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Breeding neos in soft water


revolutionhope

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Just a random thought does anyone have any tips for how to increase baby survival rate of cherry shrimp kept in bee shrimp parameters? It just occurred to me that perhaps adding generous quantities of mineral powder might be of some help or would that be a waste of time? All suggestions and opinions are welcome as always :-)

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Will

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Increase the GH. If you can't increase KH, best to try increasing GH by 1 or 2 points, depending on how low it is.

Edited by Zoidburg
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When I was breeding Neos - I had very large colonies of Black/ Chocolate, Rilis, Reds, Blues - I bred them all in soft water. I never had any issues with survival rates in fact they bred extremely well and were of a very high standard. The main thing is to ensure you have moss for them to hide in, feed lots of powdered food and keep stable parameters. I have bred them in ph of 6 , GH 6. KH 1-2 TDS 150-160. I kept 10 tanks of mixed bee and Neos for several years I used RO water with GH+ and benibachi substrate. I also used mineral powder weekly , biozyme twice a week, 5-10% water change. As always I believe stability is the main thing we need to look at . Check water parameters before adding to tank, keep temp of new water close to temp of tank, good quality foods. image.jpgimage.jpgimage.jpg

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Thanks to both of you for the tips. I will try upping TDS with more gh+. Currently it's at 120-125ppm.

Stability is my mantra now too@ineke and these are in a 240litre tank so the conditions are pretty good and constant.

I'm unsure about powdered God. Perhaps it is because I do less maintenance and cleaning; and maybe I was feeding too large of an amount at times - but when I was feeding powdered foods fairly frequently I had two dramatic drops in baby survival. For the past 6 weeks though I've only been feeding processed foods (including powders) quite sparingly - only once or a couple of times a week and the bee shrimp babies survival rate has been phenomenal without the need for regular feed aside from leaves.

The babies are growing faster than I have ever seen them grow as well. I am just finding that the cherry shrimp babies are not surviving and growing very well. Not to say that there aren't still a few coming through but it would probably be much less than 20% of the berries carried while the crystal shrimp baby survival rate must be close to 100%.

So much to learn !!

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Will

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The higher ph and TDS is of course the better environment for Neos, I was just letting you know it is possible. I found that once I had mulberry leaves available constantly my baby survival rate sky rocketed. I can't give any other explanation for my success. 

Recently I have been adding trace elements and minerals plus bacteria daily and this too has been a big success. I have shrimp numbers that are way too high now so I am catching out females to stop breeding. Never thought I would be complaining that I have too many shrimp LOL. 

 

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Wow that sounds great you must be loving it !! :-)

Which bacteria are you adding daily?

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I'm using  Dr. Tim's fresh water eco balance probiotic. I am only using it every other day at a very small dose. There are other additives I'm using as well -hopefully later this year there will be a write up about the benefit of using these products. The products are available to us here in Australia -even through a sponsor  so that's a plus - anyway I have been trialling them for a few months and I'm very happy with the results.

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@ineke
Are these the products you were talking about? Sorry for the qustions still learning all i can about them. (Photos are from internet)8dcc3c616f2de91a90635949661dd48e.jpg2358a7eb313455d787a5290d61c011a6.jpg


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

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I used to use Biozyme all the time it is an excellent product . 

I only use the Eco balance probiotic in the Dr Tim's range at the moment - I haven't used the others in that range but again I believe they are very good. 

@RagingWind92  Please don't ever apologise for asking questions that's the only way we can all learn. I have been breeding shrimp since 2012 and I still ask questions. I don't think we will ever know everything about our shrimp and there are more things coming out about them every day.

this forum is lucky to have some very knowledgable people who are happy to share what they know without some of the misinformation that is out there

Hopefully the other products I use will be published later this year by the person who has recommended them. We want to be sure that the information given out can be substantiated by the good results we seem to be getting. It's better to have some proof before adding even more products to our already large amounts of additives we use.

Good luck with your shrimp and as we have always said on SKF no question is a silly question its better to ask than to try to fix problems we have caused by not asking ?

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4 hours ago, ineke said:

I used to use Biozyme all the time it is an excellent product .

Is there a reason why you have stopped using it? Is it because you are currently testing another product?

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For a while Biozyme was very hard to get .I used it mainly for my shrimplets so instead I started making my own powdered food. During the months I couldn't get the biozyme I didn't notice much difference in the survival rates which were and still are extremely high. I just never got back to buying the Biozyme and now that I am trying out the other products I don't add anything else to the tanks so I can get a true idea if the other products make a difference. 

I was having issues breeding OEBT so that is why I am trialling these other products . So far I notice better colour and more activity in their tank. As far as my other shrimp go I never had breeding issues and my tanks really are overflowing with shrimp -as I mentioned elsewhere I am having to separate out the males and females to stop breeding! I have however noticed an improvement in shell, depth of colour and colour coverage -noticeably so in my CRS where the improvement is really good- although selective breeding has been a big thing towards that end too.

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Hi guys,

I am currently doing the remineralisation experiments that Ineke is referring to that she is currently testing on her shrimp. As soon as I am completely finished tweaking the regime, I will post it in an article. It takes time as I a not afford to kill shrimp in haste, let alone other peoples livestock that they put their hearts and souls into- that is why Ineke is unable to provide details at the moment. The experiments are based on ShrimpyDaddy's principles that shrimp need trace minerals and nutrients from the water column as well as dietary inorganic and organically-complexed minerals to have a mirror-like shine, great colour, high level of activity and breeding success. I have no affiliation with his business, but would highly recommend having a look at his work and recommendations as he has a wealth of knowledge.

The reasoning behind using Dr Tim's Freshwater probiotic is that it is a completely clear water-based bacterial solution. This means that there are no additional water-fouling agents added to the bacterial supplement that could potentially affect shrimplet survival. It contains mostly beneficial bacillus- type bacteria that outcompete vibrio. It is not a food source based product. I briefly mentioned the product in the write-up on the difference between BT-9, Bacter AE and Biozyme. 

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