Moore River Hunting

[Madmerv]

As i'm setting up a natives tank my mate Bluey and i decided an overnight camp and shrimp collection was called for. Any excuse for a camp out is good so we loaded up some kayaks and headed to my secret spot on the Moore river north of Perth. We arrived in the arvo and threw the swags on the ground, unloaded the kayaks and started to do some river exploring. It turn out that my kayaking skills need some improvement as i managed to last 25 sec before i turned turtle, the first time. Lol.  Anyway we explored up river first and managed to get only about 700m before it was getting to choked out for comfortable navigation. We headed back down river and got stopped by a natural rock weir 300m or so from our camp spot, so all up we had a km or so of river that the kayaks could navigate before haulage was needed. Must have been something wrong with the bloody kayak i was using as by the time i got back to camp i had gone underwater a total of 5 times. It is not summer yet in WA so we got a fire going and waited for the sun to set.

After a good BBQ feed and a few ales we set off with a couple of torches (flash lights for the yanks on here) and some nets to see what was around. The water level was a lot lower than the last time i was here and the shrimp were a lot harder to find. There was also some little fish that were as skittish as hell but with a couple of half drunk old men and some nets we managed to get a few in a bucket.

If anybody remembers the last time i collected from here the water was 4200ppm TDS. Well it surprised me to find out with a lower flow the water had dropped to 2100ppm TDS. Less run off from the salty farm lands up river is my guess. When i got the catch home i put them in a quarantine tank for the slow acclimatization back to my tap water and could finally see the fish clearly. Turns out they were Gambusia, and the fattest ones i have ever seen, so they ended up as fertilizer.

Camp set up with river views.

 

The river.

 

 

The catch. 4 berried femails to get the population started in the new tank.

[fishmosy]

Nice shrimp mate. 

[Madmerv]

9 hours ago, fishmosy said:

Nice shrimp mate. 

Thanks @fishmosy. These shrimp are massive and i think i under quoted above. I have about 20 of them but 4 are berried. Once i get my outdoor tank up and running they will have a better home and hopefully they will breed in fresher water. My plan is to get a stable breeding population in the aquarium and then offer them up to WA SKFA members.

[fishmosy]

Good plan. I love their rostrum, much stockier and bigger spines than Caridina shrimp.

[Baccus]

Great to see that you went on a field trip, very disappointing that you found dreaded gambusia. I hate gambusia and sadly now in the Fitzroy river (QLD not the WA one) there are tilapia too, generally they are easy to spot and see at night with a torch, I actually hope that the powers that be invest in a wide spread cull on the tilapia. They could even have a comp like the carp one that is held further south. That or allow trapping of the tilapia to be used as food stocks for farmed barra. Any way I digress.....

The shrimp looks really interesting with what looks like 5 spines along their rostrum. And good to see large eggs so hopefully that means easy to breed in fresh water. When you where catching them did you notice any with interesting colouration? In the second pic it looks like the female might have some light barring across her back, which could mean when settled/ comfortable she may develop a pattern similar to chameleon shrimp. Sometimes I find really nice coloured and patterned glass (?) shrimp locally but as soon as they get stressed by capture and placed in a tank for photos they drop the colour.

You might need to go back for another explore once the water is a tad warmer too see what other aquatic beasties you can find.