SKF Interview #5 - Glenn Ng

[Disciple]

Good afternoon my fellow Shrimp Keepers,

I have received the answers for the 5th SKF interview.

Today we have a interview from @Gbang. He is a very well respected breeder that is well known for his world class Cherry shrimp but he should also be known for all the other great shrimp he has.

SKF - Hi Mr Ng can you please tell us a little about yourself?

GB -  Hi guys my name is Glenn Ng and I've been a shrimpaholic since 2010! I first started aquarium keeping back in 2003 when a friend got a job at a fish store and i spent my youth regularly hanging out at his place of work. I've been hooked ever since and have enjoyed breeding many varieties of cichlids, from malawi and tangs to americans and catfish.

5 years ago i started breeding crayfish for fun and that was highly enjoyable. And then the minature livestock bug came in where i went from dwarf cichlids to neolamprologus shelldwellers.

One day i stumbled upon a shrimp website and after looking at an sss mosura crs, i have been hooked on shrimp breeding since!

While my forte and success is mainly neocaridina, my love for caridinas is just as intense and ive had a lot of fun with breeding programmes of many kinds. To date i still do keep many cichlids and catfish but my main passion currently has been shrimps, pseudomugil, rasboras and fancy guppies.

Question 1 - What is your weekly/monthly maintenance schedule?

GB -  My maintenance schedule is based on a 10-20% water change fortnightly. During the week i maintain a variety of stable and natural vegetable based foods while planning the occasional protein rich meals and a constant supply of nutritious leaves. Every fortnight to a month, i also perform a cull run and analyse how my breeding objectives are coming along.

Question 2 - What is your favorite additive/products?

GB - By far i am the biggesr fan of boss aquaria baby powder and booster. It has worked wonders for me and really increased the survival rates of not only baby shrimps but fish! They absolutely love it. Benibachi products also have a been a huge hit for me. In particular the benibachi bee max has been a great bacteria additive. But if you were to ask me whats my favourite product. It would be hands down saltyshrimp products. It is almost the sole reason why everyone in the world has great shrimp success!
ALMOST

Question 3 - What is your worst shrimp experience?

GB -  My worse shrimp experience was possibly spending over nine hundred dollars on a reputable breeder who sold me pure line shrimp. These were not technically good enough to be classed as prl and pbl and were some of the brownest shrimp i have ever seen. Assuming that they just were not acclimatising well to the tank i waited for the first generation of babies, which were probably worse then the parents. What frustrated me most of all was being there at the breeders house before the sale and seeing all the quality stock he had....which he clearly did not choose for me. In fact, i ended up using those shrimp purchased as part of my pinto mischling programmes.

Luckily i have met many genuine hobbyists and fellow enthusiasts that have helped me achieve the status of a pure line shrimp breeder and i now have a wonderful colony of prl and pbl.

wink emoticon

Question 4 - What are the biggest myths in Shrimp Keeping?

GB -  That you dont gravel clean. I have seen some people with amazing success gravel cleaning every 3 months. After 4 years of shrimp keeping, i tried it myself and the results were amazing!

Question 5 - Unusual things that you use with your shrimps?

GB -  I occasionally use brine shrimp to fatten my colony up and occasionally use a frozen food produce called fish fuel. Specifically the goldfish frozen mix and turtle veg mix are very popular with the shrimps!

Question 6 - Can you give us tips on selective breeding? And how to improve the quality of our shrimps?

GB -  Well....when i am in low numbers i really only concentrate on the culling of males in my colony. Once the numbers are high the main criteria i base my selective breeding is on size, shape pattern and colour.

Question 7 - What do you think will be the next big thing in shrimp? Will it come from crosses or line breeding pure species?

GB - Mainly crosses are taking a huge wave of interest due to the surprises in store. Soon enough Aura blue crosses and tangtaibee programmes will be incredibly popular due to the genetic variability. It already is in europe and asia! I would kill for some aura blue to create an aura hybrid colony! I would also imagine that many purists will further continue the pure red and black lines and work on an sss and white pure line programme soon.

 

Question 8 - How do you mineralize and what WP do you aim for?

GB - I remineralise ro water with saltyshrimp gh plus to a tds of 100-120 for caridinas. With cherries i do the same with ro water to a tds of 150 using gh kh plus. However, ince the shrimps have settled, i do try to use a mixture of tap and ro remineralised again to tds 150 as i would like to "harden" cherry shrimps so to speak.

 

Question 9 -  What food enhances the welling being of shrimps and increase shrimplets survival rates?

GB -  100% boss aquaria baby powder and benibachi baby food has been amazing for me. I am also a big believer of natural greenfoods and leaves as well as bee pollen which has a lot of nutrition.

 

Question 10 - How often do you cull?

GB -  I normally cull ever 3 to 4 weeks and also pending if any shrimplets reach 12-15mm just before they are ready to breed!

 

Question 11 - What is your funniest shrimp experience?

GB - I dont have a particular funny shrimp experience but one incident that comes to mind was discovering the German word or term for the female shrimps breastplate. The word was "tigershaufel". Needless to say, many tasteless, inappropriate and countless jokes were pulled off....and constantly repeated lol

 

I wanted say on behalf of SKF and its members, Thank you very much Glenn. I have to agree I love looking at the Tigershaufels on females.

[KeenShrimp]

Thank you for the Interview- awesome!???

[Foxpuppet]

Again thanks for these interviews - Gravel vac even on aquasoil, great advice!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[OzShrimp]

Thats an awesome post. I have to agree with the gravel vaccing I never used to do it when i first started keeping shrimp in fear it would cause a spike in the water and they would die. After a while i started doing it to my shrimp soil and i even altered my gravel vac with some SS mesh and airline tubing to hold it on to prevent the soil being sucked up but allowed all the broken down silt to get out of the tank.

My water quality improved and my parameters slightly as well. 

[jayc]

I gravel vac my shrimp tanks too!!

Have been doing it for a couple of years now.

 

Looks like all the pros are doing it 

[revolutionhope]

What methods do people use / how to vacuum tank without sucking up shrimplets?

love n peace

will