Elusive Shrimp

[jimbooo]

Hi everyone.

sorry i couldn't find an appropriate forum to put this in so i'll dump it in here.

i have 2 massive armoured shrimp (one 4 inches, one 6/7 inches) in my 50G cube. the journal is in my sig if you want a picture. basically i spent 5 hours last night trying to net them to transfer to my rio180 but as the big lump of bogwood has so many little holes and caves in it i have been unsucessfull in the transfer. i could see them sitting right under the wood mocking me... but they were well out of reach.

i really dont want to remove the wood for obvious reasons (see pics) so does anyone have any nifty tricks to trap them.

i tried submersing a pop bottle with algae wafers in it to see if they would climb in and get stuck but they weren't playing the game.

any ideas?

 

[chrismr]

how about a square piece of netting with a bit of string attached to each corner, and when they wander on to it you can pull the strings and net them?

Best i could come up with off the top of my head

 

[jimbooo]

lol. thanks but i dont think you understand quite how fast they are. imagine letting go of a fully stretched elastic band. thats how quickly they move once disturbed.

i managed to get the net within 3 cm last night but then all hell broke loose and like a bullet they vanished under the wood.

it was rather funny if a little frustrating.

 

[chrismr]

lol. thanks but i dont think you understand quite how fast they are. imagine letting go of a fully stretched elastic band. thats how quickly they move once disturbed.

Having never kept shrimp, I was not aware they were that fast.... don't know why, but I always thought they were slow... learn something every day

 

[modernhamlet]

Sounds like you need to build a trap of some sort. There are various methods available via a google search, but I can't say which would be best for your particular situation. Sounds like a real pain. Shrimp are just too fast.

Are you sure you can't pull up that huge piece of wood?

 

[The-Wolf]

the last time I caught mine I had to suspend the wood above the tank (using the braces) lowered the water line to allow a bucket (with tank water) to sit on the bottom. 1hr later they "gave up the ghost" and dropped into the bucket

good luck Jim

 

[jimbooo]

thanks for the tips guys. one down one to go.

i noticed the big one was sitting conveniently in the roof of my coconut cave when i got home so i swiftly scooped the whole cave out with a net keeping the shrimp undisturbed and clinging to the coconut.

i've put the cave back in but right in the open so hopefully by tonight the other one will have moved in.