Moving Pregnant Cherry Shrimp

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Angie J

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Hi everybody,
A couple of days ago I found out that one of my female berried cherry shrimp is pregnant. This is my first time experiencing this so I have a few questions.
1. I have a heavily planted tank, with five guppies (who are very curious about the shrimp and usually scavenge for food down the bottom). This makes me believe I should move my girl, therefore lessing the stress on her and limiting the risk of her babies being eaten. Is it a good idea to move her while she is pregnant? Its her first time being pregnant and I don't want her to get stressed and drop her eggs.
2. along with this, I don't not have a readily available tank to put her in (and can't really afford to buy another tank to the collection). Would it be alright to use a cylindrical jar (perhaps around 2-3 litres) that isn't heated nor filtered, just for the time being. I will add plants both live (e.g. java moss) and silk. Then once she has given birth and the babies get older move them back into the tank.

Please, any help would be highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Angie
 
A pregnant RCS is termed as "berried", as in seeing the eggs usually yellow or green inside her abdomen which look like little berries :lol:

Anyway, as to answer your query, catching shrimps is fairly simple using a small net to catch her, but the real problems starts as to where you're moving the shrimp to.

Newly set up tanks is not really the best for any shrimps, never mind a berried shrimp. If there is an established tank where she can be moved to then that would be more suitable.

Also a risk to catching berried female shrimps is that if you spook her too much, she will simply drop the eggs and escape, so thats anothr factor to bear in mind.

Female shrimps, when adapted to their aquarium will get berried fairly often throughout a year and as long as there are male shrimps, you'll soon see a number of tiny shrimplets every now and again, some will survive as long as there are plenty of hiding space and plants for hem to feed and hide in.

So even whilst there are guppies, am sure one or two shrimps will survive to adulthood. Not guaranteed of course as guppies feeds like gannets really :lol:
 
A pregnant RCS is termed as "berried", as in seeing the eggs usually yellow or green inside her abdomen which look like little berries :lol:

Anyway, as to answer your query, catching shrimps is fairly simple using a small net to catch her, but the real problems starts as to where you're moving the shrimp to.

Newly set up tanks is not really the best for any shrimps, never mind a berried shrimp. If there is an established tank where she can be moved to then that would be more suitable.

Also a risk to catching berried female shrimps is that if you spook her too much, she will simply drop the eggs and escape, so thats anothr factor to bear in mind.

Female shrimps, when adapted to their aquarium will get berried fairly often throughout a year and as long as there are male shrimps, you'll soon see a number of tiny shrimplets every now and again, some will survive as long as there are plenty of hiding space and plants for hem to feed and hide in.

So even whilst there are guppies, am sure one or two shrimps will survive to adulthood. Not guaranteed of course as guppies feeds like gannets really :lol:
Thank you! I suppose I won't bother moving her and just let nature take its course :)
 
If you don't have an established tank to move her to, just leave her in the tank. Add more plants if you like, the more plants the more hiding places for her and the babies. Java Moss is a good one to try.

Floating plants like Water Sprite (Ceratopteris species) will give the guppies somewhere to hang out and help keep them in the top half of the tank so they will be less inclined to swim around the bottom.

Guppies don't naturally feed off the bottom. Do you put bottom feeding pellets in the tank for the shrimp? If yes the guppies are probably going after that.
 
Totally agree with the advice given, I had to move a cherry shrimp while carrying eggs, into another established tank and all eggs were lost
 
If you don't have an established tank to move her to, just leave her in the tank. Add more plants if you like, the more plants the more hiding places for her and the babies. Java Moss is a good one to try.

Floating plants like Water Sprite (Ceratopteris species) will give the guppies somewhere to hang out and help keep them in the top half of the tank so they will be less inclined to swim around the bottom.

Guppies don't naturally feed off the bottom. Do you put bottom feeding pellets in the tank for the shrimp? If yes the guppies are probably going after that.

Yeah I already have java moss and other plants for the shrimp. Also I do feed the shrimp/guppies peas and zucchini, which the guppies go crazy for and swim to the bottom to eat. Thank you so much for your feed back :)
 

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