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How may Natives do you have?


Baccus

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After doing some species counts I was pretty surprised at how many native shrimp I currently have.

First is what I am assuming are local grass shrimp, which I easily catch with macrobachium, just the macros I tend to put back in the wild rather than keep.

Then there are Riffle shrimp

Chameleon shrimp

Darwin Red Nose Shrimp

Darwin Algae Shrimp

Typhus Shrimp

And a large macrobachium looking shrimp that I have never formally identified.

I did have the other type of Red nose shrimp that doesn't breed in fresh water which I think has now died out in my tanks.

I did have Barney Springs shrimp which I think have either since died out or are disguising themselves in with the Blackmores. The zebras I had I know sadly died out.

I also have some native snails which I am pretty chuffed with and then some native fish such as Threadfin rainbows, spotted blue eyes, Pacific Blue eyes, locally caught rainbows and Streets Creek rainbows, pygmy rainbows and in the back pond I am pretty sure their are still come purple spot gudgeons.

Never did I think I would end up with so many natives and still be on the hunt for some other elusive natives like some local  Rhads.

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I've kept Chameleon Shrimp, Darwin Algae Shrimp, as you know I'm looking at keeping natives for the tank I have at the moment but just not sure of which, Darwin Red Noses are nice, Blackmore River Caridina are also, you mentioned Riffles earlier and they seem nice, just not sure what I'll end up keeping, haha.

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I have a real soft spot for riffles, and love watching them waving their nets through the water. Typhus too are a lovely shrimp and prone to getting nice patterns and colours. Also typhus don't seem to get as big as riffles and do not have the net feeding so don't need as good water flow as riffles tend to.

Managing to keep and breed zebra shrimp would be my holey grail, I love them but alas just cant seem to keep them.

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I have pretty much the same list as you Baccus, except no macros, but some new species.

  1. riffles
  2. typus
  3. Caridina cf. confusa "Short Creek"
  4. zebras
  5. Caridina sp. "Barney Springs"
  6. Caridina sp. "Malanda"
  7. chameleons
  8. Paratya australiensis
  9. Caridina gracilirostris
  10. Caridina sp. "Darwin red nose"

Admittedly the jury is still out over whether the last two are seperate species. DNA says they are but I cannot tell the difference morphologically. 

The Barneys and the Malanda may be the same species too. 

I've also kept Caridina longirostris and plan on keeping Caridina indistincta "Clade C" once I find some more in the Beliinger River. 

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I've got DAS, Chameleons, C. typus, DRNS, Riffles, Zebras, C. wilkinsi here.  I must get off my backside and get some local Paratya!

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As a hobby, we need to re-establish the red Paratya back in the hobby. Some pics I've seen of them suggest they aren't even australiensis as the rostrum is the wrong shape. Maybe there are several red shrimp. 

The paratya I'm keeping have the tiger stripes on the back. Well at least they have them sometimes. The stripes disappeared when I added the shrimp to the tank nearly 12 months ago now. However they had the stripes again last week. I think it may be something to do with the warmer weather - getting ready for breeding time. I must go back to the creek to see if they are striped up too. They look fantastic when they are. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have riffles, Parataya, DAS and macro brachium have chameleon's coming soon I want to get zebs and a few others the natives are undervalued and should be given greater appreciation

 

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