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Dude, are you serious? I could be making this up for all you know, haha. But thank you so much, @NoGi! It's all I seem to get from all you shrimpos - kindness, generosity and long, time-consuming paragraphs explaining the best way to do things that I should already know. In a recent trade I had someone send $150+ worth of plants to me without hesitation or any form of collateral, and that was someone I was talking to on a forum for only a few days!

Fair trading won't give a hoot about a private 2nd hand sale via Gumtree. How did the guy raise a second PayPal dispute? I thought PayPal only allowed for one to be raised and when closed tough luck. A bit of bad luck lately for you so I'll share some SKF love. PM me your address and I'll send you a little SKF something. I need to check the box. Include your shirt size in case I have any left.

I still think these shelters look like nudibranch eggs. :) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wow stoked with that cheers guys and a massive thanks to Baz and Jamie for organising the comp and the prizes

Congrats @Ronskitz you have won the last prize. pm me!

Let him goto department of fair trading your not a registered business so they cant do crap to you. Record your conversation you have with him for the sake of paypal if it comes to it but it looks shonky on his part to make a claim then cancel and make a new one lol. Paypal is also based in america and I have heard some instances where they are unable to do anything anyway. If he fails with paypal then his only option is to sue you in civil court and kudos to him if he tries lol cause I highly doubt he would be successful. Probably be to much hassle for him anyway going to legal aid to get free representation. I wouldnt feel guilty I would tell him you will quiet happily wait to deal with paypal or tell him that you will be awaiting a summons to civil court because you already have a fairly strong brief of evidence. There is no way in hell he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt (providing they operate on the same basis of criminal court) that you have deliberately misrepresented yourself and ripped him off. Its for reasons like this idiot that I have a PO box and no one gets my address unless i know who you are off a forum or its a documented sale like through ebay.

Hi All so after many many many many PM/Email/SMS/calls etc etc all asking similar questions about building and plumbing rack systems for shrimp, so when a friend asked me a few weeks back i decided to draw up a blue print Guideline to save me trying to explain everything over and over. So With these simple drawings you can understand the most basic way of plumbing up a system. The way i have drawn it is what works best for me and it is the way i have plumbed up all 64 tanks in my various systems now. you can modify any of the fittings and pipe to suit the size of your system but the lay out is tried and proven and works perfect. so i will start with the Over Flow (water going from tanks to sump) In the picture below you will see on the notes that i use 40mm pipe everywhere except the upstands (pipe going to bulkheads) this is to allow for the larger volume of water that passes though this pipe as its draining from every tank. The pipe that runs up the outside beside the tank with an end cap needs to have a hole drilled in the top (5mm) This pipe's purpose is as a noise reduction, if you dont have this you will get more noise in the pipes from the water. The next is the return. (water going from the sump into the tanks) For the return plumbing the pipe size is all the same, as a rule i always use the same size return pipe as the upstands used on overflow pipes. the only important thing to remember about this part of the plumbing is to make sure your corners use 2x 45 elbows to make the corner turn. If you use a 90 elbow it restricts the flow a little and makes the pump work harder than it needs to. You will notice there are 2 ball valves, one on each row of outlets before the pipe going into the individual tanks. This is to control the flow of water to each rack so it flows evenly as the first row of tanks will get more pressure from the pump than the top row, so you can reduce the pressure at the bottom to get the same pressure at the top :) Its always good to put a UV inline also as a bit of back up against any bacterial problems or algae blooms :) feel free to ask the questions on this thread so everyone can benefit from the sharing of info ;)

Since you all seem to love videos and shrimp! Here is a bit of both! :D This is cheating a little since it was back when I was breeding these guys but you get the idea. I only had one female and when she molted it was ON! They males went nuts looking for her!

I agree with a lot of what Fishmosy says although I'm not quite as strict as him. However we should clear up about what some of us class as culls. I call anything I don't want to use in my projects as culls. They aren't necessarily low grade but don't have the patterns or depth of colour I now want. Low grade shrimp are a different thing in my mind. Low grade are always low grade and should be kept out of the hobby. Not all culls are necessarily low grade just not up to the standard of a particular breeder. I can remember when a lot of us couldn't wait until certain breeders did a cull so we could buy their shrimp to improve our shrimp So we should point out there are culls and there are low grade poor quality shrimp that should never be bred with and this is why I have a cull tank for low grades that I won't use and won't give away and a pond outside for the last of my Neos. When it comes to my hybrids it's a bit different as there are no standards but still I take out any shrimp that have poor colour and strive to get that depth of colour and full coverage of colour as required in all types of shrimp

I've had some luck since we discussed this subject. I've just found eves on one of my soon to be pride and joy :-) Sent from my SM-N920I using Tapatalk

That's what makes our community so great [emoji4]

Wow that's a lot of questions there Will! Good ones though. I don't know that there are any hard and fast rules on culling. It can depend on the type of shrimp you are breeding too. With some shrimp you know almost straight away if they are keepers or not but in some groups it pays to wait until they are a bit more mature - I have put many Neos into my cull tank only to find they have matured into very nice shrimp. What do I do with culls -first if you are going to feed culls to fish please make sure the fish are big enough to quickly dispose of the shrimp. Small fish will take pieces out of shrimp but may not be able to quickly kill them. I have not so far resorted to feeding mine to fish but it's part of nature and big fish will quickly chase and eat shrimp. I do have a cull tank for my Taitibees as they can grow into or out of a pattern so if I don't want to use them initially I can at least keep an eye on them. I give many of these away and sell others off cheaply. my CRS I keep until about 3 months now as by then you can see if their colours are good and if there is full coverage of the colour without clear areas or muddy whites. Culls go for free or very cheaply, so far I have had no deformities so have not had to euthanise any of them. Good colour is more important than pattern so I go for a good S or SS grade but if I find high A grade I would use that. I do let my colony get to about 50 then cull right back to the best shrimp - maybe 10-12 - and start again. I believe it is better to introduce a few really good males into a colony and remove all inferior males . Not because of any sex linked genetics but a few high grade males can breed with many females and that is a quicker way of introducing better genetics into a colony. I know some of our top breeders may only pick 2 or 3 shrimp from each drop of babies to keep up their high grade colonies. i use 24" tanks for breeding purposes. Because I breed a large number of Taitibees I pick patterns and put those patterns into tanks rather than a specific male and female. I have similar patterns in red and black so have a tank for each pattern in each colour. If I find new patterns within those tanks I put the new pattern into a seperate tank - I'm lucky to have 10 breeding tanks plus my cull tank and 2 larger tanks . I can partition my tanks if I get too many projects happening - I have some removable home made partitions that I can put in to give me 2 x 1 foot tanks but rarely do. when I bred Rilis I culled very heavily - but not until the shrimp were about 1 cm. if they had any spots or lines in their clear section or if their coloured sections weren't a good strong red I would cull them. Some females with a few flaws were used to build up numbers but were still culled after 1 or 2 lots of babies.

F11

hey @neo-2FX a lot better than it has been. I decided to basically stop reading forums, reviews, articles and just leave the tank alone and it has been a lot more successful than it was. No issue with nitrates and I no longer do many tests on the water, change have a semi-serious routine. I still have the odd deaths but the shrimplets are surviving a lot more so I am happier. Fingers crossed it continues.

I "C1" more prize left that one of us pure blood lines can bolt out of the blue with, or am I just a Blonde orange eyed blue tiger hungry for more shrimp?

You and me both! I get told by the wife to! Why are all the hobbies i choose expensive lol. Nice post reply though!

SKF may feel like a community to you but once you have been here and active long enough it becomes more like a family :)

Hi @Cornell333, There are many ways to skin a cat. I have tasked myself with testing almost any available food out there available for shrimp. The short answer, 'best' is a very liberal term depending on what you are willing to spend on your shrimp. There are also many shrimp foods available such as all in one everyday foods, specialty, and supplemental. The truth is that you do not need any shrimp food at all if you have good biofilm supply as most vitamins, fatty acids and proteins are obtained from bacterial film directly. It depends on what shrimp you have, and what you are willing to spend. You can have perfectly happy, healthy breeding shrimp in good condition on a generic store brand fish flake. If you want to specifically pay attention to fertility, exoskeletal health, colour etc there is a food out there to match and people have various and strong opinions about what works for them. My personal opinion is that less is more. The less altered a product is, the more natural ingredient you are putting in your tank: it is more realistic that a dried organic nettle leaf falls into a pond naturally compared to a Pellet with glucomannan, synthesised vitamins etc. I find shrimp keeping a very expensive hobby ( I might be doing it wrong!), so I prefer to pay a little extra to have peace of mind that my shrimp have the best odds of not developing deficiencies long term, because that would almost be impossible to identify. And losing shrimp for whatever reason hits you financially as buying new ones is not cheap- even cherries add up. So I try and give them the best odds. Mosura, Benibachi, Shirakura are the most reputable and well known brands out there. The best quality brand of minimally altered products I have come across is the Dennerle Shrimp King range. In Australia, there is a locally owned brand called Boss Aquaria: the shrimp love the products I have tried ( and still have to review), and are made of natural ingredients that they disclose- I just have an issue with the ingredients that they are not disclosing on the packets ( I understand that it might be a copyright issue)- to be fair, most Asian market shrimp foods also do not disclose ingredients either. There are also pocket-friendly highly processed food like Fluval shrimp granules or Hikari: highly processed, but very nutritious and the manufacturer focuses on 'minimal waste'. As a person with biochemical background, I can confidently say that whichever option you choose, your shrimp will be fine as long as you give them variety and culture your biofilm ( that is a whole separate blog). Compare shrimp feeding to dog feeding: all brands have one aim: to sell you their brand which they believe has its strong points and merits and is marketed to you that way. The food review section on the forum has been going since 2012 and plenty of information available on there. As to how much and how often: everyone has a different opinion as well. I find that feeding whatever they can eat in 3 hours max and then removing the remainder works really well, if you have starvation concerns you can always add shrimp snow as bacteria and fungus grow on the soy bean shells. Good luck! ?

Yes, I caught it from the wild. Though, I didn't find it in the book listing local species. Then, I remember that in the 60's, they introduced the Black Bass in the Yate's lake - probably one of the more stupid things they have ever done - for promoting "sport fishing" After the Black bass destroyed about everything, it is said they try introducing taiwanese shrimps and Tilapia Mozambica to build a live stock for feeding the Black Bass... When you are stupid, you stay stupid... That being said, I started searching, thinking this shrimp was a caridina cantonensis, more probably a wild Black Crystal, but the wild Black Crystal has orange/yellowish spots on the nose and the tail. Then, I found the Hue Bee. Pictures of this vietnamese shrimp are showing exactely the same than I caught. For these reasons, I'm pretty sure this shrimp is not an endemic one. I'm going to the spot today and see if I can catch some more. I will keep you updated ;)

That isn't a bad thing? If you were to set up a new tank with a new filter and let the tank cycle. Better to have lots of ammonia for the filter to cycle properly and know that after all your water changes and so on when you test the WP the tank is complete and ready for your shrimp. I use Africana, up aqua soil and a few other of which do not leach ammonia and I still always get a couple hand fulls of Amazonia and put it in a net and let it hang it the tank to help cycle my tanks. Rather it take a month and be good rather than rushing. I had one tank that I rushed and it was fine for a few weeks and then about $200 dollars of shrimp started dying :(

Hey she came back pretty good haha and now she is berried. I did do a water change which lowered my ph a little bit. Thanks

Well said Ineke.

I follow two ideas based on my conversations with other breeders on this issue - when numbers are small (say ten shrimp total), I limit the number of males to one or two with 8 females, and then cull all the male offspring and leave the females to build up the numbers of the colony. When colony is larger, I have a couple of really good males with lots of good females, then cull the offspring when they reach around 10mm, but you can already tell apart individuals with really good grades and really bad grades by this stage. I cull anything that doesn't reach a high grade (see SKF standard guides) and select only a few individuals to remain with the colony. The remaining high grade shrimp get sold. This might be seen as a bit hardlined - why don't I also sell/give away the mid and low grade shrimp and just cull the culls? The reason is simple. Shrimp breeders have a responsibility to maintain the quality of the shrimp in Australia. Selling lower grade shrimp means that lower grade shrimp will be bred more often, leading to a downward spiral in the quality of shrimp available in Aus. Case in point, has anyone seen the quality of common red cherries lately? The top breeders stopped breeding them to move onto more lucrative/difficult shrimp, so every man and his dog started breeding with no consideration for quality, and now you are hard pressed to find anything even close to high grade. most stuff you see in shops are, at best, low grades and mostly culls with so little red you could barely call them red cherries. Now some people might suggest that you can give low and mid grades away with the understanding that they won't be bred or sold. Unfortunately there are very few people who I completely trust in the hobby and they breed for quality anyway.

You are one lucky guy, @Ronskitz! I would have loved those two PRLs.

Congratulations Ronskitz!

I would consider myself a reasonable shrimp breeder. I had nearly every colour of the Neos and bred them well EXCEPT Yellows. I got them to breed but never had them survive long term - never longer than 12 months- I never managed to get to the bottom of it and have spoken to many breeders who have the same problem or they get them to breed a couple of times then they stop and never start again. I would really like to try them again now I have even more understanding of breeding and water conditions but just don't know if I want to subject even more yellows to my apparent incompetency with them. I don't understand why I bred Reds, Blacks, Blues, and beautiful Rilis but my poor Yellows just didn't thrive. Even with varying water parameters, trying RO, tap water, low ph high ph medium ph. Different substrates, plain gravel nothing made a difference, after 4 tries I gave up on Yellows

It might come to a shock to most of you but I never have had a "colony" of shrimp. What I do (probably due to being more into fish than shrimp, and just being used to working this way) is only keep 15 - 20 of my best shrimp of each variety together. As soon as there are offspring I whisk them away into another tank until I know which of those I want to put back in with the others. This cuts down on having any type of contamination of the good females by males that may not be up to standard. With the culls I either sell them (as culls) or throw them somewhere where I can let them run rampant and take care of algae, etc..

Great idea! Added this to my to do list! I'd like to add a handle for easy carrying too!

+1 to what Nogi said. I've been on many forums, and SKF is different. Lots of caring, generous and thoughtful people. Personally, I reply to others on this forum like I would like someone to respond back to me in the reverse situation.

16 DD ?

Thank you so much everyone! It's certainly uplifting to know that other people have had equally as bad experiences in the past! Now that I come to think of it, people that aren't really knowledgeable about plants (especially for things like buce, crinums, MLPs, etc.) might be happy buying something for a high price because it's got that rare tag attached to it, but once they get it into their tank and they think of it just as another plant it would be pretty easy then to become underwhelmed and annoyed that they paid so much for it. I think that could come into some situations. As for Trump, I've pretty much lost all hope in America already and am pretty much just waiting for Ol' Don to plunge the planet into a nuclear war.

That's annoying part when we deal with someone been so rude and thought their money was bigger than anything else and throwing attitudes.

Sorry to hear about your experience.. I've had 2 bad ones with gumtree so far but they were quite different from yours. On one occassion the poor fella's shrimp died overnight and he still has no idea why. He was quite rude to me about it.. I felt very guilty despite the fact that I had dropped the shrimp off to him locally and I had also shipped some interstate on that same day and the interstate postage went perfectly fine... The other time I sent someone some high grade rcs juvies which never coloured up for the customer. I tried to help him to sort out what was obviously something wrong with his setup and causing his shrimp to be stressed - I kept in touch over a period of a month or so .. he continued to guilt-trip me and then ultimately he shut down the conversation saying he would never buy livestock from a stranger again. I'm inclined to think that they probably had started to die off by that point in time and he was refusing to concede the fact - e.g. he's a total knob with no consideration of how I must have been feeling the entire time while trying to do the best I could for him. Anyway there's always going to be overly selfish and very ignorant people out there I suppose, at least for the time-being. Thanks for creating the thread and providing the opportunity to vent/rant LOL On a not so unrelated subject; is anyone less than excited about the Trump getting the republican nomination? love n peace will

Yeah I reckon he just wanted something for free and what easier way to do it, like I said if that's the case ask for the plants back . Anyways go the forums next that is if your still going to sell haha

That's good news Larry. It's sometimes the case. The less you touch the tank the better. I've found that the tanks I set and forget end up doing better haha.

B16!!! As in there are 16 Bee shrimp in this picture and I have zero and that needs to change. :( I bet you counted them all didn't you ;)

Your shrimp room is AWESOME! You seem to have things very stabilized! Everything looks very efficient! A good variety in there too.

D12 for me today

I thought this beauty is a caridina. i also thought she is a local, and even endemic shrimp, but it seems this is rather a Paracaridina, the Paracaridina Haivanensis, aka Princess Bee from VietNâm... also known as Princess Bee Shrimp, Hue Bee (Honey Vietnamese) What you guys do you think?

1D Dunno if I can live with myself after that one...

I hope i dont get B10 to the prizes. Pretty crap but its all i got haha

Thought I'd get in early "B4" everyone else!

A3 for me today :)

Avoid steak ;)

How is this shrimp going? If you haven't done much can I suggest you try lower you tds to under 150 and lower your temp to about 23 or 24.

I'm not 100% sure, but they look like mosquito larvae, after the mossie has emerged.

Hello guys :) It's time for a some update :) First - shrimp foto: And now :) some movie: Thank You :)

Also MASSIVE thanks to @AwwYea (the Queenmaker!!) we we are so blessed to have some brilliant breeders here is Australia! I am constantly stunned by my new tank inhabitants!! ???

Excellent write up, Marcus - I have two points to add: the last word should be Taiwan Bee (not Tigers)fresh boiled food (spinach, stinging nettle) will stimulate breeding even more than pellet food. This is also true for feeding brine shrimp and blood worms (=protein). However, one should be aware to not introduce planaria eggs with the food (that is why I prefer brine shrimp)temperature also stimulates breeding: adding a bit cold water can stimulate molts, while raising temperature ad light will stimulate the females to produce eggs. Most of our kept shrimp here in Europe stop breeding in winter from October to January.TDS is total dissolved solids, btw - everything that is i the water, no only ions.