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Just a random thought does anyone have any tips for how to increase baby survival rate of cherry shrimp kept in bee shrimp parameters? It just occurred to me that perhaps adding generous quantities of mineral powder might be of some help or would that be a waste of time? All suggestions and opinions are welcome as always :-) [emoji173] [emoji111] Will

Hi All Im a foreigner living in Ecuador. I have my build pond in the garden around 10 meters long and 4 meters wide. Maybe 1.5 meters deep with shallow areas. Lots of plants in there. Guppies and a few cleaning fish. The dragon flies breed there as I saw their underwater versions in there too. About 6-8 months ago I bought 15 red cherry shrimps from a local shop. Some very very small. I released them in the Pond and basically didnt see them again for months. I was pretty sure they where eaten by predator insects or something as the guppies dont seem to do this. But recently I saw big fat red cherry shrimps wandering around. Its hard to find them but they are there. Now I also see another shrimp. same body shape. same size. but glass clear. I dont think its ghost shrimp as they are bigger. these are not. actually usually pretty small. Is there a shrimp species that looks like red cherry in form and size but is transparent? Or is this maybe a not fully developed cherry that will get its color later? even more important: will it maybe breed with the cherry and breed out the beautiful red color of the cherry? Also another question: I would love to see the shrimps all over the pond. Like a lot of them. How long would it take for them to "overpopulate" such a large pond? They seem to come to the shallow waters in the early morning to heat up. Easiest to see them then. But taking pictures is not really a option. Thank you

Just a quick update, still getting alot of mixed results of the chocs mainly blues, blacks, and browns (still no reds, but is probably only a matter of time). I do however have a hypothesis that i plan to test, that i hope will result in something a bit more stable. At this stage i only have about two shrimp that match my criteria, so hopefully i will get a few more soon, and then start selective breeding from there. I plan to keep you all informed as i progress, hopefully my hypothesis pans out.

It looks like you are on the road to success with the blue cherry shrimp. I was recently culling undesired colours from my black cherry breeding project and discovered two distinctly blue sub adults. These black cherries have come from choc/ black parentage. But I also did have blues appearing in one of my tanks when it was entirely red cherries. The blues that came up in the red tank however never held their blue, going blue over night and when the lights came back on the following day quickly returned to red. I suspect this was due to pH fluctuations during the night when the plants stopped photosynthesising. In this same tank I also started getting rilli's turning up, all the original reds had come from one local source, back when I had thought even having red cherry shrimp was not possible in my area because no shops stocked them, and I didn't know shrimp sites existed in Australia that people traded shrimp on. It can be fun to develop your own line of colour, but also frustrating and you need to be ruthless in removing even a hint of the wrong coloured shrimplets before they get a chance to mature, breed and release their offspring into your carefully selected breeding program. (Believe me it is near impossible to remove newborn shrimplets from amongst gravel, and they are expert hiders in any plant life so daily if not twice daily inspections of the breeding tank is a must). Also keep in mind that shrimp can change colour drastically depending not only on their genetics but also the water parameters. So when you think you have stabilised the blue gene in your shrimp be sure to try them in different tanks, to make sure they hold their colour and intensity. I have moved cherry shrimp from one tank that looked amazing to another tank (same water source just different substrate/ timbers/ plants/ lighting) and often they have changed intensity of colour, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Something else I think seems to aid in the intensity/ quality of colour aside from food and water is paradoxically the presence of what the shrimp see as potential predators. For some reason tanks that I have had potential predator fish in with the shrimp the shrimp have had better colour. I doubt the fish would be selecting only the poorly coloured shrimp and leaving the intensely coloured shrimp alone, so I actually wonder if the shrimp show their health and vitality (and ability to escape so not worth chasing to eat) by carrying intense solid colouration. Other tanks that have no such potential predators I find it much harder to get nice vibrant strongly coloured shrimp.

Another quick update, turns out my phone camera is better than i thought. Images still aren't great but here are the juvenile blues from choc parents.

Hi guys, I am currently doing the remineralisation experiments that Ineke is referring to that she is currently testing on her shrimp. As soon as I am completely finished tweaking the regime, I will post it in an article. It takes time as I a not afford to kill shrimp in haste, let alone other peoples livestock that they put their hearts and souls into- that is why Ineke is unable to provide details at the moment. The experiments are based on ShrimpyDaddy's principles that shrimp need trace minerals and nutrients from the water column as well as dietary inorganic and organically-complexed minerals to have a mirror-like shine, great colour, high level of activity and breeding success. I have no affiliation with his business, but would highly recommend having a look at his work and recommendations as he has a wealth of knowledge. The reasoning behind using Dr Tim's Freshwater probiotic is that it is a completely clear water-based bacterial solution. This means that there are no additional water-fouling agents added to the bacterial supplement that could potentially affect shrimplet survival. It contains mostly beneficial bacillus- type bacteria that outcompete vibrio. It is not a food source based product. I briefly mentioned the product in the write-up on the difference between BT-9, Bacter AE and Biozyme.

I used to use Biozyme all the time it is an excellent product . I only use the Eco balance probiotic in the Dr Tim's range at the moment - I haven't used the others in that range but again I believe they are very good. @RagingWind92 Please don't ever apologise for asking questions that's the only way we can all learn. I have been breeding shrimp since 2012 and I still ask questions. I don't think we will ever know everything about our shrimp and there are more things coming out about them every day. this forum is lucky to have some very knowledgable people who are happy to share what they know without some of the misinformation that is out there Hopefully the other products I use will be published later this year by the person who has recommended them. We want to be sure that the information given out can be substantiated by the good results we seem to be getting. It's better to have some proof before adding even more products to our already large amounts of additives we use. Good luck with your shrimp and as we have always said on SKF no question is a silly question its better to ask than to try to fix problems we have caused by not asking ?

I'm using Dr. Tim's fresh water eco balance probiotic. I am only using it every other day at a very small dose. There are other additives I'm using as well -hopefully later this year there will be a write up about the benefit of using these products. The products are available to us here in Australia -even through a sponsor so that's a plus - anyway I have been trialling them for a few months and I'm very happy with the results.

When I was breeding Neos - I had very large colonies of Black/ Chocolate, Rilis, Reds, Blues - I bred them all in soft water. I never had any issues with survival rates in fact they bred extremely well and were of a very high standard. The main thing is to ensure you have moss for them to hide in, feed lots of powdered food and keep stable parameters. I have bred them in ph of 6 , GH 6. KH 1-2 TDS 150-160. I kept 10 tanks of mixed bee and Neos for several years I used RO water with GH+ and benibachi substrate. I also used mineral powder weekly , biozyme twice a week, 5-10% water change. As always I believe stability is the main thing we need to look at . Check water parameters before adding to tank, keep temp of new water close to temp of tank, good quality foods.