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After a sad failed attempt at keeping/ breeding chocolate/ black cherry shrimp in a small tank (failed thanks to some sneaky damselfly nymphs), I gave up and ended up putting the couple of sole survivors in with my colony of Red cherrys. Then I had a drama with a malfunctioning heater that cooked most of the Red Cherry Shrimp colony. Now quite a few months later I am slowly getting the reds almost back to the quality I want, and the bland old wild type cherry shrimp I ended up with I put in my fish pond. After some time I ended up finding some more chocolates in the pond and I rescued them and thought I would try them again but this time in a tank with some fish so less chance of another nymph incident. Now here are my ambitions..... This lovely black girl I am hoping to get breeding with some of my darkest chocolate males until I get an entire tank of blacks like this stunner. Then there is this rather nice but not so obliging Red that is the goal for the Red Cherry Tank.

I love it when a plan comes together. I bred some Caridina typus and swapped them for another 10 zebs so I'm back in the saddle. From the outset I've got them in a tank at floor level (2C cooler than top of the rack), with a constant rainwater drip. We're going into cooler weather (+1) and as of today there is fresh rainwater in the tanks (+2). Therefore, the tank conditions over the next few months should be about as good as they can ever get. The only additional "levers" I can think of that I could pull are: 1) food - going to feed a lot less than before (if at all!) and keep the tank much cleaner. 2) water chemistry (pH, KH, GH) - keeping EC < 100µS/cm. My pH from rainwater is ~6. We really dont know enough about these shrimp - maybe they would benefit from a fancy shrimp soil or a little shell grit in the substrate... but in the absence of information I'm going to leave mine on the inert sand and let the constant supply of fresh rainwater be the stabilising factor. They'll have considerably more water changeover than I had last time with an aim to lower the bacterial counts in the water with no waterchange-day shocks. (the tank overflow ends up in another rainwater tank that is used to water the vege garden!).

After I loss all my tangerines and local zebra during summer, I patiently wait for temperatures to cool down... Now, it's really more affordable, and my tank have gone down to 25~27°C, and I decided this week-end to go back hunting local zebras. Here is what I collected this saturday: Also found some nice Eriocaulon sp.

This is still a draft now final but can still be updated to accommodate new info. Please help me refine the terminology, and let me know if I have forgotten anything that has to be included. Common Terminology Tigers, Crystals and Taiwan Bees will all breed together. Here are some common terms or names that are used in the Shrimp hobby to describe various shrimp. The following picture from rah-bop will paint a better image as we go through the descriptions. Refer back to this picture as you read the descriptions. (Click to expand) What is a Tibee? A tibee is a hybrid between any Tiger (OEBT - orange eye blue tiger or also blonde tiger) - and usually a Taiwan Bee (TB) OR can also be hybrid between any Tiger and Crystals - CBS (Crystal Black Shrimp) and CRS (Crystal Red Shrimp). The preference is to cross with a Taiwan Bee. Since TBs are rarer and more expensive, you might not have enough TBs to breed. Using a Tiger as a partner to the Taiwan Bee, will ensure some genes are carried over when you cross the Tibee back with the Taiwan Bee parent. It's offspring could yield some Taiwan Bees. Crystals are more common. So a Tibee from TigerXCrystal is not as sought after. But nature can throw up some amazing colours from this hybrid too. I am working on a TigerXCRS myself to try to get some Red Tiger tibees. What is a TaiTibee? A Taitibee is a Tibee crossed back with a Taiwan Bee. What is a Pinto? A Pinto is a colour variation and type of Taitibee. There are 3 variants of patterns: Spotted Head Zebra Fancy - Such as skunk pattern and cloud patterns. The creative name for skunk pattern is derived from the black-and-white pattern, which very much resembles that of a skunk, especially due to the pattern on the head. And as the name suggests, the Cloud pattern very much resembles clouds shapes on the head of the shrimp. Colouration of pintos generally come in either black or red base. Black Zebra Pinto Red Zebra Pinto Cloud Pinto Skunk Pinto What is a Mischling? Mischling is a German word for "crossbreed" (plural: Mischlinge). A mischling (in the shrimp hobby) is a hybrid cross between Crystals and Taiwan Bees. When this crossbred mischling is crossed with another CRS, it's genetics are diluted, and you get a small % of Taiwan Bees. When mischlings are crossed with another mischling it's genetics are even more diluted. And the % of TB are even smaller to the point of never getting a TB. It's like striking Lotto. However, when you cross a mischling back with a Taiwan Bee, you get a larger % of TBs, but with the added benefit of strengthening it's gene pool when it's original parents were mixed with a CRS. BlueBolts has already started an excellent sticky thread on Mischling here: http://shrimpkeepersforum.com/forum/index.php/topic/714-minchlings/ This article is a supplement to information already on SKF. It is by no means trying to supersede any information found elsewhere. Here is an excellent explanation from Ineke as well “Taiwan Bees crossed with Crystals give Mischlings which are then crossed back to Taiwan Bees to help people get to their goals quicker in having more Taiwan Bees (TB) however on this forum we like to let people know when Mischling bloodlines appear in our breeding so more initials are added. If you get a King Kong (KK) Bluebolt (BB), Panda or any other TB from a TB/ Mischling cross we like to let people know by saying we have a KK(TBM)-King Kong from TB / Mischling. If you are lucky enough to get a TB. From 2 Mischlings it would be a KK (TBMM) or whatever type of TB you have. This just keeps people honest and let's buyers know that they will get a percentage of Mischlings from their TBM / TBMM. Nothing worse than having Mischlings showing up in your TB. Breeding program when you thought you had purebreds". What is a Tibee cross Mischling? To my knowledge, this has not been given a common name yet. It's still a Caridina Cantonensis. It's still a bee shrimp. It is just a different colour variant. Let's call this variant a "Tischling" for now (03Oct2014), unless someone can confirm a common name that pre-dates this name. This Tischling is an uncommon hybrid, possibly because the desirable genetic traits are too diluted and takes the shrimp keeper further away from achieving desirable goals. Not when there are easier and faster breeding choices that would achieve the same goal. Like for instances, using the Tibee or Mischling to be crossed back to a pure Tiger, Crystal or Taiwan Bee. A hybrid Mischling might carry recessive traits, and is unseen (like a specific colour), and crossing it with another hybrid Tibee would be like trying to get a certain colour (say red), from something that doesn't show any colour. A complete guess.

The temperature in New Cal start to cool down. Here are sound critters found in a creek of the New Cal west coast. This one is just 5mm long :

So an update. Whole striata population exterminated due to accident (I tried to sterilize aqua because I tought that leeches are present). No3 rose up to 50. All of that begun with death of one tylomelania. After 3 months I found out that leeches were actually kind of planaria and hydra. After no planaria overdose both planaria and hydra died. Only 5 denerli were still alive but those 5 starts to reproduce recently and youngligs seems to be strong and happy :) Odoslané z LG-D855 pomocou Tapatalku I made some changes in tank. Whole soil has been changed. Recently Ive got ground filter connected to external filtratio tetra ex600 plus. Filter is covered by matrix, big size rocks (white) with Onyx (found onyx sand in Poland). Aditives: tourmaline bc and clear carbo from ada, beninachi beemax plus, mironekuton and shirakura, bettaglucan from glassgarden and mosura sea mud. Added chihiros doctor shrimp Odoslané z LG-D855 pomocou Tapatalku

A low EC/TDS and a low pH (6) should be enough to keep bacterial counts low. I've considered a UV in the past but I think it would be unnecessary overkill and may add some extra heat to the tank water.

How things have changed! Current layout of this tank is as follows: Divided into two 2 foot sections, UGF filters - Seachem Matrix - Benibachi soil capped with powder. Eheim 2217 on left section with Hailea chiller, Aqua One Nautilus 800 on right section Biospon Sponge filters with ceramic noodle in media section Twin 150W Jager Heaters both sides. Air is provided via a PondOne 4000 air pump with DIY manifold in 30mm poly which works great. Will try and update this journal a bit more now that ive remembered my login password!

Thank you!

Another fun fact: Radulae are actually some of the hardest structures formed by a living organism! Made of mostly silicon and iron, the "teeth" are the closest thing we've found to biosynthetic steel. Pretty cool for just being a snail!

Hi Guys, I'm from South Africa and planning to do some shrimp breeding. Busy getting everything ready for my rack and getting prices for my tanks. Hope to learn lots from the forums. Cheers, William

Hi all! Very nice pics Damien! How was the water flow in the creek you got them in? Was it deep? Were they on the banks of the creek or in the middle where water flows faster (I presume)? Just trying to know which species can be found in different conditions around here. :) Here are some of mine, I'm guessing they are Paratyas? Not sure about that, they do look similar to Paratya Australiensis to me, and after trying to ID them with the help of our local book, I'm not sure, my biggest "Paratya" female (berried since last week) is exactly 30mm long, and the book mentions individuals up to 27mm, not more. Most of them come from a creek near Mt. Mou, I also have some Caridinas in there, but they were harder to take pics of. The red one is my pride (and she's berried too - yay!), she comes from a small creek just outside Nouméa, she was caught with a couple other reddish females (not as much as her), a couple quite colored red males and an interesting blue male. There were also some "tiger" patterns in some of the other shrimp caught that day, mainly yellow stripes on a blue/dark body, I'll try to get new pics when they possible. These pics are a couple weeks old, they were taken with a friend's camera and I just got them a couple days earlier. First, the "Big Momma" as we call her: Here she is flirting with a male on the driftwood, no wonder she's berried now :) The flirting male went to tell his buddy about it: And finally, the berried red Caridina (she shows the same tiger stripes pattern as the others mentioned above in my post): I really want to isolate the red individuals but I first need to find and cycle a decent tank for them. I'd also like to isolate the "tiger" phenotype but that means another tank, as you all know... :) Cheers everyone, have a nice day!

Great shots, and amazing to see. Just a little creepy in that they remind me of something from Alien (or other such si-fi horror flicks). It would be great if you could do a series of the different mouth parts of various snails kept in aquaria.

Work has started on the poster, any comments appreciated. The article that the poster will be attached to will include real photos of the various graded shrimp as well.

Interesting observation yesterday... one female with a smaller shrimp (assume male) riding around on her back as if giving a piggyback. A second "male" approaches... climbs onto the fist. So now we have a 3 high stack..all facing the same way with the female walking around... along comes a third who climbs on board (so one female walking around with 3 males clinging to her back) then #2 got displaced and eventually #3 gives up. After 10 mins the female is still walking around with male #1 clinging to her "shoulders". Courtship by attrition? ... or persistence? I ran for the camera... and of course there was nothing to see when I got back. *rage*.