believe that a continuous, reliable food source speeds up the breeding and growth of all shrimp, including the Tiger Shrimp.
In my experience it takes a little less than 2 months for a Tiger Shrimp to fully mature, and in an experiment I conducted (Birth to Berry – Tiger Shrimp Edition) it took exactly 41 days.
Helpful Resources:
- Tiger Shrimp
- Birth to Berry – Tiger Shrimp Edition
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3 groups of 10 Cherry Shrimp will be available to my blog readers as of Monday April 27th. The Cherry Shrimp will be $25.00 for 10.
Please email me if you are interested in buying the shrimp and I will send you an invoice and ship the shrimp out on Monday.
I will post on this blog again when the 30 shrimp are sold out!
Helpful Resources
- Cherry Shrimp
- Breeding Cherry Shrimp
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First I would like to apologize to my readers for the large gap between posts. In the last month I have spent 2 weeks out of town (work), 1 week sick, and the most recent week has been spent with the in-laws (life). I had a nasty flew that knocked me down for an entire week, that was not pleasant at all!
Anyway, a little bit about shrimp now. I have been visiting the boards a bit lately and there seems to be a lot of talk about two subjects: Sulawesi Shrimp and Tiger Shrimp Breeding, so I figured I would address them both here.
Sulawesi Shrimp
The larges topic of discussion is that there is now a wholesaler of these shrimp in Indonesia that is now selling the shrimp for $5.00 per shrimp when the buyer pays for 500 at a time. Some people may think this is a great deal as the average price for the shrimp is around $25.00 right now, but I am not a fan of this offer. With large exporters of this shrimp I question how long the local populations of these shrimp will be viable.
There are few shrimp hobbyist in the United States that trying to breed these shrimp in captivity and some have even had some minor success. Ryan Wood in Miami received some berried shrimp and has so far been able to maintain the young, although I have not heard any reports of the shrimp actually breeding in captivity yet!
Tiger Shrimp
There has been a lot of talk lately about breeding tiger shrimp and what is required to do so. I have seen many people say that Tiger Shrimp need nothing special to get them to breed and that they have had berried shrimp many times. But they also say they have never successfully grown the young to adulthood.
Tiger Shrimp, in my experience, do require special care to successfully breed them. They require water that has a slightly acidic pH and slightly cooler than tropical temperatures. I wrote a quick blog post, Breeding Tiger Shrimp, and another blog post, Birth to Berry - Tiger Shrimp Edition, that are great references.
I will be rewriting the Breeding Tiger Shrimp post and will be including much more information soon!
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Researchers in China have given scientific names to the popular Bee Shrimp (the wild form of the Crystal Red Shrimp) and the Bumble Bee Shrimp.
The scientist collected and described 4 species of Dwarf Shrimp from the Guangdong province of China. 2 of the shrimp are similar to the Bee and Bumble Bee but less popular in the hobby.
According to Wang, Liang and Li, the Bee Shrimp (previously referred to as Caridina cf. cantonensis, the cf. means “similar to”) is now known as Caridina venusta.
The Bumble Bee Shrimp (previously referred to as Caridina sp.) is now known as Caridina maculata.
It is great to see that researchers are giving Dwarf Shrimp a little bit of the attention that they deserve. I hope these names stick a gain scientific acceptance over time. There is little that is more important to the Dwarf Shrimp hobby than actually knowing what species a shrimp is!
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When TheShrimpFarm.com’s hatchery expanded I changed many of the aquariums over to Aqua Soil Amazonia II (ASA II) to help control pH and hardness. The water that comes out of the tap her is very hard and has a pH over 7.8 so controlling the pH is very important to speed up breeding for most species of dwarf shrimp.
After switching to ASA II I decided to put a fast growing plant that grows out into a nice looking lawn. I am not sure what plant it is (I am no plant expertif you know what the plant is please leave a comment with its name) but I did like the appearance of the plant. After about 3-4 weeks the aquariums with this plant had a full, lush lawn grown in and they all looked great!
In this picture you can see the plant I am referring to:
After the shrimp being in these aquariums for a month I noticed breeding slowed to a crawl and the young shrimp were having very low survival rates. I was unsure what was causing this so I check my other aquariums that I put the ASA II in and those shrimp where doing GREAT! So what was the problem?
Well, this plant was so fast growing that is sucked up all Co2 in the water and caused the pH to skyrocket during the day, and the plant produced Co2 and night causing the pH to crash. During the day I was getting readings of 7.8 and at night 6.9.
I have since removed this plant and am slowly replacing it with slow growing plant!
Lesson learned!
Helpful Resources
- Growing Pains
- Cycling Aquasoil Amazonia
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