Jump to content

Sydney native shrimp


peneye

Recommended Posts

Hi all,

I joined this forum a couple of months ago but my P.C. died soon after joining & I have been unable to post until now so this post is to firstly say hi & also share a recent experience I had.I recently had to go to a dam in Sydney for work purposes & though I thought I wouldn't get an opportunity for any exploring for aquatic life while I was there I took an aquarium scoop net with me just in case.I managed to sqeeze in 5-10 minutes with my net at a small section of rocks along the shoreline.I saw a few small fish that I assumed were Gambusia & attempted to net one to confirm it's identity,when I checked the net to see if I had caught any I was suriprised to find no fish but 2-3 glass shrimp in the net.The only container on hand was a small plastic drink bottle so I filled it with some water & tried to transfer the shrimp to get a good look at them.I had a few more scoops & managed a few more shrimp, most escaped when I tried to transfer them from the net through the small opening into the bottle.Most of the shrimp looked at first glance to be juvies & males with a couple of larger females.When I had a closer look I noticed that there was some with nippers that were young Macrobrachiums & not glass shrimp.I had never seen any Macrobachiums except in tropical areas way north of here & did a search on the internet & found that there is more than one type that occur in the Sydney area,but all info I could find said that they need salt water for the baby shrimp to survive,yet the dam is isolated from salt water & there is young present in the dam, can anyone shed light on how this is possible?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are Machrobrachiums in the blue mountains too, they don't all need salt water. Good find. Was the dam at manly by any chance?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey peneye, welcome to the forum.

There are two possibilities/explanations. One is that the shrimp you saw were not macrobrachium, but were something like Parataya australilensis, which also possess small nippers. The second is that they are in fact macrobrachium, as these can breed in freshwater (for example I've caught them in the feeder rivers for the Murray river in North western NSW, hundreds if not a thousand km from any saltwater.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They would have been macrobrachium australiense, you can catch them in just about any river and dam in NSW. I use a $7 shrimp trap and some tasty cheese, 15 mins in the water and you'll have a few handfulls in the trap. I had them in my tank for a while but have since gotten rid of them, there's some pics of them in my thread in the journals forum.

P.S They make good bait for catching cod.

P.P.S Yay, I'm now a "Shrimp Enthusiast".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There are Machrobrachiums in the blue mountains too' date=' they don't all need salt water. Good find. Was the dam at manly by any chance?[/quote']

P.M. sent

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Join Our Community!

    Register today, ask questions and share your shrimp and fish tank experiences with us!

  • Must Read SKF Articles

  • Posts

    • beanbag
      Update to say that after a few gravel vacs, front wall scrub, moss / floating plant trim, that the condition seems to have improved.  My current theory is that it is due to waste / debris management, where "stuff" like that brown mulm accumulates in the substrate and behind the HMF filters.  Maybe some tanks can somehow deal with it, but mine can't.  Also another experienced shrimper suggested that maybe those "shell bugs" don't just live on the shrimps but also in this debris.  Maybe this is the reason some tanks fail due to "old tank syndrome" where all they need is a good gravel vac? Also, I am guessing that plant trim helps too because now more of the nutrients and light go into growing algae instead of more plants? Well anyway for this tank I will try weekly water change and monthly gravel vac / plant trim.  For my next tank, I'm thinking of something like an under-gravel system where this mulm can fall down and I vac it out.
    • sdlTBfanUK
      Good to have an update and good to hear you are getting shrimplets, so hopefully your colony will continue and you may not get to the point where you have to cull some to stop over population. These type of shrimp only live 12 - 18 months so the adult deaths may be natural? If you have the time I would do weekly 25% water changes, adding the new water via a drip system and do some vacuuming clean of the substrate each week, even if only a different bit each week! See if that helps in a few months and if it does then stick with that regime? It should help reduce any build-ups that may be occuring!
    • beanbag
      Hello again, much belated update: The tank still has "cycles" of 1-2 month "good streaks" where everybody seems to be doing well, and then a bad streak where the short antenna problem shows up again, and a shrimp dies once every few days.  I am not sure what causes things to go bad, but usually over the course of a few days I will start to see more shrimp quietly standing on the HMF filter, and so I know something is wrong.  Since I am not "doing anything" besides the regular 1-2 week water changes, I just assume that something bad is building up.  Here's a list of things that I've tried that are supposed to be "can't hurt" but didn't prevent the problem either: Dose every other day with Shrimp Fit (very small dose, and the shrimp seem to like it) Sotching Oxydator Seachem Purigen to keep the nitrates lower Keeping the pH below 5.5 with peat Things that I don't do often, so could possibly "reset" the tank back to a good streak, are gravel vac and plant trim, so maybe time to try those again. One other problem I used to have was that sometimes a shrimp would suddenly stop eating with a full or partially full digestive tract that doesn't clear out, and then the shrimp will die within a few days.  I suspected it was one of the foods in my rotation - Shrimp Nature Infection, which contains a bunch of herbal plant things.  I've had this in my food rotation for a few years now and generally didn't seem to cause problems, but I removed it from the rotation anyway.  I don't have a lot of adult Golden Bees at this point so I can't really tell if it worked or not. Overall the tank is not too bad - during the good streaks occasionally a shrimp will get berried and hatch babies with a 33-50% survival rate.  So while there are fewer adults now, there are also a bunch of babies roaming around.  I guess this tank will stagger on, but I really do need to take the time to start up a new tank.  (or figure out the problem)
    • jayc
      If that is the offspring, then the parents are unlikely to be PRL. I tend to agree with you. There are very few PRLs in Australia. And any that claim to be needs to show proof. PRL genes have to start as PRL. CRS that breed true after x generations doesn't turn it into a PRL. Neither can a Taiwan bee shrimp turn into a PRL despite how ever many generations. I've never seen a PRL with that sort of red colour. I have on Red Wines and Red Shadows - Taiwan bee shrimps. So somewhere down the line one of your shrimp might have been mixed with Taiwan bees and is no longer PRL. It just tanks one shrimp to mess up the genes of a whole colony. 
    • sdlTBfanUK
      Sorry, missed this one somehow! The PRL look fantastic and the odd ones look part PRL and part Red wine/Red shadow in the colour. They are still very beautiful but ideally should be seperated to help keep the PRL clean if you can do that.  Nice clear photos!
×
×
  • Create New...