jumpsmasher

Hi all, I originally took some quick photos of my Pure Red Line "culls" for a sales thread a while back and since I never got around to posting that thread (and probably won't be able to for a while) I thought I would share the photos here instead. Those who have seen my shrimp tanks know that I been working on some PRL's for the while and got rid of my standard CRS colony to focus on these guys. These are mostly F1's & F2's from my original Nishiki-Ebi & MananaP PRL's. They not that greatest in terms of quality as they are just my "culls" and also because the photos where taken with my cellphone. I have my breeders sectioned off in same tank but wasn't able to get any good photos of them at the time. Enjoy!

my experiences with neo's in low ph tanks have been mixed. They seem to do fine in tanks that i had fluval shrimp statum as it only buffers the ph down to around 6.6 ~ 6.8. The one time i had some pumpkin shrimps in my super tiger tank (ph < 6.0) it really stumped their growth; at 6 months there were less than 1 cm - they usually reach that size at around 4-6 weeks normally.

They look pretty sweet Ron! Any pics of your poison blue?

I been playing around with crossing my TB hybrids with my Taiwan Bee's the last little while and been fortunate enough to get a couple of Hiro patterned ones from my crossings. Not the greatest of photos since it I took them with my cellphone but enjoy!

Welcome to AA! Always great and encouraging to see more local shrimpers here!

From my experience once the body turns cloudy it is in the late stages of the infection and there isn't much you can do for the shrimp other than remove from the tank to prevent it spreading to the other shrimps. If there parts of the limbs and / or antennas looks like they are missing or "dissolved" it is a pretty good sign that your shrimp is infected. I have used both Paraguard and Hydrogen Peroxide (3% @ 1ml / gal) - Neither were that effective in curing infected shrimp but both seems to stop it from spreading. For Paraguard, one hobbyists recommend large water changes (75%) between treatments, and like Ron said 1/2 the dosage Treating with Hydrogen Peroxide is less extreme but you will need to do to daily for around 2 week. I usually experience bacteria blooms during the summmer when temperatures goes up. So if you tank has experience any temperature swings recently that might have triggered it.

20-22 C seems to be the sweet spot for all my tiger shrimps. The start to get stressed above that. Although like Caine mentioned you don't want temperature swings with them. Neo's (RCS etc;) should do fine regardless. I believe Frank (Ebi-Ken) had them outside in a pond during winter but that was in Vancouver.

nice video. Yup that one looks like a BKK shrimplet to me. Congrats!

if you want an totally inert substrate than the coated, decorative gravel is probably your safest bet. I tried a few "natural" gravel without much luck as the all affected the water chemistry. The Caribsea sands seems to be inert enuf though - i like how the powder food stay on the surface of the sand so my shimplets can pick over it at their leisure.

I would guess she released around 40+ shrimplets on her first batch; her second batch was quite a bit smaller maybe 20-25? The other two females released around the same number (20-25). I used an inert sand - one of the Caribsea Super Natural ones, Sunset Gold I believe.

great photos! nice looking colony of taiwan bee shrimps you got there!

Very nice! How are your CRS doing in there?

Thanks! In that particular tank it is just being used as a divider. I do plan on on using some HMF's in my new setup's but just haven't gotten around to setting up the tanks.

I been on a bit of hiatus when it comes to shrimp farming but mange to snap a few pics of my BTOEs, OEBTs and PRLs shrimp recently. BTOE (Black Tiger Orange Eyes) Recent developments with Neo's such as the dream blue may have stolen the thunder from these guy but they remain one of my favourite. Under direct light their solid black bodies give off a beautiful blue hue and unlike blue tigers they breed true. Finally starting to have a good size colony of these guys, hopefully they will make through the summer as they really are quite sensitive to warm temperatures : ) I keep them with my Orange Pumpkin / Sakura shrimps Young juvie BTOE OEBT (Blue Tiger Orange Eyes) Haven't really cull these guys yet so i still have lots of "blonde" OEBTs. Also because I haven't been culling them or moved them to a larger tank (they shared a divided 33g tank with the Black Tigers) the population boom is putting alot of pressure on the females - lost quite a few of them from overly aggressive males. I added about 1/2 dozen breeding tubes to the tank recently to give the females more protection. MananaP's PRL (Pure Red Line CRS) Took a while but Stephan's PRL CRS finally got berried and release their first batch of shrimplets recently. ANd what a batch it was! The largest female was heavily berried and while i haven't managed to accurately count them, her litter was definitely larger than average - if was to guess at least 40 to so. Here's her feeding with her shrimplets (~ 2 weeks old) A closer look at her - she berried once again : ) One thing I noticed with these shrimplets is how consistent the pattern is on them almost all of them have hiro / no-entry pattern - Stephan really done a great job with them! Can't wait to watch these little guys and gals grow up! That's all for now Hung

Sorry Fisher, didn't your post earlier. I got around a dozen F2's but they stop reproducing when I separated them from my regular PFR's. Due to lack of tank space I had to move them into a tank with my Super Tigers and they didn't really enjoy that. Some of the younger ones stopped growing; they are 6-8 months now which means that they should be fully grown adults but they are still no bigger than a typical 1-1.5 month old shrimp. I decided to dedicate the majority of my tanks to my Tiger and Crystal Red / Black shrimps and have only a couple of tanks left for my PFR and Orange Sakura shrimps. Judging by the evolution of these brown / blue Neos in the hobby - Chocolate, Blue Rilli, Blue Jelly, Carbon Rilli, and now solid Blue Neos - they have evolved a long ways from being "throwbacks" and wild culls! Snowballs are actually a separate species from RCS / Rili's. They have white saddles / eggs. If they are clear / blue / green offsprings from your Rilli's, than they are generally refer to as "Blue Jelly" shrimps

Pisces' been bring in some of the more fancier shrimps such as the Sulawesi shrimps now that they have their new shrimp rack up and running. I think the issue is that most of the fancier shrimp species do not do well in our tap water and there is not local importer / breeder as they are mainly located in Vancouver and Toronto. Only the Neo's seems to do well in our tap water (Red Cherry, PFR, Orange, Yellow, Rili's etc;) . The crystal reds / blacks, tiger, BKK, etc; shrimps require more specific water conditions that generally require the use of remineralized R/O water. There is a few of us here that are currently raising various and we usually get our shrimps thru Ron's group orders from Ebi-Ken. He is currently putting together a group order so if you want anything i would message him. Myself, I am currently breeding Crystal Red (CRS), Crystal Black (CBS), Orange pumpkin / Sakura, Super Tigers, Orange Eye Blue Tigers (OEBT), Black Tigers (BTOE) and well as attempting to breed a few Pure Line CRS / CBS (PRL / PBL). I am still waiting for my population to grow in the hundreds (well more like thousands) and have the required tanks set up to starting culling them - at which stage I might have some for sale. I never had any of the shrimps up for sale, can't say why as I had population booms in the past but usually just end up giving them away to friends and family or putting them in my cull tanks and let them grow out in there.. but i guess it comes down to being too lazy to post an ad in the classified section.. lol

You are pretty lucky! Heating is much easier issue to tackle than cooling for a shrimp tank! ADA does have their own under substrate heating product call the growth plate: http://www.adana.co.jp/en/products/na_substrate/growth_plate/ So it should be fine but like Ron said, unless you really have want the minimalist look, probably not worth the time or work (if it is an existing tank) to install one. if in tank is your only option, I have a couple of Fluval M series heaters and found they blend in to the background quite well as they have a slightly mirrored finished and they are decent quality heater as well.

I have uses all three of the above, petri dishes, the ikea candle holders (both sizes) and even the Ebi-ten ones (after seeing Ron's I couldn't resist when i saw them in Aqua Inspiration in Toronto) and they all work fairly well. The deeper ones like the ikea candle holders and fancy shrimp works well for lighter food like Barley pellets. Petri dishes are nice and wide but not as deep so i find they tend to collect substrate over time. The higher end ones (i.e Pyrex) are a bit deeper but pricer as well. I have also seems hobbyists use shallow clay dishes they just as well - just a matter of your needs and preferences for looks The bigger Ikea ones comes in packages of 6 for $4 and the Ebi-ten ones are around $12 and not available locally. generic shallow dishes can probably be found for $1-2 at the dollar or something.

I love the fact they you never really know what you will get with them when they are young - they are like a box of chocolate.. lol. With CRS shrimplets you already have a good idea of the pattern they have and you just cross your fingers their colors stay solid as they grow. But with tigers, both their colors and stripes develop over time. I have similar shades in mine, but your blue ones have thicker stripes than mine. Not a big fan of the brown / rust color that develop in some of them but I think they happens to all the females when they are berried. I am surprised no one have really been successful in stabilizing the various shades of blues as separate lines (other than BTOE / Royal Blue). That definitely would be a neat project to under take but you would need to separate them into at least 5 groups based on the title of this thread :p

awesome progress Ron! That blue bolt looks like it will turn out to be a dandy! I have to say, I think you have "made it" ... Hopefully your success with breeding the rarer shrimps will start rubbing off on everyone here and give us a local source for them Did you ever set up your new rack with the HMF's?

I just moved my OEBTs to a new tank, getting ready for summer temps. I probably had about 200 little ones with dozens being less than 0.5 cm and dark blue already. I was going to start culling but I think I will wait for them to be of breeding size to make sure the blondes are actually blondes. Good luck with your OEBTs and BTOEs. Nice! I might need to hit you up for some one of these days

My only female BTOE only held on to a few shrimplets on her first batch so I only have a small sample size to compare but here are are differences that I notice so far between my BTOE and a few dark blue OEBT shrimplets that I have. BTOE turn blue sooner, mine were within the first few weeks or so ( ~ 0.5cm) BTOE shrimplets don't have any tiger strips and have a translucent / indigo blue body than dark blue but it is very uniform throughout the body. When i first got them I found that they didn't turn solid (i.e black) until they were of breeding age. A couple of them looked similar to the Royal Blue tigers until they turned black. OEBT shrimps seems to develop their strips first than start to turn blue. On the darker blue shrimplets you can still make out their tiger strips. A couple of my darkest blue OEBT shrimplets are darker than my BTOE shrimplets I also have a some very orange looking blondes OEBTs that are starting to reach breeding age. They will probably turn more brownish as they mature but there are a few that have a very definite orange tint to them. How old is it? ADA aquasoil should continue buffer for at least a year. Never really had an issue with the ADA stuff being too light, although I do like to used the finer "powder" versions as the top layer. I won't recommend covering it as sand or another substrate as the shrimps really like to pick and feed off the aqua soil I find.

Yes Yes and No. depends on your point of reference. Compared to your regular cherry shrimps? Yes. Compared to your fire red, probably not. Most just cull out any clear looking ones (make sure you don't cull all the males though). Ideally you would keep them separate so you can keeping breeding your Fire Red within themselves while adding some of them to your red cherry colony. Yes, they are red cherry shrimps with a clear mid section. I haven't done so myself but the offspring between the two should have varying degrees of "clear" sections Depends on your parameters but from personl experience I found there is very small overlap for their parameters - your best bet is to get some that have been acclimatized (i.e born) in conditions similar to your yellow shrimp tanks. If you selectively breed them you can improve their white coverage but it will take many, many, many, generations

if you want to add some substrate to lower to ph in your existing tank, my first choice would be ADA Africana over Amazonia. I doesn't leech as much ammonia as Amazonia. It will however lower your pH more than Amazonia so you won't have to use as much but at the same time you will have to be more careful about how much you add. That being said, the amount of free ammonia in minimal at lower pH so some hobbyists don't worry too much about it as long as their tanks is cycled.

Adults are usually the first to go. Shrimplets usually have a easier time adjusting to changes in the tank. How old is the tank? Have you added anything new the the tanks recently (i.e. Plants) kH seems very high.. has it always been around 40 in your tank? What's the kH of the tap water you are using to change the tank Nitrate seem a bit high as well Maybe test your tap water