Caprichoso

That's neat! I have some dark plum ones with cream colored diamonds on the tail and cream stripe on the back and I have one that is almost black. In the light, it's has lots of black tiger striping and mottling and the lighter parts are blue. I took pics but same thing, they don't do them any justice. These shrimp are all the neocaridina heteropoda variety.

Hmmm, very interesting...I had read that the Mosura "shrimpton" shrimp foods will allow shrimp in the larvae stage to survive and grow in freshwater because the food gives them the same nutrients they would find in brackish water. So they claim basically that shrimp die in the larvae form because there are insufficient nutrients and so they say that it is a myth that Amano and other shrimp need brackish water to survive. I'm going to switch food in my shrimp tanks and see what happens!

If salt is the route you want to take, can't you use just plain old sea salt? It's really cheap and you can get it at any grocery store in the organic aisle. You're correct about the corydora, the salt will irritate their skin. Good luck

Looks like Amano shrimp to me. Is the one at the bottom of the first pic the baby that you raised from a zoae(sorry spelling)? Also, what are you feeding them?

You have bred Amano shrimp in fresh water? Are you sure about it being an Amano? Can you post some pics?

Thank you, that's really nice of you to say

Thank you all for your kind words.

Today my 12 year old Green Corydora died. I am completely gutted. In December I moved him and his mate to my 140 gallon where they joined a large school of bronze and albino corydoras. These last months of his life were spent enjoying all the new space he had with new friends. I think my green female is ok, she's been staying close to her friends. I knew he was slowing down this last year but I was still shocked and saddened to find him laying in the java moss this morning. Good-bye little one. R.I.P

You're right, moss is slow. Even when it's growing "fast "it's slow. My mosses are growing well in my nano tanks because the light is quite bright. My christmas moss has spread into a failry dense canopy of about 3-4 inches around in about 2 months. I don't use ferts or CO2 in those tanks so I would assume the growth would be faster if I did. In my low light tank my java moss is growing so slow I can't even tell if it's growing. My med light tank has java moss as well. I dose with Flourish (the amount they recommend on the bottle) each week and the moss is doing pretty good. I've thinned it out a few times already.

It's very common for shrimp to drop eggs when they are stressed out. I got a large bag of shrimp and the bottom was covered with little black eggs. They were very stressed out from the move. They should be hatching live shrimplets, so, if you see this happening a lot, that is a sure sign something is amiss. Otherwise I would say it's probably an isolated incident.

I have 4 of them in my 140g and they spend all day long browsing on algae. I never see them on the ground or on the glass but sometimes they just like to "float" in the water and land on a new plant. I don't notice them too much unless they decide to sit on my java moss, then their colours pop. What you mentioned is normal behaviour for them. I have 2 males and 2 females, the males being the ones with the red nose. Mine are also starting to really turn lime green in the body, I guess they are full grown now. I wish I would have bought more at the time, I really like them but having only 4, they sort of get lost in my tank.

How do you clean the glass inside that upper tank? Or get the fish out? Maybe I'm missing something here, lol...looks pretty cool though!

Yeah, don't boil it for more than 5 minutes or you run the risk of cracking the shell.

Thanks for the info, I have little experience with these sponge filters. I've only ever used canisters for the last 15 years.

So you guys have had your shrimp eaten by pygmies? The reason I'm asking is because I did some research prior to posting this topic and of coarse there's conflicting info on whether or not they eat shrimp. I just hoped to hear from someone on the forum who's experienced it first hand.

Hey everyone, I have sponge filters in my tanks in addition to canister filters. The sponge filters have been set up for about 2 months now and I was wondering how can I tell when they should be rinsed? They still look like the same colour (dark grey) on the sponge and don't look dirty. I have the valve open all the way so there are lots of bubbles in the tube. So, should I be waiting until the sponge looks dirty or should I just rinse it? How often do you guys rinse yours? I have three, 5 gallon tanks and they each have a Marina filter and the filter sponge for 10g. All 3 filter sponges are connected together to an air pump for 40 gallons. Thanks for your help

Hi, I thought about putting some Pygmy Corydoras in my dwarf shrimp tanks but wondered if the shrimplets would get eaten. Has anyone done this? Thanks in advance!

Dude, glad you got rid of it! I had those tetras and IMO they are EVIL. I had them in a nice big school and they terrorized my mountain minnows, gourami and catfish! They caused my minnows to become so timid and hide and they eventually died because of it. I didn't know why the minnows had died at first as I didn't see them biting or anything but realized that they were chasing the life out of them and not letting them eat. Crazy fish even started killing each other off, I only had 2 silver ones left as they had killed off all the golden ones. Then the more dominant of the two killed the other one off. Stupid fish, now your all alone...took it to LFS and good riddance! Community fish eh? *scoffs* lol

It looks pretty good so far, a lot more tanks too than before. They were constructing their indoor pond when I was there last, don't know if it's finished yet. Well worth a visit!

So far, they devour hair algae and brush algae but I still see that thin film algae on the glass. Must just be certain types they like....cause I don't think I have special shrimp. I can only tell you what I experienced first hand. I'll have to do some before and after pics next time.

I never knew how well dwarf shrimp ate algae! Ok, so when you go to the LFS they always advertise Amano as algae eating shrimp. I have to say that I've seen my cherry red's, green's and CRS do a much better job at eating algae than my amano's. I had some grasses in my community tank that were doing poorly. They were covered in this crazy hair algae that I couldn't pull off and the plant was having difficulty growing. I have amano in that tank and they never touched it. I put a piece of it in each of my dwarf shrimp tanks and they ATTACKED it with such a fury and had all the algae stripped off it in 3 hours! I also recently got an anubias that had a very stubborn brush algae on it. Like, there was no way I had a hope in heck of scratching it off without damaging the plant and I refuse to do bleach dips. I put it in my green shrimps tank and they stripped all the brush algae off! I am amazed! I plan on putting any algae ridden plants in my shrimp tanks from now on for a quick clean up:)

I think I might know one of the reasons for this behaviour now. I've discovered that they ride around on each other a lot more at feeding time. Sometimes if one shrimp detects that another one has food, it will jump on top of the other shrimp's back and try to steal it away. If it can't get the food, it just stays on the shrimp for awhile, grabbing little particles off the face of the shrimp that has the food. Since we started our shrimp breeding tanks, I've spent a lot of time watching them and I find them to be totally fascinating little creatures!

My Crystal Red experience.... I got my 6 Crystal Red's from Big Al's a few months ago. Initially, they were in my established 30g low tech with tetras, corydoras, cherry shrimp and amano shrimp. Filter was AquaClear 150 and I use 2 sponge inserts and 1 layer of bio rings. There was also an airstone. I had a gravel bottom, malaysian drift woods and different plants and mosses(not a planted tank by any means but a few). I do 45-50% water changes every week with de-chlor tap water and the shrimp were eating tetramin sinking pellets and any flake food that fell to the bottom. The tank temperature at that time was 79F and I keep lights on for about 10 hours. . No pH adjustments, no other special considerations. I have moved them over to their own 5g tank a couple of weeks ago. The filter is just the small one that came with the tank. It has some measly looking biomedia which I plan to ramp up a bit with some bio rings and I also added a small sponge filter. I bought the Fluval black shrimp substrate, put in a few mosses, some ground cover, 1 plant and some drift wood. I also lowered the tank temp to 76F. I also changed their diet to Fluval shrimp pellets, Critter Crumbs and blanched zucchini. I feed them 2x per day in small amounts. So far they seem happy but initially, I was worried about the environment change and new substrate. This is a brand new set up. I did not use any biological filter or water or anything from the other tank. I just added Prime for de-chlorinator and Stability bacteria starter for 7 days. Yes, the tank was uncycledwhen I added the shrimp. Don't rage on me, please....Apparently, with this special substrate, you don't need to cycle the tank. I'm still doing water testing just to make sure of coarse. Everything is looking great so far. I just wanted to share this info to show what I'm doing and maybe it can help someone out. I think the main thing with these shrimp is that they like really clean water, temp obviously isn't as important and they eat everything I give them. I decided to get a bit more finicky with their food and temperature because I'm hoping to breed them. I was looking at them really closely the other day and I think they are all FEMALES, d-oh! LOL, well I guess I'll just have buy some more and wait and see what happens. As far as keeping them, they have been comparable to my amano and cherry shrimp as far as requirements goes. Good luck fellow shrimpers!

That happened to me too...I ended up sawing off the end that I knew was going to be buried a bit in the gravel. This might be a great excuse for a bigger tank lololololololol!!!!

My hydra came in on plants from a LPS Creepy...I must have them then because I have acquired soooo many plants from different places. Where would be a good place to spot them? Do they just sit on the plants? Thanks for answering back!