A pleasant surprise

[Baccus]

A while ago I had dumped a heap of spare and cull cherry shrimp into my 1000L goldfish pond, fully expecting the goldfish to have a fantastic feed. However yesterday out of idle curiosity I thought I would just have a scoop about in the elodea to see if any shrimp where left. Turns out that the elodea is so thick that not only are the shrimp surviving and thriving (found adults and shrimplets of all sizes) but the goldfish had also spawned.

I was going to give my pond its spring clean before the heat gets really insane, but now I will have to wait until the baby goldfish get bigger, and in the mean time figure out how to clean the pond with a million shrimp in there, when I know that the floor of the pond has probably 30cm of leaf litter for the shrimp to also hide in.

Now I am also wondering how many shrimp are still in the old bathtub where I put a heap of spare guppies which also has an insane amount of leaf litter.........

[Garnelchen]

Sounds like you've got some nice shrimp (and goldfish) biotopes going there. ;)

How you will ever clean the pond and the tub out without killing thousands of shrimp and fry I don't know. :dejection:

Maybe it's a good excuse for not cleaning them at all. :congratulatory:

[BlueBolts]

Mmmm, 3 large white tubs....1 used for sorting, 1 for goldfish and 1 for shrimps...and do it slllllooooooooooowllllyyyyy. LOL

[Squiggle]

Wow, that's really cool accidental result! I really wouldn't like to have to sort all the shrimp & fish out. :dejection:

[Garnelchen]

I really wouldn't like to have to sort all the shrimp & fish out. :dejection:

Well, it actually sounds like fun! :congratulatory:

I would volunteer to help if I lived closer.

[KFenk]

Wow that's so cool! How big are the goldfish fry?

[Baccus]

The goldfish fry are roughly month old guppy size, I knew that I had accidentally released some endler fry in the goldfish pond (the fry where mixed in with the shrimp and I was getting frustrated trying to separate them after hours of trying), so when I had first seen all the surface movement in the pond I had put it down to the endlers growing up. It was only when I netted the goldfish fry I realised most of the movement was actually goldfish.

The truly hard part will be offloading the baby goldfish when they are bigger. I can not believe how hard it can be to sell (even cheaply) locally pond bred goldfish which are use to our water chemistery and heatwaves as well as our winters with no heaters.

[Baccus]

Three of the shrimp from my goldfish pond ( I left the shrimplets endler and goldfish fry in another tub of water.

The real surprise is the greenie brown shrimp that dwarves the full grown dark red cherries.

I don't think I have put any other shrimp in the goldfish pond, so I can only guess it is a cherry.......

Now the question is where do I put this odd one and who do I put it with?????

[BlueBolts]

That's great...what is the PH of the pond....curious to see whether it changes colours with a different PH ?

[Baccus]

I have never tested the pond, but I would say the pH would be just about off the scale, just because of all the leaf litter, fallen flowers and even fruit. The trees that mostly drop their leaves and flowers into the pond are Icecream Bean (also its fruit), Silky Oaky (also the empty seed pods), Tea Tree and Flea Tree. There are house bricks in the pond as well as a besser brick which could/ should also be affecting pH.

I tried getting some better pics of the green/brown female but she wont sit still, or if she does she hides in the far back corner of the temp tank.

Here is another pic of her

Plus one of the shrimplets

And goldfish fry

And if you look carefully to the left of the goldfish fry you can make out the tail end of what looks to be another dark/green shrimplet.

It also looks like I have a male cherry in the ones that I got out of the pond with blue gene, he has a pale blue look about him while the other males just look normal.

[Garnelchen]

Who know what else you are going to find.....keep posting pics please!

The goldfish fry is cute! :)

[Baccus]

Just waiting for my camera to recharge and then I am going to try spotting lighting shrimp in the pond. I fed the fish earlier so the shrimp should be up around the surface finding any missed food.

[Baccus]

I went down to the pond with a torch and the pond is alive with shrimplets, also it was good to see that there is also a healthy population of bloodworms also in the pond. I tried to take some pictures of the shrimplets but they are too small to get easily while juggling a torch.

But here are some more pics of the brown/green female as well as the male that has the blue tinge

PS, About the goldfish fry I am hoping once they colour up they will have some nice colours since one of the breeding males was pure white while some of the females had white and orange patches and one of the other males was a solid deep orange/red