At last I've gone native!

[revolutionhope]

Due to an unlikely set of circumstances I ended receiving some of the short creek caridina confusa from northboy - i decided against trying to keep the c zebra shrimp (which I had prepaid for in May or June but delayed and delayed, so anyway i'm hoping that these will be easier to keep given they're apparently used to a much wider range of water parameters than the zebs which live in parameters something similar to "evian - the essence of purity"

The shrimp were packed very well by northboy in a large box; 2 very large breather bags inside the box with 10 shrimp in each, there was one casualty I discovered later, but the rest seemed quite happy. I also had asked for some native mosses and some leaves - he kindly included a very good sized portion of moss and also a few ferns which look beautiful but i'm not sure if they'll do well in gravel - (any tips about how to plant/grow them would really be appreciated!) He also threw in great samples of IAL and mulberry leaves and the shrimp went into a feeding frenzy for these mulberry leaves - they must have been somehow better than the mulberry leaf already sitting in the tank ?

My first impression of the confusa was "wow these things are big" - I've never had any shrimp other than neos and CBS and some of the girls were already slightly chunkier than the biggest elderly female cherry I've seen. They really do have a different body shape/structure to neos and bee shrimps for sure and given my eyesight is bad I really appreciate their larger size ! They do have a pretty yellow hue when viewed in nice light conditions. I also thought they seemed to be social animals; seeming to congregate together for some reason ??

I tested water parameters of the newly arrived shrimp, EC 150ish (75ppm), pH 6.8, GH 2.5 and KH ~1 (I measured GH and KH using 10mL sample in an effort to get a reading twice as accurate as the API test kit normally would give).

My tank which is approx 110 litres had been running for a month or two already and the canister was seeded with media from other cycled canisters as well as an air-sponge which was brought across from another tank. My substrate is just a fine black quartz. The water in the tank was RO plus a blackwater extract and some boss aquaria mineral powder and was around 9 or 10 ppm. I attempted to achieve a slightly softer water than the bags the shrimp came in by using a mixture of salty shrimp bee shrimp and salty shrimp GH/KH + and i think i did a good job with pH somewhere around 6.6 - 6.8 and a bit lower EC. I'm in Adelaide and our tap water is horrible with 100-200 ppm water and can even get much higher at times. So i realise if i am going to be able to share my shrimps locally with people who don't have RO units then I won't want to keep them in extremely soft water conditions that's for sure.

The shrimp were acclimatised carefully by drip method and then temperature matched by floating them before releasing them; they seem to have settled in quite comfortably, grazing around and interestingly they do seem to still like to be in each other's company, clustering together somehwat and not scattering so randomly as my neos have always done whenever I've received a new lot.

So my tank is horribly horribly "aquascaped" if you can call it that as I just didn't have time (or energy) to focus on appearances today and it is a practical tank not a display tank as such. I had to do water-changes and other maintenance in other tanks while I had the chance to spend time in my room and life is busybusy as it is for many of us at this time of year.

So enough of my rant; I hope someone here finds my little shrimp-journey I've had today interesting.. and here are some shabby phone-pix, the colours show up very poorly in part because the tannins from the blackwater extract I recently added to the tank tints the water very dark and it will take a few days for it to become clearer.

OK no pictures available due to technical problems - will post again tomorrow with some pix hopefully if i get time damn LOL

love n peace

will

 

[fishmosy]

Awesome post mate. Keep us updated.

i find my SC (short creek) will eat mulberry leaves but seem to spend most of their time grazing from rocks and substrate. They took to pellet food straight away too. What are you planning on feeding them? 

 

[revolutionhope]

mymistake i forgot to point out it was my neos that went ape over bob's mulberry as opposed to the ones that were already in tank :-)

i didn't give too much thought to what to feed them - im hoping to feed them mainly on dried leaves and fresh greens. i've recently discovered that the peach tree and locquat tree leaves from my backyard should be very suitable for dwarf shrimp!

and aside from that i do have a good variety of processed shrimp products ie boss aquaria genchem and even a couple of fancypants benibachi ones.

ben can u fill me in on the temp range these shrimp are accustomed to? i noted that in your short creek thread you said the temp was 19C in may - my room is hopefully hopefully going to hover between 23-26 (hopefully not higher than that) this summer .. do you think they will be happy?

i have found a pic i can upload at present :-) will up more when waters clearer i think

[fishmosy]

Mine are quite happy at room temperature (roughly 23-24) so I think yours should be fine at 23-25. Maybe keep an eye on them at 26 and perhaps provide aeration to keep dissolved oxygen levels high.

It might just be the lighting in the pic, but it kinda looks like your shrimp has discoloured or white tissue. If so, it might be suffering a bacterial infection. A yellow, blue or light brown tinge on the external shell is normal for these guys, but not any colour in the tissue underneath. keep a close eye on water parameters and consider removing any infected individuals to a hospital tank or cull as IME these diseases in natives seem to slowly spread, and when the shrimp are placed under stress, the disease can cause sharp drops in the number of individuals in your colony.

[Disciple]

Grats on the Natives man.

I have to admit I was looking forward to seeing your Zebra colony but what an unfortunate set of circumstances. Good luck with these guys.

[GotCrabs]

Native Shrimp and Fish are great, more people need to explore keeping natives in their tanks, you'll enjoy them for sure!

[revolutionhope]

Thanks for the encouragement guys :-)

I'm not sure how they're doing, they're definitely less active than my cherres and CBS typically are. Thanks for your insight ben - I don't think there is any infected tissue.

 

Bob included a funky native snail with spikes around its shell but I believe it may have died unfortunately! I don't know if it is significant or not because it had a rough ride moving from bag to bucket to aquarium was quite a rough experience for the poor thing.

 

Not to worry though;I'll see how the shrimp behave over the following days, I was definitely disappointed that they aren't grazing very consistently and when they are grazing they seem to do it slowly. Only the odd one comes over to graze on the shrimp-snow I threw in; but there was certainly a stack of natural biofilm around for them to eat in the tank already.

 

Last I checked almost all of them were congregrating on a sponge filter. They really seem to love hanging out in a group from what I've seen. I hope this is not indicative of some problem! They are also very shy of bright light and rapidly hide under moss or filters when I put my bright 80 watt CFL on top of ithe tank!

 

I don't really know what to do in-case of trouble; but I guess if I see any deaths or any obvious sign of sickness I will remove the offending shrimp asap and do a 90% water change - unless anyone has other suggestions for me :-)

 Love n peace

will

[fishmosy]

It all sounds good. Mine seem to hang out more in two and threes, but less so now they have been in the tank awhile. They may just be hanging on the sponge filter because thats where the food is! 

I'm sure they will settle in soon. 

[revolutionhope]

hm that's reassuring but i do have an update; definitely hanging out ina  big group on the sponge filter, which may well be where the best food is, but only a few are actively sampling food at any one time.

unfortunately said snail is dead as i suspected :-(

tested parameters and still 0 ammonia and nitrite, and pH is stable at ~ 6.8.

fingers crossed they are all good. there's no appearance of illness; aside from their reduced activity compared to neos and bees. and the fact that they are very shy of light and skittish when i move near tank.

[fishmosy]

There is nothing in what you have said that would concern me. Remember these are wild caught shrimp that have never lived in a tank before.

feed lightly for the moment. The shrimp seem to be getting plenty of food from the sponge. Them ignoring the pellet food is a sign that they are getting enough. 

[revolutionhope]

thanks a lot for the encouragement buddy, just this minute i discovered a moult! i hope this is a good thing :-)

they really really are hiding from the light btw hanging out in the corner bigtime

[revolutionhope]

Now I have found 3 moults now, and unfortunately have had 3 deaths one last night, one earlier this afternoon, and i just removed one in the last few minutes after literally watching it die - tail bent over then squirming a little on its back then dying shortly afterwards. Upon inspection I found that it had a pale white colour throughout most of its internals.

Fingers crossed the dying ones are just the weakest ones and it is aftermath of them being compromised from the travel (one of the shrimps had arrived dead in bag) but I am getting quite worried.

Although a number of them are looking more brown/redder and less clear than they were when I first got them on Thursday; I am also finding a number of them definitely have a more obvious "whiteness" inside them and i'm beginning to think it is an infection sadly..

I'm not sure what is wrong. pH is stable at 6.8 and ammonia and nitrite are zero. The tank is well and truly cycled with plenty of algae all around. Maybe they were carrying something already and now the stress of transport has tipped them over the edge? I will admit that some of them had a rough entry and got stuck on the side of a bucket when I tried to shift them into the tank after drip acclimatising them.

I'm pretty much lost as to where to go from here! Any advice from an experienced hand about the place wouldn't go astray at all!

love n peace

will

 

 

 

[fishmosy]

Just keep an eye on them and keep water parameters stable. They dont like big or fast water changes, so dont do that either. I had a similar thing happen with my Barney Springs when I brought them back from Cairns. I just had to wait it out whilst the weaker ones died off. The rest were fine. Its just a result of the stress of travel. Keep us updated. 

[revolutionhope]

I'll up some pictures of shrimp soon i hope but for my legions of followers - heres a quick update LOL :-)

No deaths since the 26th October catastrophe 3 days ago hurrah!!

when i look now there are at leaat a few out and about having a munch on the go so im optimistic now for sure.

they still seem very light shy though. might run a less powerful light perhaps.

currently using a 80w philips CFL on the 2 1/2 foot tank (which in Old school method of gauging light intensity equates to somewhere over 3w of the old fluro style per gallon)

love n peace

will

[revolutionhope]

quick update the tank has been a bit of a bummer really as at least 2 more have died.. becoming pale like the ones i received that died 2 days later

Unfortunately i can see at least another two that are gonna cark it soon and there are a handful with reasonable brownish with red colour.

About 5 others are unaccounted for hopefully they're just hiding well.

I'm contemplating shutting down tank they look pretty dull anyway lol.. i like their shape and size but they were not at all yellow like i was hoping they would be.

maybe i should sterilise the setup then let it cycle and wait for zebras or something else

[revolutionhope]

example 1

shrimp showing signs of illness

example 2

shrimp very close to death

[fishmosy]

They aren't looking happy. Whats your water parameters currently?

[revolutionhope]

just tested again.

last test i guess was 2 days ago and pH has gone up at least another 2 maybe 3 or even 4 points and it seems to be at 7.2 or a touch above that now. it would be nice to have something better than the API kit.

tds has gone up a fair bit since I started the tank and is now at 170ec / 85ppm where as it was 150 /75 when i started.

ammonia and nitrites have been zero at all times and still are. i dunno why pH would have risen so much since all I've added is livestock, plants, moss, leaves and a little food.

[Disciple]

Do you know what your nitrates are? GH and Kh I guess they would be low.

Have you removed the sick shrimp I think fm suggested that earlier.

[revolutionhope]

cheers for ideas i might test for nitrates tomorrow.

now i do know 100% what to look for in terms of sick shrimp with these ones. so I will do that as well. i am close to giving up on them but i won't just yet.

ihope pH doesn't keep rising or I'm guessing that that might present a new problem in and of itself.

[fishmosy]

Hey Will, 

I dont think you mentioned rising TDS and rising pH in your message. Could there be something in the tank that maybe shouldn't be there. It would only take a small amount of coral rock for example to increase TDS and boost pH. As I suggested, it would be best to reduce TDS using RO water changes. I cant remember specifically but I think the TDS in short creek was below 20 ppm. If you can get down to say 30ppm slowly then that may help the shrimp. 

I just realised the number of moults you have had too is a sign of something amiss. Moults can occur in response to stress, especially when multiple individuals do it at the same time. For example, riffles often moult during transport. 

Keep at it mate. Natives aren't plug and play like the exotics generally are - somebody hasn't worked it all out for you already - but that makes it worthwhile. 

[revolutionhope]

i dunno man both my new crs tank and this sc tank have rising pH but pH was stable prior to adding the salty shrimp and livestock itself.

i must be missing something obvious...

[fishmosy]

Was the salty shrimp all dissolved before you added it to the tank? If there is some still dissolving over time then this may explain your changing water parameters.

[revolutionhope]

hm i cant say for sure it was all dissolved in the native tank or not as it was mixed in only 6 hours or so before the shrimp were added.

in the case of the crs it was added 1 or 2 days before and that has experienced a rise of only 2 or 3 ppm since i mixed it in 6-7 days ago..

[revolutionhope]

most recent pix