SKF Interviews 2 - Paul Minnet

[Disciple]

Good afternoon my fellow Shrimp Keepers,

I hope you are all having a great weekend, as promised the 2nd installment of the SKF interview.

Today I have one of our own, Paul Minnet. He is a very well respected member of the shrimp keeping community and is a admin for a couple of the most popular shrimp related facebook groups in Australia and Overseas when he isn't to busy with his own business or his admin duties he is looking after his massive 21 sectioned RACK!!! 

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

PM - I have had aquariums on and off most of my life have had at least one tank continuously now for over 25 years. In that time I have kept most types of fish. I discovered the joys of shrimp a few years ago while looking for an algae clean up crew like most of us started out with some reasonable red cherry and the rest is history.

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

PM - I mostly do weekly Water changes 20% roughly on all tanks I clean up duckweed plants etc. every couple of weeks. clean filters every couple of months.

Question 2 - What is your favorite additive/products?

PM -  I don’t really have a favourite additive I have tried a few different additives and booster products but generally feel there is no replacement for a healthy tank.

Question 3 - What is your worst shrimp experience?

PM - My worst experience is my recent disaster from rushing stocking the new rack and not allowing it time to establish and settle properly in the haste I caused too much instability and crashed the system and lost all my tb misch and tibee.

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

PM - The biggest myth I think is that shrimp require a small specific range of conditions to do well I have found this to be very untrue and that you can keep most shrimp in a wide range of conditions as long as the tank has a healthy biosphere.

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

PM - I feed dried anchovy fillets at times as well as dried shitake mushrooms which is probably a little odd.

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

PM - When selective breeding don’t always look for the best shrimp occasionally you can do better with the ugly duckling. ultimately but you are looking for desirable traits in the shrimp be it colour size vigour etc.

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

PM - Shrimp genetics is still somewhat of a mystery I think there is a lot of interesting varieties being produced from taitibee lines. There is still a lot of room for new lines to come out of keeping pure lines in both cherry and bees still a few colours to be achieved.

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

PM - I use two mineral products primarily seachem equilibrium for gh and seachem reef builder for kh and ph I aim for a ball park range of 6.8-7.2 ph gh 3-5 kh 1-2 tds 160-190 using rain water.

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

PM - A varied diet of fresh foods like peas zucchini etc combined with a mic of commercial shrimp foods as well as things like rolled oats dried shitake mushroom etc. I find helpful to supplement there main food source from the tank environment.

baby survival I think depends more on the tanks biosphere than it does on food you supply.

Question 10 - How often do you cull?

PM - I cull regularly picking out the rejects as you see them. I pick a grade point that is the minimum standard I want for the colony and reject everything that doesn’t meet that level.

Question 11 - What is your funniest shrimp experience?

PM - One of the more amusing moments would have been recently trying to take photos of the shrimp in the top tank of the rack I was standing on a bench seat with the camera and tripod setup on a second seat.

I stepped back to focus for the pic the chair I was standing on tipped back nearly knocking me and the dslr camera and tripod onto the floor would of been very funny to watch but I wasn’t amused and haven’t tried it again since.

I wanted say on behalf of SKF and its members, Thank you. Lastly Paul has also agreed to become a member of the admin on our facebook group "Shrimp Keepers Community". 

[NoGi]

Great write up, keep them coming.

[JacksonL]

Really liking these interviews. I'm learning a lot from them.

[Disciple]

I am glad you like it and you are learning from it.

Those were my two main goals for these interviews. The third is to show that everyone thinks and does things differently.

[OzShrimp]

Im intrigued about those seachem products mentioned in question 8. I think if i could adjust ph and what not by that means i could save money going away from shrimp soil and back to an inert gravel

[Gbang]

Great interview! Thanks paul :) and basri for organising this!