Euryth

Whenever I watch videos of shrimp molting or read about it, I've always seen or heard that they almost flick right out of the old shell almost instantaneously. I would increase calcium in their diet and measure your parameters. I'm wondering if your KH is high enough or may need to be raised a degree or so. Have you been having any deaths?

Lol! Well that's why I've been researching old threads to see if I could find out anything about ways to increase growth rates. I feed good quality foods, have an established algae covered tank, use 6 or 7 hour light cycles, & keep params in between Caridina & Neo preferences. So far, not even my RCS or carbons are breeding in the same 5g & I've had them for two nearly three months. If I could improve something, it would have to be more water changes. I don't do them as much as I would like to. Scared I'd shock them too much ?

I'm having the EXACT same scenario play out lol. I feel like my trio probably molted maybe all of once or twice since having them. They are still maybe under or at 1 cm in length. I guess I won't have to worry about them breeding with my mischlings for the next 3 months lol.

Beautiful yellows, dazalea! I've been trying for the last month and a half to get my population off the ground, but my girls are holding steady onto their saddles ugh! Not really sure what it'll take to get them going, but I'd appreciate it if they'd start lol. Otherwise, you'll have an order from me sometime very soon!

Are those maybe ostracoda, or seed shrimp? I used to have them in one of my old RCS tanks a few years back, I didn't mind them at all but I could see how they could be distracting with so many of them. I personally love seeing copepods and such in my tanks, makes me feel like I have a pretty nice ecosystem going on lol.

I'd say maybe 50 or more to start off would've been good. As long as your tank is cycled, water params are good & your filtration is adequate, there's no real limit to how many you could have. Shrimp have such a small bio load, too.

Exactly what I was going to suggest next, ohmiko! If you're disturbing the tank too often by moving things around, aquascaping frequently, etc. or even changing the water too often that could be an issue. Taking ohmiko's breeder box suggestion would be the easiest way to make sure breeding is occurring. With a tank that large, I would honestly have started with a much larger colony than 25 in order to prevent that from happening. It may not seem like mating is occurring, but I'm sure it does when we're unaware in situations like these. You could rearrange the tank to isolate the hiding places in certain areas like placing moss clumps, large leafy plants or lava rock in the right back corner of the tank. The rest could be slightly barren or lightly scaped.

I haven't kept shrimp in a few years before recently starting back up again, but I do remember having this same problem when I first got started with RCS I purchased. I bought mine young, and when the females would mature, all my first time mothers would drop their eggs. No matter what I did, they always would lol. On top of that, they would make entirely too many to hold in their swimmerets. It got to the point that I automatically expected it as a right of passage lol. How old are your female shrimp in question? Are they repeat egg droppers?

I really appreciate the advice! My reasoning for buying BB mischlings was that they'd be more tolerant than BB and most BB I could find for purchase thru various sellers or dealers had their stock accustomed to a pH of 6. I keep them with Neos and don't have tank space to dedicate to them solely at the moment, so I figured mischlings were my best bet. Since they're stable, ik for sure at some point I'll get BB from their breeding, but didn't want to chance $50-90+ on a handful of high end BB that may die out before getting established as my first purchase. I'm willing to gamble now lol, plus I want to make my own lines to get down the basics of selective shrimp breeding, otherwise I'd just buy some Mosura or Shadow Pandas now ?

Thanks Mr. F! That's definitely reassuring then. I think I may buy some high grade BB or something to throw into the gene pool too. I have some young OEBT that are royal blue, but doubt they'd mature fast enough to mix into the gene pool so I should have majority BB & more mischlings I'd expect.

Thanks DETAquarium for the response & explanation! I thought to ask because when I asked the seller, I was given their lineage history but didn't know if it would be sufficient enough to guess from. I've never kept mischlings before so I was hoping for a bit of guidance, is all. It sounds like the sure thing for me to do is to simply wait & see what sort of offspring come from their breeding and move forward from there?

Nothing guys???

Lmao please do, this time via PM in case there's competition!

Almost two weeks ago I purchased 15 BB Mischlings from Dreamer_yoyo on aquabid and they have been thriving in my 5g mixed shrimp tank. This tank has a few Christmas moss balls and two types of Java Ferns present in the tank, with some simple black petco sand mixed with Seachem Fluorite gravel. I also use SS GH+ (for 8 dGH) in 1G Purified Water jugs (TDS 0, pH 6 or less) for water changes. When asked, yoyo told me that these mischlings are third generation, coming from both BB Male x BB Female or BB Male x Snow White Bee female. With this knowledge, what would be my expected yield or percentage of actual BB phenotypes from their breeding? For now, I'd like to work on breeding more BB that can also exist in Neo parameters. Eventually, I'd like to aim for Blue Mosura or Shadow Panda's if possible, but that would obviously be further down the line. If anyone wants to provide any advice on the best way to do that (so I could refer to it here), I'd greatly appreciate it! Obviously, I'm not opposed to buying those types and mixing them in, but would want to know what to expect first.

Unfortunately, I know lol...I was so caught up this weekend that I forgot to purchase one! Smh, someday...someday soon lol...