journal Maiden Shrimp Voyage

[Disciple]

My first thought were that you had seed shrimp but since that has been ruled out I am very curious about this bug lol

[eternalc]

28 minutes ago, Disciple said:

My first thought were that you had seed shrimp but since that has been ruled out I am very curious about this bug lol

yes i'm quite curious too myself lol. i'll try my luck with the camera these few days. maybe i can shoot up something interesting

[eternalc]

ok. i somehow managed to capture those bugs on videos. try to play it in 1080p for the most clarity. it wouldnt be very clear, but at least you can see the movements. video 2 has more actions

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 1, 2016 by eternalc
embedding problem

[jayc]

@eternalc

Ok that's not an  Ostracod (seed shrimp) by its movement.

 

Might be a Copepod.

Google it for a bigger picture and let us know if that is what it looks like.

 

Edited February 1, 2016 by jayc

[eternalc]

1 hour ago, jayc said:

@eternalc

Ok that's not an  Ostracod (seed shrimp) by its movement.

 

Might be a Copepod.

Google it for a bigger picture and let us know if that is what it looks like.

 

ok.. now that you said it, perhaps it is copepod. i remember seeing this one guy with two big balls behind him moving around, albeit slower than the one in the video.

 

[eternalc]

another quick update, i saw 3 molt leftover since the day i put them in. one is stuck between the edges of the sponge filter, which scared me for awhile as it looks like a dead shrimp.

 

hopefully, i can see berried female soon :)

 

 

this is by far the most active, or rather, super active shrimp inside, which i believe / hope going to be berried soon. it loves to go round and round the tank while others just chilling out doing their own business. 

 

i blanched a papaya leaf and left it on the glass bowl. so far none of them has touched it yet. 

[eternalc]

did a water change two days ago. noticed that the two females are extremely active, going round and round the tank while the males just chilling out. have yet to see any molted shell after water change. meanwhile, a little supper story:

 

 

oh, i found a yummy food! all mine!!

 

here comes a new challenger!!

 

hey you! what you think you're doing?

 

who run the world? girls!!!

[Disciple]

Haha awesome pictures and captions

[eternalc]

hi guys, its been a while. 

 

during my absence here, i've added some plants, with additional shrimps, namely velvet blue and malayan shrimp. all was good, up until yesterday when there's visitors with 3 very naughty kids. they banged on cabinet on which the tank is on. very loud indeed, which almost made me snapped at them. i even raised my voice. dumb parents act dumb and stupid pretending nothing happened.

 

fast forward few hours later into the night, i saw 2 or 3 shrimp acting weird. 1 female was jumping as if it was struggling from something. it wasn't a failed molting from what i see. occasionally landing sideway, or swim upward then just fall free fall down, like a dead shrimp. but still manage to move itself. same goes for another male shrimp, but not as active as the female. water is ok. i dont think the kids was stupid enough to drop anything inside. didnt do any water change since i dont want to stress the shrimp out. the other shrimps is acting fine.

 

this morning i checked up on them, did not on the lights so cant really see into the back part of the tank. so far, no dead shrimp in the front. or it could have been consumed by the other shrimp? i dont know. i'll check them out again tonight when i'm back. 

[buck]

that's a shame i had a shrimp do a similar thing to me not long ago, it was like it had a hart attack or something, hopefully the kids didn't stress them out to much with there banging!

 

[eternalc]

after 3 months into this tank setup, this is basically what it looks like

currently there are 11 shrimps in the tank. 4 blue velvets, 3 red fire and 4 malaya. many of them hiding somewhere. as you can see, i still dont know what to do with the right spot under the filter. thinking of putting some other stem plant but not sure how it would look with the filter above it. the rotala on the middle eventually gonna grow bushy. my initial thought was that rotala was a single stem grower, never knew it would branches out every time i trim it lol. i'm just concerned that it would clash against my christmas moss tree on the left.

 

total KIA done for each shrimp type was :

BV - 9

Malaya - 0

Red fire - 1

 

malaya was really tough, which speaks from their size, almost triple of the BV. no problems with them since day 1 i put them in. the BV on the other hand has some trouble settling in the water. to summarize it up, i was left with 3 BV and 4 malaya last week, before i brought in another male BV and 4 Fire Red. all the BV left were females and all are saddled up. so i went and get a male together with harem of 1 male and 3 female Fire Reds. 1 female Fire Red KIA the next day, but one of the BV is berried! talk about horny shrimp, the next day another BV is berried! Perhaps tonight the last female would also be berried? oh well... 

 

that is why there's not much activities you can see there on my tank picture. the two berried females are hanging out around the filter sponge area. 2 berried females but 2 different characteristic that i can see from them. the first pregnant shrimp was a bit nervous i would say. it will fan its eggs every few seconds and do nothing else. the second pregnant shrimp was more relaxed and chilled out. it would swim about (but still not far from the filter area) and fan its eggs occasionally.

 

the pictures above is the second pregnant BV, while the first one is a little bit hard to take so i left it out.

 

 

now comes the hard part. how do i change water for these guys? i do a routine weekly water change and the deadline is coming soon, or rather, today. and there's this algae that is sticking on tank glass that i would want to brush away. but i'm concerned that doing this would stress the berried shrimps. any suggestions are welcome. please hit the comment button.

 

Fire red saying goodbye!!

[NoGi]

The juvis might enjoy some of that algae?

You could always use a nano algae cleaner and gently remove.

[Matuva]

Well, I did clean the front glass once a week and did water change (10%) when needed, none of berried females seem to be disturbed.

Do that cleaning with low movements, and it should be fine

[NoGi]

I clean my little tank all the time and don't seem to have an issue with getting any loss of berried shrimp/new borns either.

[eternalc]

On 3/30/2016 at 4:17 AM, NoGi said:

The juvis might enjoy some of that algae?

You could always use a nano algae cleaner and gently remove.

the thing is its obstructing the beautiful view hahaha

 

On 3/31/2016 at 10:21 AM, Matuva said:

Well, I did clean the front glass once a week and did water change (10%) when needed, none of berried females seem to be disturbed.

Do that cleaning with low movements, and it should be fine

noted. 

 

On 3/31/2016 at 4:38 AM, NoGi said:

I clean my little tank all the time and don't seem to have an issue with getting any loss of berried shrimp/new borns either.

cool. will do that

[eternalc]

so, two weeks passed since the shrimps got berried. here's the update.

 

first berried shrimp died. the one that i mentioned that was particularly stressed / nervous. found her dead less than 24 hour since the last time i observed her. i usually observed my shrimp every time i got back home, just to see how are they doing and all. i was so sad. i dont want those eggs to die with her too. so i salvaged the eggs and tried artificial hatching.

 

first thing i did was i washed my hand thoroughly. no soap no shampoo. just water. then i picked the dead shrimp up with a tweezers. holding the head area with the tweezers, i used a plastic spoon to "scoop" the eggs out. before that, do prepare a bowl filled with tank water and do the step above the bowl so the eggs / shrimp would fall into the water in case of a messed up. i used plastic as i dont want any metals to have any effects on the eggs. yeah i know i'm very speculative lol even if i dont know if it does affect the eggs or not. during the process, being a rough person that i am, sad to say that the mother shrimp was utterly destroyed and annihilated by me. it was that hard to hold the soft vulnerable tiny shrimp at the same time not to crushed it. lets just say the shrimp has the smell of a prawn. 

so somehow i managed to salvage all the eggs inside. i guess there was around 20. so the problem now is how and where do i place these eggs? i did my homework. the most popular guide was about a guy putting the eggs inside a bottle, doing a WC every 3 days and fanning them. although he succeeded, i'm not very convinced of this method. so i came up with this idea, which i realized were being used by others too. 

i took a thin layer of an unused new "tank filter fiber"(i dont know what do you call it) put it in my fish net. it kinda floats up so make sure that it sinks below water at least 2 inch below water. i placed the net near the water outlet so that it has good fresh flow of water, stimulating the mum fanning her eggs. the fish net is for protection from other shrimp to feast on it. another important point is, i made sure that the top of the fish net is above the water level. this is to prevent the other shrimp to climb in into the net and feast on the eggs. after setting everything up, i poured down the eggs from the bowl into the net. in the picture above, the eggs can be seen on the middle top of the filter fiber. there's other eggs too but it was too small to be seen individually by my camera.

from then on, i could only pray and watch. 

a bigger picture on how i place the fish net. i used a big cloth clipper to keep the fish net in place as you can see on the bottom right of the picture. 

i did my regular water change of once a week, but with 15% instead of the usual 30%. tried to do it as gently as i could without stressing the other berried shrimp. a week later, the third shrimp was finally berried too. i checked on the eggs every single day. as day passed by, i noticed that the eggs were getting darker in color, like dark orange. i was actually planning to give up on the eggs after almost 2 weeks as i think the eggs has died as the color was different from the one inside the tank (the shrimp which berried the day after the dead shrimp berried). but i hold on, saying to myself at least wait till the second shrimp hatch and if they dont hatch by then, perhaps i should give up.

i'm glad i made that decision. yesterday when i got back, i checked the eggs as usual, and noticed that they were gone! first thing that came into my mind was, did they evaporated? LOL!! then i checked beneath the filter fiber, lots of shrimplets!!! it was a success. then i checked on the second berried shrimp, she too was unloading her eggs which is hatching too. i felt so damn proud. sorry no pictures of the shrimplets in the net, as i was too focus on getting them out into the tank. 

if you can see, there's still at least two eggs still in the process of hatching. few hours before that there were around 10+. all are good at hiding, as i can only find a few to be seen. 

the father, and his offspring below him. 

now lets hope all those shrimplets will grow up well and make me proud :)

and by the way, anyone recognize what is this below?

i found two inside my tank and i quickly took them out. the mouth is located at the end (the darker red part) and it open up as big as its body. 

[KeenShrimp]

Congrats on your DIY incubation ???

[eternalc]

29 minutes ago, KeenShrimp said:

Congrats on your DIY incubation

thanks! i was thrilled when it popped ?

[jayc]

Well done!!? ?

Salvaging those eggs paid off.

No idea what that red worm is.

Edited April 13, 2016 by jayc

[eternalc]

2 hours ago, jayc said:

Well done!! 

Salvaging those eggs paid off.

No idea what that red worm is.

thanks!

indeed it paid off. i was smiling from ear to ear yesterday ?

i saw the worm eating one of my shrimp's corpse during the early days 

[eternalc]

after two months, one of the first female got berried again. 

i noticed that the amount of eggs did reduced compared to last time. not sure what went wrong there or maybe it was angle problem. i'm happy that they are all alright and doing fine inside there. babies are growing, but some are still tiny, maybe because they are males?

 

some of the juvenile shrimps being chased by uncle malaya shrimp. 

 

one of my favourite color when those malaya shrimps changes color. another color that i like is deep blue sea color which happens not frequently but its very nice to look at. 

 

now, to the problem part

any idea what are these things? there's like tons of them swimming around like no one's business as if their father owned the tank. i dont think they're affecting the shrimps but its really an eyesore seeing them on the walls.

[KeenShrimp]

They look like seed shrimp ( ostracods). They are part of the ecosystem, harmless and live in good quality water. You can't do much about them. You can gravel vac a few thousand out of the substrate for population control or you can  net them In a brine shrimp net. They are bivalve crustaceans and there is no chemical you can add to the tank for this. Unless I m looking incorrectly and they are something else?

[eternalc]

4 hours ago, KeenShrimp said:

They look like seed shrimp ( ostracods). They are part of the ecosystem, harmless and live in good quality water. You can't do much about them. You can gravel vac a few thousand out of the substrate for population control or you can  net them In a brine shrimp net. They are bivalve crustaceans and there is no chemical you can add to the tank for this. Unless I m looking incorrectly and they are something else?

well, at least that mean i have good quality water lol. i dont think its something else. they all peace loving creature, just that its a lil bit of an eyesore seeing bunch of them hanging on the walls

[Disciple]

Looking good Bro. Congrats on the berried shrimp

[eternalc]

6 hours ago, Disciple said:

Looking good Bro. Congrats on the berried shrimp

thanks bro. been looking forward to introduce new shrimp into the tank. but those that can live in 28C temp. those that are not neos. i got malaya shrimp already in there. not sure crs can live within 28C temp