jumpsmasher

I don't clean the gravel any more in any of my tanks just siphon the water from the top / middle of the tank. When I did however, I would keep one finger at the end of the hose by the bucket and before I start a section cover the end with my finger to stop the siphon and with my other hand (holding the gravel cleaner) shoo any shrimps away from the area than once the area is clear I proceed to clean that area. if i do catch a shrimp inside the cleaner i just pause the siphon by putting my finger over the hole and release the shrimp by pulling the gravel cleaner out of the water. If it is already in the tube i have a net ready on the end of the tube to catch it. As for the sponge filter, i don't clean those either.. the shimplet love feeding off it so I only replace it once it get really clogged. But ya if you give it a good shake they should shatter

ya the NAG are even nicer.. but they are like $13 each.. :P come to think of it there must be some nice glass ashtrays out there that would make good feeding dishes...

np hb. The last year & half was definitely a bit of a learning curve but I think I finally dialled in to what I need to do to keep them happy. If I can pass any info I learn to to help fellow hobbyists than I am more than happy to share. Of course I think the next 6 months will still be an adventure, especially as the tanks mature.

Thanks Skidbro, I actually don't use tap tap water, all of the water in my tanks are 100% R/O water which are than remineralize with mineral products designed for shrimps tanks. But R/O water can be easily buffered so it really is dependent on what you have in your tank that will buffer the pH. In my case I use a mixture of ADA Amazonia & Africana Aquasoil to achieve the target pH I want. They are an active buffering substrate and will lower the pH of the water. I find an active buffering substrate is really one of the key component for higher grade shrimps that require lower pH. They cost a premium and need to be replaced after they lose their buffering ability but they have made a big difference in my current setups compared to the the previous substrate / gravel that I used I got the feeding dishes off ebay - they were sold as cheap glass petri dishes. I think i got 10 of them (w/ covers) for around $20. They are made out really thin glass but it works well enuf. The nicer Pyrex ones are around $6 each BTW, I took out the gravel and undergravel pipe on my BTOE tank today. The pH was creping to high for my liking and the OEBTs seemed pretty stressed so took both of them out and went about separating the gravel from the sand - was a bit PITA it was either that or set up another tank... I really wish ADA made an aquasoil that buffers the water at pH 7... lol

Sorry, had to rush off to work this morning before I could post more photos and go into more details about my setup. Will updated it tonight or over the weekend. My place is still quite a mess but if you are in downtown Calgary feel free to drop by. No shrimps for sale yet.. might be a while as I am trying to keep them happy and if that does well they will starting breeding for me and my population will grow. My goal is to have a tank full of shrimps : ) Might have some culls further down the line but not sure if any one wants those.. lol 1. The rack is alright but not great. Even with a piece of particle board it still bows quite a bit in the middle. If I was to do it again I would go with more heavier duty warehouse type racking. 2. So far it has been pretty good - haven't experience much in terms of clogging. The undergravel system consists of several layers to prevent this. The pipes are first covered up with crushed lava rocks and biological filter media (Eheim Substrat Pro / hex nodes). For my ADA aquasoil I use a colander to separate the finer granules from the larger ones. I than use the larger granules on top of the lava rocks, than the finer granules and finally if they are available the powder one. For tanks with both ADA Africana and Amazonia, I use the Africana over the undergravel filter as it is harder than Amazonia and doesn't break down as easily. I also remove any fine filter foam or floss from my filter - I find that mechanical filtration is not as important once the water get to the HOB or Canister filter. For my two 20G tanks in the middle I use Eheim undergravel plates that are designed to work with their canister filters (no really necessarily but it was an impulse buy). For those two tanks the water is filter through a prefilter unit before they hit the canister filter and all of my mechanical filter media (Eheim MECHpro + bioMECH) are placed in those units. That being said, it depends on the substrate - when I used Fluval Shrimp Stratum in my previous setups it broke down more easily so after a while it was just a big layer of muck. 3. The auto top-off system is rather simple and crude. I used standard 1/4" R/O tubing to run a gravity siphon from both reservoir tanks to each tank - both lines have a ball valve for shut-off and flow control and both lines connect to a single a float valve on each of the tank. I consider using standard PVC piping - it would have made for a cleaner look but it was overkill for my flow rate. Because it is on the top level, the 20G long is not hooked up to this system. For that tank I just manually drip water from a buffering cup every other day for top-off. For water changes for that tank, I salvage an air driven intake pipe from my external breeder box to slowly move water from the adjacent tank

20G Taiwan Bee Tank After some early success with the CRS, I was very curious to see if it was possible to set up a taiwan bee tank. When they first hit the shrimp market they fetched very high prices and earned a reputation for being very sensitive shrimps. I kinda knew I could hit the lower pH levels with ADA Africana and with the prices dropping to fairly reasonable levels for taiwan bees I decided to take the plunge and to go for it. I switched my ratio around for ADA Africana / Amazonia and increase the depth of the substrate to over 5" - definitely overkill for a 20G tank but it will keep my pH level super stable. I picked up 6 BKK including a Shadow Panda at the beginning of September and they all seem to be doing alright... well at least all 6 are still alive.. lol They grow more slowly than regular bee shrimps and the ones I have are fairly shy during the day. They seem to only come out when the lights are off but at the same time they seem pretty content with just feeding off the biofilm in the tank. Parameters pH: ~ 4.8 gH: 4 TDS: 150 Temp: 22 C Filtration: Eheim Undergravel plates + Prefilter + Eheim Canister filter Substrate: ~ 2/3 ADA Africana / 1/3 ADA Amazonia (powder) I have yet to see a berried BKK but they are pretty young and haven't really seen any females in my group - I think all of my mine are males but it might be just because they are too young to tell. I did put in a saddled female Golden Bee and couple of weekends ago and she became berried last weekend.

20G CRS Tank (Breeding Group) From the above CRS group that was born in late May / early June I selected best shrimps in terms of thickness and intensity of color and move them into one of the 20G. Out of the dozen of so CRS in this tank i would say there are 5-6 females with very nice colors, 2-3 okay males and a few lower quality but mature females from my culls that i just threw in there to increase my population. Pretty sure they have some Golden genes in them as their parents were just some higher grade CRS from the LFS so they will never be consider a "pure" red line but I am mainly doing this to get some experience with line breeding and to see how far I can take them. Most of the females are now berried so I should in a month or so see how my current set up works for breeding (i.e shrimplet survivability) and if there is any improvements in color in the F2 offsprings. Parameters pH: 5.8 ~ 6.0 gH: 5 TDS: 160 Temp: 23 C Filtration: Eheim UnderGravel Plates + Prefilter + Eheim Canister filter Substrate: ~ 1/3 ADA Africana / 2/3 ADA Amazonia One of my biggest issue in my environment is the temperate, specifically heat. I am pretty sure the parents of my current CRS died off due to stress from the first heat wave of the summer. My condo gets very hot during the summer. Even after picking up a portable A/C unit the temperature in my den was still a bit warm so I added additional cooling in the form of some computer case fans. Originally I had them plugged into the timer so that they turned on when the lights were on but I found the temperature crept up at night. So in the end, I just kept the fans on 24/7 and if the temperature gets too cold the heater kicks in. Not the most power efficient way to cool the tanks but it keeps temperatures stable. One of these days I will have to build some DIY dual stage temperature controllers.

3 x 10G As my two 20G still have shrimps in them, the first 3 tanks on the rack were 3 Aqueon 10 gallon tanks I picked up during a sale at Big Al. They came with a free HOB filter and they also had a bunch of 50W heaters on sale at the same time so I ended up three tanks w/ 3 HOB filters and 3 heaters. The original plans for the three tanks as to use them as breeding and nursery tanks for my CRS shrimps. 1 for the main breeding group, 1 for the culls and one for the berried females and shrimplets. All three tanks were setted up the same way with an undergravel filter system hooked up the HOB filter. The first one used an old AquaClear Mini I had sitting around while the other two used the Aqueon HOB that came with the tanks. The Aqueon worked great for this purpose once I threw way the original cartridge i was able to fit my three filter media (Eheim MECHPro, BioMECH and SubstratPro) as well a 100ml pouch of Purigen. Plus the way it was designed, the output of the filter was greatly diffused and the flow diverted along the surface of the tank leaving the rest of the tanks relatively undisturbed (shrimps like lower water flow, especially shrimplets). I ended switching out my AquaClear for my spare Aqueon a few month later. I cycled all three tanks for about a month and moved my CRS from my 20G tank into the first 10G. Shortly after that two of my females got berried and I decided to move the berried females to one of the empty 10G so they won't be brother by any of the males. By this time there was also a good layer of biofilm in the "nursery" tank so this will provide the newborn shrimps plenty of food. This also let you feed the shrimplets by themselves without them competing with the adults (who also like to eat the baby food). Another advantage of separating your berried females into another tank is that once the shrimplets are born and she is ready to breed again, you can control who they breed with by adding the select males you want to breed into the nursery tank or by moving the females and males into a 3rd tank. The first batch of shrimplets were born at the end of May followed by a second batch a week later. In total there was 35 or so shrimplets. The shrimplets were eating well and it seemed like most if not all of them survived. Their parents however slowly started dying one by one until all of them died off - wasn't sure what killed them but might have been a bacterial infection or the summer heat. The babies however were fine and I started moving the ones with more solid colors to the third 10 gallon tank and from there they were moved to the 20 gallon tank after it was ready. Parameters pH: 5.8 ~ 6.0 gH: 5 TDS: 160 Temp: 23 C Filtration: DIY undergravel pipe + HOB filter Substrate: ~ 1/3 ADA Africana / 2/3 ADA Amazonia The middle 10G still house my CRS shrimplets but now they are all young adults. They are what I refer to as my "culls" as their colors are not as solid as the ones in the breeding group. The first 10G was home to my Golden Bee shrimps for bit until they moved them to the 3rd 10G to make room for my recently acquired APB Pure Black Line CBS: Even though I been pretty happy with the three 10G so far, I am planning to replace them with a single 33G breeder with 3 partitions so it would allow me keep all of my CRS from this line in the same tank - would make make moving around shrimps for culling and breeding a lot easier.

Now that my shrimp rack is finally complete (for the time being) and I finally cleaned the glass on the tanks the other day, I thought I share some on the photos of the tanks and their inhabitants. My Shrimp Rack started at the beginning of the year when I decided it was time to redone my existing shrimps tanks at the time (2 x 20G, 1 x 10G) and switch the substrate over to ADA Aquasoil. Long story short, I was having issues with the Fluval Shrimp Stratum (low survival rates of shrimplets, etc;) and seeing how a few others on the net were experiencing the same issues and it was almost time to change the substrate over (1 year) and decided to switch to ADA Aquasoil as see if i would have any better luck. I decided to take the opportunity to move the tanks to my spare den to see if it the temperatures would be more stable there. Than I thought i would be neat to have a type of gravity fed "drip" system for my water changes and top-offs so i could slowly fill up the tank during water changes and automatically top off any daily evaporation - from there the Shrimp Rack idea was born! I started putting together my Shrimp rack at the end of March and went with a 48" x 18" medal frame rack from costco and set it up to have 3 levels for tanks and a couple of short level for supplies and storage. The tanks consists of 3 x 10G on the bottom rack, my 2 existing 20G would go on to the middle level. The top level consist of a new 20G long, as well as the two reservoir tanks for water changes (10G) and top-offs (5G). The 3 x 10G were to first to populate the rack at the end of March, the 20G Long was added a in the end of April and than finally my existing 20G were move later in the summer. Unfortunately I didn't really document the process other than a few photos when i first set them up. Here is a photo of the rack today: Current inhabitants are as follows: 20G Long: Super Tiger Shrimps 20G Left: Crystal Red Shrimps (Breeding Group) 20G Right: Taiwan Bee Shrimps (BKK, Panda's) 10G Left: APB Pure Black Line Crystal Black Shrimps 10G Center: Crystal Red Shrimps (Culls) 10G Right: Misc. (Golden Bee, low grade CRS) Other shrimp tanks NOT in the rack but includes: 33G: BTOE / OEBT 9G Eheim AquaStyle: PFR, Green Shrimps 12G Long: tbd 110G Tall: PFR Filtration system in all the tanks consist of a type of undergravel system which are connected to either HOB or canister filters. There is a sponge filter in each tank as well. Substrate in all the tank consist of ADA Africana and Amazonia, the depth and mixture varies in the tanks depending on my targeted parameters. I use 100% R/O water remineralize with Fluval Shrimp Supplement, Mosura MineralPlus or Bee Shrimp GH+. Tanks are kept fairly bare, usually a piece of driftwood with some moss and java fern. Will post more details and pics about the individual tanks below...

Nice Neos! you just need a few more colors and you will have the whole set : )

Just a word of advice for those remineralizing R/O water for their shrimps tanks to pay attention to the GH and TDS values as they can vary greatly between products. A couple weeks ago I switched over to new product for remineralizing RO water and made a mistake just measuring the TDS (assuming the would give me the same end GH). It turned out that it gave me the same GH at about 1/2 the TDS so my water ended having a GH value that was twice was what the previous product was at the same TDS! Measuring for RO water is useful for establishing a baseline TDS for a target GH value so in the future you only need ot test for TDS which is much more convenient with those TDS meter pens. However, once the water is in your tank I think the GH value is more important than TDS as there is many different factors that could alter your TDS in an established tank while not effecting the GH. Two different tanks might have the same GH value but one might have a TDS of 120ppm while the other might be 230ppm. Of course you don't want either value to change dramatically either so it is still helpful to keep on eye on both but if you are trying to replicate the parameters that someone give you, make sure you focus on the GH first

Not sure about local builders but Pisces should be able to special order an ADA tank in if there is they have a size that suits your needs - not cheap but very nice tanks.

this is easy,grab some extra airline/airtube/airpump hose......whatever you want to call it. then drip acclimate tie it in a loose knot....start a syphon from the tank with this airline. then let it slowly drip into the shrimp bag,after hours remove some water from the bag,then continue driping untill the bag fills again. yup just as Sprucegruve mention, use a regular airline tubing - i prefer using a control valve to control the flow but either way works. For new shrimps, depending on how the shrimps are bagged you can just use the bag they come in (regular fish bag) or cut the bag and empty the content into container (best for breather bags). If you are going to leave it unattended it is best to put it into a pail or bucket in case it overflows. If they don't come with some moss inside the bag, grab some from your tank and put it inside the container / bag so that they have something to latch onto. If you planning to use 100% tap water, it helps to keep a reservoir of aged water in case the parameters of the tap water temporarily spikes. If you are topping up the tank due to evaporation, only use R/O water - if you use regular tap water to top up, the concentration will keep building up over time. If for some reason you want to adjust the parameters of the tank water, do it slowly in small incremental steps over days or weeks.

One of the most important thing I learned during my time with them is that unless you are prepared to invest in a R/O unit (and essentially create the "ideal" water from scratch), the key is to maintain stable water parameters. CRS are very susceptible to any changes unless it is done very slowly, they will get stressed and slowly die off. Both the japanese and germans have been very successful breeders when it comes to bee shrimps and they both a very hard tap water. Of course, the japanese have relied on the use of "active" soil to buffer their water (more on this later) but the germans in particular have been content with their tap water and adapted their shrimps quite well. The main issue with using tap water is the stability - tap water can changes over time and if you don't monitor it carefully when you change your water it might stress out your shrimps. The water coming in should be as close as possible as the water in the tank (PH, GH, KH, temp, TDS, etc;). Needless to say things like ammonia, nitrites and nitrates should be zero. Invest in a test kit for all of the above if you don't already have one. If you can maintain stable parameters over time than there is no reason not to give it a shot. With my first CRS tank, I used city tap water but what I did was filter it using my brita water filter and let it sit overnight to get it to room temperature. It was only small 5gal nano tank and I probably lost aobut 1/2 of them slowly over time but one of the surviving female got berried about 3 months after I got her and from that I got 25-30 baby shrimps who survived to adulthood. Of course all of the original adults in that tank eventually died (still got some of the first batch of babies) but it was start for me and a learned quite a bit from that experience. From there I moved on to bigger tanks, fancier shrimps and started using active shrimp soil like Fluval Shrimp stratum, R/O water, shrimp minerals etc;. In your case, if you decide to try some CRS, I recommend starting out with a few low grade CRS if you can find them locally. When you first get them use a drip acclimatization over several hours (like 4-8 hours!) to acclimatize them to your tank water. Do the same when you doing water changes - drip the new water back into the tank using airline tubing and a control valve (1-2 drops per sec). Again use "aged" tap water so let it sit overnight or longer. Some people have also report issues using with Seachem Prime as a dechlorinator so you might want to avoid that particular product. Also be aware that some stones / rocks / gravel and even filter bio media tend to buffer the ph of the tank so if your tank water is consistently more alkaline than the tap water he might be one of the causes. Another alternative to CRS are tiger shrimps. One of my next project would be a tiger shrimp tank using regular gravel and harder water. The tank they are currently in now is due for a changeover as the Fluval Shrimp Statum that is in there now has lost it buffering ability due to age. That plus the seiryu stones I have in there has slowly buffered the ph in that tank to 7.5. but they seems to be alright, I am now on to my 3rd generation of OEBT's (only about 3 weeks old shrimplets). I still have issues with temperature as i live in a condo and it is like an oven in the summer but learned to be content with keeping things at room temperature to avoid wild temperature swings from setting my heaters too low (to the "ideal" temperature). Hope this helps and good luck!

Ahh.. wished we had a store like A.I. here! Have you noticed that OEBT babies grow much slower than CRS or cherry shrimps? I really played much attention to them until my last batch and they are about 1/2 the size of my PFR babies that were born at around the same time.

I might be up for some more shrimps... kinda waiting for Frank to get more OEBT and Super Tigers in stock.. but let me know if you decide to do an order.

Going have to hit you up for some shrimps once my tanks finished cycling

For those who follow the Japanese shrimp trade, there is finally an authorized distributor for Japanese Pure Red Line (JPRL) shrimps on this side of the ocean. Benibachi USA has set up shop in the states and the owners are slowly bringing some shrimps from the Benibachi farms in Japan http://www.benibachi-usa.com/ Prices start at a relatively reasonably $18 (at least for JPRL) for mixed band grade A CRS and go up to $350 for Mosura/Hinomaru Grade SS They go by a different system that what we commonly use here. First by the name of the type of pattern they have (4 bar, hiro, no-entry, mosura etc;), than by grade (A, S, SS, SSS - based on the intensity / solidness of the colors) I actually prefer their grading system but it is not very applicable for non-PRL shrimps as the quality of JPRL or even PRL shrimps are on another level. more info on the grading system: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/benibachi-usa/173323-grading-information.html Hung

Thanks! I gave away so many of my shrimps the past year to friends & family but than after than about 6 months in the survival rate of the babies just dropped off... most of my current adults are from my initial batch of babies. I am in the process of setting up my first shrimp rack and got a few new tanks cycling right now. That being said, it looks like latest batch of shrimplets from the last couple weeks are doing well so I might have a tank full of them once again : ) Just a update. I noticed the other berried "blue" female is not longer berried and thought i saw a couple of clear / blue shrimplets last night. Checked again this morning and confirm there were some off colored babies - was about to snap a quick shot of one of them. Not the greatest of shots but from the size and color i would guess it is around 3 days old Hopefully they will survive to adulthood! Hung

I usually don't take too many photographs of my shrimps but when my initial group of painted fire red (PFR) cherry shrimps gave birth, a couple of baby shrimplets stood out almost immediately. [sorry - didn't know big these photos were - should have resize / cropped them smaller :P] All PFR shrimplets are borned clear but starting turning red within a few days to a week. Out of the hundred or so PFR shrimplets there were two that stayed clear / white. Here is a shot of one of them at approx. 1 week old Regular PFR shrimplet on the left (amber / redish tint, looking straight at the camera) and the clear / white PFR shrimplet just to its right For reference, here is a picture of a normal PFR shimplet Normal PFR shrimplet, clear / amber body with red markings As they got older, while the other PFR shrimplets turned more red, they remained mostly clear with a slight blue tint. Here is another shot of one of them at approx. 1 month old And for reference, a group shot of a couple of adult PFR and and a bunch of shrimplets At two months, the body remained clear with a slight blue tint but brown dots start to appear where you would see the red pattern on a regular (non-PFR) red cherry shrimp On a mineral rock with a couple of other young PFR... At the time I had high hopes that the two "blue" would remain blue as they turn into adults and they they were a pair (Male + Female). As they matured, the blue got a bit more intense but they both turned out to be females. Unfortunately i seemed ot have put away my camera during those months because i can't find any photos of that "stage". But it was quite odd, even thought they both got saddles, for the longest time all my males PFR never touched them - maybe because they looked too different from the other PFR! Well that all changed a month ago when i put in some males from one of other PFR tanks and within a couple of days both of my "blue" PFR were berried. As soon as happened they both went thru another change - the brown pattern they had became more intense and more redish in color and the strip on the back you see on some red cherry shrimps also became more pronounced. another thing that set them apart from their other PFR was that their eggs are dark blue / black in color as opposed to the standard yellow eggs. Here is a shot I took the other day of them one them, now a bit over 1 year old. The shrimp on the right is one of my adult male PFR This one dropped her eggs prematurely but last I checked my other "blue" one was still berried and due any day now.. As you can see it is more maroon than blue or brown now although the base color is still clear with slight blue tint. Their colors varies greatly during the day and when they are berried. In the mornings when the lights first come on the maroon / brown pattern is very faint and their blue base color is actually quite intense but that doesn't last very long as the maroon / brown pattern comes back within a matter of minutes. I will try to get a photo of them like that one of these mornings but they change color so quickly it is very hard to capture them within the small window of opportunity. Hard to say if the blue will be passed on to their offsprings but i should find out fairly soon (hopefully : ) )... of course these could just be their "wild" form as they don't have the solid colors you come to expect from PFR's and are alot closer to the standard Red Cherry shrimp pattern but in a tank full of Painted Fire Red shrimps they are different! Hope you enjoy the photos - hopefully there will more "off" colored PFR to come! Hung

For a more local source, you can get most of those shrimps from Frank Jiang in Vancouver. http://ebi-ken.blogspot.ca I know Ron does some orders from him from time to time. He is one of the more reputable Canadian source for high quality shrimps. If you are into blue shrimp another you might want to check out are the Aura Blue - apparently they are few (or only) blue shrimps that breed true.

I dropped in on Riverfront the other day, the "A" grade Crystal Red Shrimps are actually more closer to what would be consider SS/SS+ grade. There was something lost in translation there as in Asia CRS's are generally denoted by their pattern type (i.e. hiro / no-entry, mosura etc;) followed by their grade; A or S - with A being the lower grade. The ones they are have are basically A grade Hiro / No-entry CRS. Wayne was telling me this was the first time he tried bringing in higher grade CRS - definitely the first time i seen higher grade CRS like this at a LFS in Calgary!

This may be of some interest... It is basically a DIY filter for a bare bottom tank which consist of a typical sponge filter inside a plastic container filled with ADA soil http://crystalredshrimp-yoyo.blogspot.ca/2010/03/no-substrate-system.html

Just a heads up, Was in Big Al's last night in Calgary and they had some pretty nice Red Cherry shrimps in one of the their tanks, most had fairly solid colors and some close to PFR quality with solid red legs - well I saw at least one :P They were going for $3.99 I believe

Wow talk about a quick turnaround! Yesterday morning (monday) I witnessed my largest berried OEBT giving birth to her first batch of baby shimplets. Later that evening it seemed that all the males in the tank were really excited and dancing all over the tank and I thought I might have gotten another female in the tank that I wasn't aware off as all my females were berried. When I checked on them today after work the female that had the babies on Monday was already saddled so decided put her in my breeder box. I place my bluest male in with her and within the hour it looked like he "tapped" her. I checked back on them a few hours later and viola! she was berried once again! With approximately 36 hours between releasing her eggs and being berried again, she looks like she will be one fine breeding machine... :smokey: On another note, newborn shrimps are really tiny, even after watching the eggs being popped out by the mother and the sequentially unraveling of the baby shimp, they are really hard to see with naked eye. I wished i had my camera handy to film it but without a good zoom and macro lens i think it would have been pretty hard to make it out. Hung