Maternity tanks

[ineke]

this year I decided to use maternity/ rearing tanks for my shrimp. I had noticed over the last couple of years that although my shrimp let survival rate was good I still didn't have an overly large shrimp population. Watching the babies in the tanks I would see adults flick babies out of their way and even though I use plenty of powdered food I wondered if they were getting enough food. I also noticed in most of my tanks the males would annoy berried girls when a female somewhere in the tank was ready for breeding.

i have 10 x 24" , 60/70 litre tanks in my main shrimp room which are all run independently with 2 double sponge filters per tank.  I have never been very good at sexing my shrimp unless I could see a saddle - it's amazing how many males got berried! Most of my shrimp are Tibees or Taitibees and are related so mixing them isn't an issue. I decided the only way I could be 100% sure I had females to select for my projects I would catch out newly berried girls and put them into one of three tanks I set aside for the purpose. My tanks are setup identically and the water parameters are extremely close - just a slight difference in TDS so only a short drip acclimatisation is necessary - probably don't need to drip but I wanted to give them the least shock I could.

the transfers went well as I never noticed any female lose her eggs. The females get along together very well and in no time there were lots of babies in my tanks.  I gave the females a week to rest and feed up then put them into appropriate tanks with selected males. 

This has been so successful for me that I am now in the enviable position of being overrun by shrimplets. I have literally hundreds of them . I am now slowly sorting them into colours and patterns  - I am still trying to establish a marble pattern in black and red .  

I also have some pure TB that I don't want to have anything else introduced into the genes so now that I know I have definite females I can safely put them into the TB tank and take them out once they are berried. 

If you have the room it may be worth while giving a maternity tank a go. You need to treat the newly berried girls carefully - I shift them towards the end of their first week of being berried- and you need to make sure the WP' s are very close so you don't upset them. Obviously if you need to know exact parentage then this may not work for you but I'm very happy with it and now realise I can keep less shrimp to breed with . I haven't done anything else different this year yet my breeding rate has probably trebled and it wasn't bad before.  Now all I need to do is move the new shrimp on to new homes and cut back on my numbers ?

[jayc]

That's such a good way of breeding.

Now if we only had ten 2foot tanks like you do.

[Unagi42]

Hey @ineke that sounds perfect and would get a far better success rate with grow out of young. I was thinking of a similar idea using a breeding / isolation net. Would it be possible to pop the berried female in there until she drops the young then remove her? Under the vast assumption I could find one that shrimplets couldn't escape through the slots/mesh. I was wondering if anyone had tried this as the shrimplets can't require much room and you could move them out as soon as they reach a competitive size.

[jayc]

@Unagi42 that's it!!

 

You have inspired me to go get more breeder boxes.

[ineke]

The meta cube type breeders would work as the female stays in her own tank but I don't know what sort of success rate you would have as there would still be a certain amount of stress on the female being confined. With the seperate tank like I use the shrimp still have hiding places and plenty of room to graze. I do know someone that uses the satellite breeding boxes for his females with a lit of success but I had 13 females in 1 tank and was astounded by the number of babies I ended up with. They had room to move and grow without being pestered by adults. The females left them alone. If an average female has 30 babies that survive that's a lot of babies in a small cube or net without much available biofilm to feed them.

[jayc]

21 minutes ago, ineke said:

meta cube type breeders

Exactly what I was thinking.

Thanks Ineke, for implanting this idea in my head.

 

<edit> - just placed an order for Meta cubes!! 

Talk about impulse purchases.

Edited November 25, 2015 by jayc

[NoGi]

With the metacubes just don't forget to plug the right suction cup holes otherwise they'll escape like mine used to.

[Unagi42]

21 minutes ago, ineke said: meta cube type breeders

Exactly what I was thinking.

Yeah but couldn't you just chuck some Java moss in there with them? That way they have somewhere to both hide and graze.

....now I'm off to google Metacubes....

[ineke]

Yes putting some moss in will help  it will give them hiding places and also grazing areas.