Mosh Pit Shrimp

[Baccus]

Just wanted to share some pics of some of the varied colours I am retrieving out of my goldfish pond. As well as the ones in the photos I am also getting orangie red, dark crimson red and varying shades of brown.

The female in the above pic (closest to the camera) has some pretty strong blue showing on her body but she would not settle and spent the entire photo shoot trying to escape of sitting at the wrong angle to the camera.

[warren63]

Great pics and very interesting colours.

[Squiggle]

Very cool, definitely a wide variety of colours there :encouragement:

[Baccus]

Thanks, the tank is housing some pygmy rainbows and threadfin rainbows along with corydoras catfish and Borneo Suckers, I usually call the tank the catfish tank. But after seeing the range of shrimp colours in the tank I think it will have to be called my Rainbow tank.

[Garnelchen]

Thanks for sharing the pics. All those different colours are quite amazing and look at all the fat berried girls. :congratulatory:

Nice! I like your Rainbow tank! :)

[Baccus]

Some more mosh pit shrimp retrieved from the goldfish pond, the well coloured brown females (or milk chocolate coloured) are ones that I would have caught a couple of days ago and have settled into the catfish/ rainbow fish tanks paramaters.

The round thing you can see in one of the pics with holes drilled in it is a home make snail trap I am trialing, so far shrimp can get in and out without issues and the bulk of the snails tend to stay in.

[warren63]

Great mix of colours and some berried females in there too.

Love to know more about your snail trap. Ive just changed liquid fertilizer in one of my tanks which has created a snail explosion.

[Baccus]

The snail trap is just the empty containers that I get fly pupae in for my birds, I have that many containers I figured they should be useful for something rather than just chuck them in the bin. I did have a commercially made snail trap but I found the small MTS just walked out between the "trapping" prongs and dopey endlers got stuck in the trap if I made the enterance big enough to allow the large MTS and ramshorns to get in.

This home made trap just has holes drilled about 2/3 up the side around the container, I did try one with the hole in the lid but it didn't work as well. You could easily make similar traps from chinese take away contianers. I am weighing the trap down with a stone and baiting it with a veggie food tap meant for Bristlenoses.

[redeye]

Cool medley of interesting colors. Do you think its half to do with what they eat or whats in the water that gives them a variety of colors. Or are they just mutating and throwing off the colors through genetics? If that makes any sense

[Baccus]

I think its actually a mix of all factors, genetics, water and food. In the pond they had possible predation by not only the goldfish but also dragonfly nymphs, plenty of algaes and plant life to nibble on as well as fallen leaves and fruit from the over hanging ice cream bean tree and some other trees. They also only got random feeds of tropical flakes when ever I happened to feed the goldfish.

Now in the tank they will still get tropical flakes along with other foods that are primarily for the catfish, loaches and rainbows, also any predation will be a lot less. I have watched the shrimp blissfully swim right past the noses of the threadfins and pygmy rainbows with no predatory interest at all shown by the fish.

And here are some photos of my home made snail trap for anyone interested.

[Wraithie]

Wow! those snails are crazy!

The shrimp should colour up a lot more in your tank compared to your pond :)

[Baccus]

Yeah, the snails where becoming a real pain in the backside, they will even swarm over any food before my catfish can get it and scoff everything. I just wish we could get assassin snails over here, but then I have heard of even assassin snails over breeding in tanks too.

At least the trap is working and even taking out the tiny babies that would normally just wonder into a trap have a feed and wonder back out again.

[Baccus]

I collected some more mixed cherries from my pond on the weekend, and a female that I found quite interesting has brown with a faint orange patch on her midsection. The only trouble is I am not sure if the orange is markings or just her eggs showing through.

[HJ V6]

hi mate how long have you been keeping shrimp in your pond for ? how do they go through winter ?

[Baccus]

I don't think the shrimp have been in the pond for a full 12 months, surviving winter really depends on if we have a cold one or a mild one. Last year we had a very mild winter, and if we have the same again I would expect the shrimp to survive without a problem.

[Baccus]

Just got back from doing another shrimp raid on my pond and these are some of the interesting ones I came across (along with about a million endler fry), one of the girls looked so dark she appeared black in the torch light at the pond.

[ineke]

Lovely shrimp. I have some nice striped shrimp in my display tank similar to your striped ones. I think from my Chocolates they also have a blue background colour. Some of the wild types are really nice even if they are culls , they are pretty in their own right.