Leaderboard

Hi All, Posting images of some of the shrimps I have kept. Its very hard to get shrimps here and you can count how many shrimp keepers are there in our country Please ignore some of the bad image qualities Blue shrimp Orange Fire Red My own prl line - which due to my mistake only is now no more. They stopped breeding and are now no more with me. But again will try this time with CBS Cross of green and zebra babaulti Zebra Crs Yellow Indian Caridina white backed Shadow Panda in 2012. We got them in India at around 2012, hand carried. Have just joined job and these things were so costly that I had sleepless nights those times. Sold them off after some days Will be getting some soon Tiger shrimp Vampire Crab, built a paludrium for them. But lost interest after some days

I will focus more on the site administration side of things and will not be moderating as much as before. @northboy and @ineke will be joining our team of retired moderators. I thank them for their time on the team and the assistance they have provided. Northboy has helped increase the wealth of knowledge around our natives and Ineke has a great initiative that we will soon announce. Free of the moderator burdens they can both now return to their daily comical banters. @Squiggle will be taking a short break from moderation duties during no doubt what is a very busy period for him. He’s been here from the start with me and a great asset to the team and will be returning once he is over his current busy period. This is a good time for everyone to hone their posting and meme skills for he has no other equal. Maybe we can do a shrimp meme off when he returns to mod duties lol @OzShrimp & @fishmosy will remain as moderators and are more than capable of handling things here. @Disciple will join the team as a moderator on our Facebook page and assist with our social media engagement.

Just an update - I've been a bit worried about these guys as they are not as vibrant as they were... but I think I've seen my first berried female and she's a whopper .. but I'm yet to get a good look at her. Have been very conscious of the water change as I think I was getting a bit slack...really need to get them in a bigger tank on a rainwater dripper.

Filled the tank so the water is a bit cloudy. Running a Fluval 306 canister on the tank. Waiting for the water to clear. the two mini bolbitis variants

From my gallery pics

Update for section 2. The chocolates are going well. They are breeding and looking good. The shrimplets are mixed grade so need to continue to cull. My blue bolts are doing well. Last update i had 2 females and one male. A couple of weeks ago one female gave birth to 8 shrimplets and all 8 were bb's. The female is now reberried then other is due very soon. I cant wait for this colony to take off. Fingers crossed they are breeding true.

Thought i might share this awsome new set up i have. I got the bottle from a mate who made it for me it is 3.5kg and it is fully modified for aquarium running food grade Co2

ok soo here she is in all her glory! wast flows in to the filter sock-> then up and over the marine pure spheres ->in to the k1 chamber-> tumble tumble tumble and out the other side to a currently empty chamber that I intend to use for random bags of media when I need to add them, carbon, chemipure that kid of thing. Then though to the return pump! I haven't put the chiller in yet because it's still cycling.

My drought is over today I found a berried Tibee in my shrimp room and at least 6 CRS in my large tank. Every winter my shrimp stop breeding- well the cherries don't but do they ever!!! So it's always nice to see the first of the season get berried. Of course the down side is I only noticed the berried girls in my big tank because I was going to empty it , put new substrate in and restock it-too late I should have done it last month! Never mind obviously the water conditions are fine the way it is. I've got berried shrimp , plants growing wildly and sword plants throwing off pups- me thinks it's telling me to leave well alone! Now if I can just stop those darn cherries breeding!!!! Gosh some people are never happy!!

Thanks Disciple we shall see how we all get on!

Dave at Aquagreen is probably the best guy to talk to with regards to the natural habitat of these guys. Alternatively you could set up a tank similar to that for Caridina serratirostris which is a very similar species.

I think that one looks slightly different in colour because I had to hold the camera at a weird angle to get the shot. Its more the yellowish colour of the first photos in real life.

Looken good mate they will like that one, 2 bolbitis? one from here and the other??, They will be AOK in your tap water, a mate in Brisvagas is keeping them and breeding them in Brisbane water and not changing it When the weather warms up here I will go and get some of the green ones and send some to you and Kiz to play with Bob PS looks like short creeks bio but where is the water fall LOL

A thread with some info on keeping macros http://shrimpkeepersforum.com/forum/topic/6535-mum-and-dad-maybe/

The best way by far is Native Nerite snails, they are better than Bristlenose by a mile and don't eat plant, one draw back, some dig in the substrate, so far there has not been a issue for me and I use laterite under my substrate Bob

I'm actually going to have a big cull soon. I want to improve the grades of my CBS and CRS so quite a few need to go. The question is can I bear to part with them or do I resserect some old tanks???

Great news, my confusa is berried.

Yeah what Bob said! You can buy red nylon safety blades on ebay, won't cut you and even better won"t scratch your glass. If you use steel blades better make sure they're brand spankin new. They rust quick in a fish room and any little imperfection on the blade scratches glass. The "Flipper" cleaners are the best if you want a magnetic one. They're not cheap but worth the money if you like magnet cleaners and use them regularly. FWIW I made a decent scraper from a piece of clear acrylic, cut the blade on a bench grinder and cleaned it up with some wet dry sand paper. Works great and I got it the same day i needed it, no wait time. Oz you could try reducing the light cycle rather than intensity, some shrimpers seem to like a couple of hours off in the middle of the day. Or you could try "AlgaeFix" (Aquarium Pharmaceuticals) - research it yourself. You'll find reports of everything from "100% shrimp safe" to "killed everything". Tom Barr says it kills about 30% of shrimp in some tanks and I trust him to have got the dose rate correct. Sometimes blackwater additives reduce algae growth - that would include IAL etc. The tannins are the inhibitor. Barley straw releases something that stops algae growth so you could try a liquid barley extract (try pond suppliers inc. Bunnings) or barley pellets/fermented straw. These options are shrimp safe but possibly less effective. If you have 4 months you should be right.

Dibs on his second lot culls from those shrimp lol. Great quality looking CRS @Gbang

Cut back the amount of light is the trick and a couple of Bristlenose will help big time. I also bought some plastic razor blades, safety type and they are BRILLIANT, safety as in one sided and they are red colour, work a treat Bob

cjwuna, have a look at the Shrimp Tank Setup subforum for a view of what substrate people use. But in short there are Cal Aqua Labs Black Earth Premium, ADA Aquasoil, Benibachi Fulvic Grain that is available in Aus which is highly recommended by many shrimpkeepers for Caridina shrimp (CRS, CBS, TB). I like CAL Black Earth Premium, since I find it less dirty (unwanted debris) than ADA or Benibachi. CAL BEP also cycles faster than ADA, and does not release as much ammonia like ADA. When moving plants around, there is less "stuff" kicked up to cloud the water. ADA seems to kick up a huge amount of debris that clouds the water. Benibachi seems to fall in between CAL BEP and ADA in every aspect (My observations only). You can't go wrong choosing one of these 3 substrates. Just make sure you cycle them properly, especially ADA substrates, they will take a lot longer. The lower premium products are Ista, Mr Aqua, Up Aqua etc. These are cheaper and don't buffer for as long as the first 3 mentioned above. As a result they can also be used for Neocaridina shrimp. For Neocaridina shrimp (cherries, rilli, etc), you can use any inert gravel or substrate like pebbles, sand, or what I do sometimes based on availability - I use old spent plant substrate, ie my old ADA or benibachi substrate. I seem to never throw out old substrate. Our sponsor Tech Den also sell Shirakura Bee Sand substrate. It's not a new product, but it's new to Aus. I have not used it, but it seems to be ok from what I have read about it. Very similar to CAL BEP. Good pH control at 6.5, buffers a long time, does not cloud the water at startup. Cycles quickly. SKF sponsor Age of Aquariums also stock a lot of plant/shrimp substrates. They also have Fluval shrimp substrates, which currently would be ranked in the between the premium substrates and inert gravels. Good for Neocaridina or Tiger shrimps. You can also find other substrates like Seachem Flourite, Ecocomplete or Dupla Ground, that are generally inert which is great for Neocaridina shrimp. They might contain some minerals that plants can use but generally do not buffer the water to maintain the pH, KH, GH for Caridina shrimps. But why pay more for such susbtrate when you can get cheaper inert gravels. Hope this helps you choose a substrate.

no worries look forward to it :)

Maybe selectively breeding tips? I'm working on CRS with an intention of having a solid and clear whites and reds. Food enhancing their well being and increasing shrimplet survival

Do these count as blue? They were my chocolate cherries with blue gene :D

Time to post up some of the pictures from my recent trip to Cairns with Northboy aka Bob. Once again massive thanks to Bob and Linda for putting me up for the extended weekend. I flew into Cairns at around 8.15am and by 9am we were at our first location sampling some typus and longirostris. When we got there, we were quite worried that there might not be enough water (or shrimp). Our worries were not justified though. Some habitat shots The typus were found in their greatest numbers hanging onto the white roots of the surrounding trees that grew down into the water. And here it is Unfortunately I wasn't able to get good pictures of the variation in colour of these shrimp. We were also able to find lots of longirostris. Below is a small sample after about 15 mins of netting. And here is why you need to keep a lid on your buckets. Typus and longirostris are very good climbers! Also found this little guy. Further upstream Through the culvert was a moss wall And after grabbing some moss samples, we headed off to the next spot in Cairns. And the result of this trip - a shot of my typus in my tank at home today.