Spring shrimp projects

[Aennedry]

Hello. Okay I am going to start a journal on this years projects. Having hit the six month mark on keeping my cherries alive and breeding I am going to expand my collection of shrimps this year. I am dreaming on having super tigers, painted cherries, and undetermined blue neo (still in the deciding stage) red tigers and then leopard galaxies. Oh, and opae'ula. My firsts step into the salty side. I am not sure if I will get to all of them this year, but that is currently my shrimp wish list.

 

Step one of my plans, move the cherries so I can use my current tanks for the painted cherries and super tigers. I am figuring this will take a while, especially in the 5 gal where I am planning on putting the painted. Need to be sure all the cherries are gone before introducing the painted. Planned purchase time will be in March, after taxes have come in and temps have improved.

 

The cherries will be moved to my 20 gal long betta tank, I had always planned on feeding spare cherries to the bettas, and possibly to my cats as I know they like dried ghost shrimp. The betta tank will be partially taken down and re-scaped for shrimp. Well, that was planned beforehand as my cats walking over the glass hood popped the dividers and I have to re-glue them to the wall now.

 

I will be adding braces over the dividers to keep them from popping over the weight of the cats on the hood, as I know I will not be able to keep the cats off the hood. They love watching the bettas. Second, I will be switching out the Tom's mini filter for my Eheim 2013. I had thought the 2013 would be too strong for the tank and went with the smaller filter. I have since decided that due to the three dividers that the flow is not high enough and will be going for the stronger filter. That will give me a filter to put on one of the other tanks.

 

I will be adding more plants for cover for the shrimp, crypts are my fave. And possibly this spring some Anubias nana petite. I will be stepping for the first time into mosses with some Java moss tied to pieces of coconut to create low caves for the shrimp. I am thinking about adding dwarf sagittaria. I know a lot of people advise Java ferns and wisteria, but I have never been able to keep those alive in my tanks. In my low-medium light tanks they die, while swords and lilies grow like weeds. Crypts are weeds in my tank, giving them a lovely jungle look. Plus side, have plenty to move over to the 20.

 

No pictures currently as I am fighting with my camera hookup to my computer.

 

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[Aennedry]

No pictures. Still fighting with the camera, it does not want to load any new pics to the computer.

 

I got the 20 gal long redone, and am now working on getting rid of the brown diatoms that sprang up. *sigh* I put a stronger light on it and am now out of balance apparently. I am working on the light timing and I am going to add more crypts from the other two tanks as it is now getting crowded in the five and ten. Quite the crypt jungle. Once you have crypts in your tank, you will never run out. The low coconut shell caves covered with Java moss are growing fine, they are about an inch and a half long now. What few shrimp I have in the 20 do hide under them, which was the purpose of having them. The larger filter is working great. Typo last post, Eheim 2213 is what I have. For the sake of the betta and shrimp I turned the spray bar toward the back, still getting surface disturbance but I am not blowing the betta around. 

 

Due to work issues I have not progressed far on the other projects. My cherries in both the five and the ten are doing okay, but I am not seeing a lot of large adult shrimp. I am seeing younger shrimp, and some of my new berried shrimp I swear are only 3/8 to 1/2 long. But no new big ones. Maybe I am just being too impatient, comparing them to the adult shrimp I bought last year. I did purchase three new cherries from the pet store, despite not planning on doing that to save the money for other shrimp. These ones were very dark, going blackish-red. Under the flashlight they don't have as good shell color coverage as my other ones do, but they do have red colored body tissue while mine have clear; possibly Bloody Mary culls? One was berried, I am hoping they will give the dark tissue color to my cherries, which I think are a low to mid grade sakura color. If they do, I think I will skip the Painted Fires and maybe go for yellow cherries. Or maybe save a tank for a yet undetermined cardinia. I have plenty of time to decide. 

 

I have purchased some cholla wood from Han and they are lovely. I also got some mulberry leaves and shrimp food samples. The shrimp love Snowflake, though I need to get a feeding bowl for it as it scatters everywhere. And they go wild for Shrimp Crack. It is the only food that they love as much as peas. And Slick the orange rabbit snail loves it as well. I am planning on making an order next month, because it will take me that long to decide on what I want to order. It is all Han's fault for having so much great shrimp stuff to choose from.

 

In the next couple weeks I am going to start to slowly transfer shrimp from the five to the ten to get it ready for new shrimp. It will take a while as I am not planning on a complete tear down. Just moving the shrimp, largest to small, so no new babies hatch out and to give the current babies time to grow. Weather has been weird, so not planning on ordering any shrimp for several more months. With my luck the week I order shrimp it will dive to -20 and I would loose them all as they sit for hours on my doorstep waiting for me to come home from work. Once that is done I am going to toss a betta over there to hold the cycle until I get new shrimp to put in it.

 

That's all for now, happy shrimping!

 

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