Jump to content

SKF welcomes Winglet to our community


skfadmin

Recommended Posts

Hello Winglet, Welcome to Shrimp Keepers Forum. Please feel free to browse around and get to know others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. regards, skfadmin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

Welcome to SKF. Plenty to see and learn here. Feel free to ask any questions someone will be sure to answer. We love to see photos of shrimp and your setup. Hope you enjoy our forum.        :welcome:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi skfadmin & ineke.  Thanks for approving my request to join up.

 

 

I'm a shrimp virgin, and have only recently (just five days ago) obtained 10 cherry red shrimp for my husband (he was the one who wanted them, but it will be me doing all the "keeping" of them). 

 

I did a bit of research before taking the plunge, although now that I have them, the more I read about them the more I worry about water parameters (mainly hardness, which I hadn't been measuring until after we got them... damned aquarium shops !), waterborne nasties (again, the aquarium shops we went to never told us that sticking the wood in 'raw' wasn't ideal), and wondering if their behaviour is normal & healthy or if they're being a great deal less active than they should be.

 

I can't count all ten in the cover they've been provided, and I do know that at least one has died.  Most days I can count four females (all with eggs) although the sole berried one hasn't been seen since day 1 & the smaller, paler males (I'm presuming that they're males rather than juveniles) are nowhere to be seen.  I'm hoping it's my eyesight but fear it's my poor husbandry.

 

I have just one little 10 litre tank for their shrimp-only setup, which lives in our bedroom on a chest of drawers, but we've already been investigating other tanks in case of future expansion.  We have a 3 foot cold water tank that houses our axolotyl, Rosie, (a couple of years old now) & her feeder fish, a number of who have survived for many months quite happily with her (the survivors are some zebra danios, both "regular" & long-finned varieties).

 

I LOVE the aquascaping efforts people display on SKF, in addition to the amazing shrimp that are available.  The two combined are stunning.  When I figure out how to post photos, I will add photos of some of the shrimp in our tank that I took on day 1.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi welcome. Sounds like you have been bitten by the shrimp bug. Many of us started out the same way with a few cherries and a small tank, which quickly turns into plans for more! Any questions, please dont hesitate to ask.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi welcome. Sounds like you have been bitten by the shrimp bug. Many of us started out the same way with a few cherries and a small tank, which quickly turns into plans for more! Any questions, please dont hesitate to ask.

 

Bitten by the shrimp bug... and chewed up a bit to boot !    Cute little tikes, they are, that's for sure.

 

 

Welcome to the forum, hope you have as much fun here as we do! :welcome:

 

I'm tipping I will.... having done some minimal lurking before joining.

 

 

 

 

I'm very pleased to say that I counted 8 shrimp today... four definite females, including one berried one (with no rhyme nor reason I"m going to presume she's the one who we acquired in that state)... one definite juvenile female (saddled, but quite small & pale) & three others that I'm guessing are males.

 

I freaked for a bit as I saw the berried female on the underside of some floating wood, and thought she was feasting on a dead male (or whatever might have been growing on his decomposing body).  A very gentle prod with a long plastic aquarium "stick" I have, and they both swam off perfectly alive.  I swear they laughed at me as they swam off !!!  (**tricked her... ha ha ha ha ha**)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • HOF Member

Oh dear be prepared to waste hours and hours looking into that tank! The cherries are fairly hardy and forgiving so a good shrimp to start with. There are heaps of threads about water parameters and general care of shrimp but just look around and ask heaps of questions.Unfortunately a lot of pet shops and local fish shops still don't know a lot about shrimp and either the wrong or no information is given when people buy their shrimp.  The really good thing about this forum is most of us remember we were beginners once so no question is a silly question and it's the way we all learn. I'm still seeing things that I think woo I didn't know that and I've had my shrimp for over 2 years.

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

    • sdlTBfanUK
      Thats a great photo, beautiful blue bolt, I hope it survived the molt without dropping the eggs! I think I can just about see some black dots (eyes) on the central egg but can't be 100% sure. I used to (and plan to again) do weekly water change of 10-15% but if you do too large or quick (not drip in new water) that would likely trigger a molt. What KH are they in, my new setup is sitting at (and refusing to budge) KH 3 and PH 7.5 so I may have to settle for neocaridina shrimp this time as opposed to the caridina I want, though not looking/deciding just yet, give the tank a bit more of a run in! Tap water here starts at kH 14, tds 320, when filtered goes to KH 0 and PH 6 but when put in the tank keeps going to KH3 and PH 7.5 despite 3 x 50% water changes???? You may be at 'maximum capacity' with only 20L tank especially if the tank is a cube type rather than shallow type?
    • beanbag
      Right now this tank only has blue bolts and golden bee (red bolts?).  The eggs start off all brown, but at the end, I notice that some are kind of a clear pink-ish color.  So I don't know if that is the egg color of dud or golden bee.  Picture of shrimp only about half hour before molting. The water is always RO + remineralizer, so it should be ok. The tank seems to still be on a "good streak" ever since I started the regimen of weekly water change, monthly gravel vac and plant trim.  The point being to keep the amount of waste low and removing moss / floating plants so that the nitrates go towards growing algae.  At one point, I had three berried females, but only netted about half dozen babies by the end, due to this early molting problem.  There might be about 30-40 shrimp total in 5 gallons, but still very few full-sized adults.
    • ngoomie
      Alright, I've done a bit more research on gentian violet's cancer-causing potential but I haven't yet done research on malachite green's to compare. But from reading the California propositon 65 document about GV (North Americans incl. some Canadians will recognize this as the law that causes some products they buy to be labelled with "known to the state of California to cause cancer", including the exact product I bought) it seems that the risk of cancer is related to internal use, either injection or ingestion. Speaking of ingestion, I think GV bans mainly relate to its use in treating fish/shrimp/etc. which are intended for human consumption, because of the above. And in countries where GV isn't banned for this purpose, it does seem to get used on various species of shrimp without causing any issue for the shrimp themselves (at least enough so for shrimp farming purposes). See the following: In February, the FDA Began Rejecting Imported Shrimp for Gentian Violet and Chloramphenicol (2022 article by Southern Shrimp Alliance) FDA Starts New Calendar Year by Refusing Antibiotic-Contaminated Shrimp from Three BAP-Certified Indian Processors and Adding a BAP-Certified Vietnamese Processor to Import Alert (2024 article by Southern Shrimp Alliance) Southern Shrimp Alliance and some other organizations have tons of other articles in this vein, but I'd be here for a while and would end up writing an absolutely massive post if I were to link every instance I found of articles mentioning shrimp shipments with gentian violet and/or leucogentian violet registering as contaminants. That being said, I know shrimp farmed for consumption and dwarf shrimp are often somewhat distantly related (in fact, the one time a shrimp's species name is listed that I can see, it's the prawn sp. Macrobrachium rosenbergii, who at best occupies the same infraorder as Neocaridina davidi but nothing nearer), but this at least gives a slightly better way of guessing whether it will be safe for aquarium dwarf shrimp or not than my bladder snail anecdote from the OP.
    • sdlTBfanUK
      I would hazard a guess that perhaps those eggs were unfertilized and thereby unviable? Did the eggs change colour, usually yellow to grey as the yolks used up, or any eyes in the eggs. Is your water ok, using RO remineralised and the parameters in range, as I have heard others say that if the water isn't good it can 'force' a molt? How is it going overall, do you have a good size colony in the tank, you may have reached 'maximum occupancy' as a tank can only support so many occupants.
    • beanbag
      Hello folks,  The current problem I am having is that my Taiwan bee shrimp are molting before all their eggs have hatched.  Often the shrimp keep the eggs for 40+ days.  During that time, they lose about half or so, either due to dropping or duds or whatever.  Shortly before molting they look to have about a dozen left, and then they molt with about half a dozen eggs still on the shell.  Then the other shirmp will come and eat the shell.  These last few times, I have been getting around 0-3 surviving babies per batch.  I figure I can make the eggs hatch faster by raising the water temperature more (currently around 68F, which is already a few degrees higher than I used to keep it) or make the shrimp grow slower by feeding them less (protein).  Currently I feed Shrimp King complete every other day, and also a small dab of Shrimp Fit alternating days.  Maybe I can start alternating with more vegetable food like mulberry?  or just decrease the amount of food?
×
×
  • Create New...