Search the Community

Due to an unlikely set of circumstances I ended receiving some of the short creek caridina confusa from northboy - i decided against trying to keep the c zebra shrimp (which I had prepaid for in May or June but delayed and delayed, so anyway i'm hoping that these will be easier to keep given they're apparently used to a much wider range of water parameters than the zebs which live in parameters something similar to "evian - the essence of purity" The shrimp were packed very well by northboy in a large box; 2 very large breather bags inside the box with 10 shrimp in each, there was one casualty I discovered later, but the rest seemed quite happy. I also had asked for some native mosses and some leaves - he kindly included a very good sized portion of moss and also a few ferns which look beautiful but i'm not sure if they'll do well in gravel - (any tips about how to plant/grow them would really be appreciated!) He also threw in great samples of IAL and mulberry leaves and the shrimp went into a feeding frenzy for these mulberry leaves - they must have been somehow better than the mulberry leaf already sitting in the tank ? My first impression of the confusa was "wow these things are big" - I've never had any shrimp other than neos and CBS and some of the girls were already slightly chunkier than the biggest elderly female cherry I've seen. They really do have a different body shape/structure to neos and bee shrimps for sure and given my eyesight is bad I really appreciate their larger size ! They do have a pretty yellow hue when viewed in nice light conditions. I also thought they seemed to be social animals; seeming to congregate together for some reason ?? I tested water parameters of the newly arrived shrimp, EC 150ish (75ppm), pH 6.8, GH 2.5 and KH ~1 (I measured GH and KH using 10mL sample in an effort to get a reading twice as accurate as the API test kit normally would give). My tank which is approx 110 litres had been running for a month or two already and the canister was seeded with media from other cycled canisters as well as an air-sponge which was brought across from another tank. My substrate is just a fine black quartz. The water in the tank was RO plus a blackwater extract and some boss aquaria mineral powder and was around 9 or 10 ppm. I attempted to achieve a slightly softer water than the bags the shrimp came in by using a mixture of salty shrimp bee shrimp and salty shrimp GH/KH + and i think i did a good job with pH somewhere around 6.6 - 6.8 and a bit lower EC. I'm in Adelaide and our tap water is horrible with 100-200 ppm water and can even get much higher at times. So i realise if i am going to be able to share my shrimps locally with people who don't have RO units then I won't want to keep them in extremely soft water conditions that's for sure. The shrimp were acclimatised carefully by drip method and then temperature matched by floating them before releasing them; they seem to have settled in quite comfortably, grazing around and interestingly they do seem to still like to be in each other's company, clustering together somehwat and not scattering so randomly as my neos have always done whenever I've received a new lot. So my tank is horribly horribly "aquascaped" if you can call it that as I just didn't have time (or energy) to focus on appearances today and it is a practical tank not a display tank as such. I had to do water-changes and other maintenance in other tanks while I had the chance to spend time in my room and life is busybusy as it is for many of us at this time of year. So enough of my rant; I hope someone here finds my little shrimp-journey I've had today interesting.. and here are some shabby phone-pix, the colours show up very poorly in part because the tannins from the blackwater extract I recently added to the tank tints the water very dark and it will take a few days for it to become clearer. OK no pictures available due to technical problems - will post again tomorrow with some pix hopefully if i get time damn LOL love n peace will

Some pics of my Caridina confusa from Short Creek

Short Creek is an interesting little spot. It is located near a tea farm on the tablelands above Cairns. Why is it named 'short creek' you ask? Well it might have something to do with a 'short' drop! We only sampled a short section but found a wide variety of organisms above these water falls including Caridina confusa, purple spot gudgeons and a species of freshwater crayfish (I forget the name, Bob will remind me when he remembers that I caught one for him, and he didn't catch any!). Water parameters (in May) were: pH: 6.8 TDS: 21 Temperature: 19*C GH: < 20 ppm KH: < 10 ppm the shrimp were mainly located in the back eddies associated with vegetation or branches ect. that were hanging into the water. Unfortunately it was drizzling with rain most of the time we were there so I wasn't able to get any nice shots of the shrimp fresh from the creek. I did get a nice shot of a purple spot. However I have pics of the confusa I brought home, currently housed in a temporary set-up alongside some snails (temp 20*C, TDS 60, GH and KH < 1, pH 7). I'm not sure why these are called the false zebra shrimp. For starters, these are massive compared to the zebras (4-5cm vs. 3cm for zebs). I've really fallen for these guys and can't wait to set up their new tank. I think they should be called fusa (The Fusa are coming - Madagascar, anyone?) or confusa. 'False zebra shrimp' (yawn) just undersells them so much. They aren't fussy at all, eating all of the normal aquaria shrimp fare. Likewise I haven't lost a single one through the travel and their housing. They can be a little rowdy at feeding time, crawling over each other and running off with bits of food away from the others - maybe not ideal for keeping with smaller shrimp like Malanda, chameleons or Zebs. But I find that adds to their appeal, rather than detracting. I will report on things like 'how good an algae eater' or 'ease of breeding' once their new tank is set-up, BUT breeding should be relatively straight forward as I believe they have large eggs and drop direct developing young, similar to zebs. Another cool thing with these guys is that can seem to have a golden glow and iridescence - at least under the LED lights over their temporary housing. hopefully I can get some better pictures of what that looks like with more time.