TwoTankAmin
Fish Connoisseur
For a good part of my years keeping fish I had no interest in shrimp except as a food for my fish. But I also became a friend of Rachel O'Leary, aka msjinkzd, in those years. Eventually she won me over and I bought a bag of the red Neocaridina davidi. These went in to planted 5.5 gal tank. Over the year the small fish I would have in the tank would pass on and I would replaced them with another species. After about 15 year and some time of having no fish in it I decided i could take it down. It was 6 feet up a wall on a shelf I had installed just for it.
So I went up the ladder I needed for working in it ready to put the contents into a bucket when I discovered it was filled with shrimp. The tank is still up there today and overstocked with the little guys.
Over the years I was lucky to have a number of the rare B&W Hypamcistrus plecos from the Rio Xingu spawn in my tanks. among other species. What I have come to believe is that we do not spawn out firsh, They do all the work and they do this because they want to do so.. Our job on all of this is not to do things which will work to prevent them from succeeding. If we give them the right environment, if we feed them the right food and maintain their tank, the odds are decent they will spawn/
Now, back to shrimp. Those red cherries above were apparently in a set-up conducive to their reproducing for almost 20 years now. As long as I had a few fish many of the potential new shrimp were lunch, until the past 18 months. Today I am thinking I need to pull out and sell or trade a lot of shrimp. I did nothing beyond weekly, water changes, an occasional rinsing of the filter media and feeding a proper diet. Of course I always add needed ferts and Flourish Excel after refilling my tanks with plants.
About 5 or 6 years a ago a customer turned fish friend on the left Coast (i.e. California) said work and family issues meant she had to shut down a few tanks and she needed somebody to take some fish and shrimp who she knew would give them proper care. I am on the right coast (New York a bit NNE of NYC). I volunteered and among the things I received were about 10-12 neo. davidi, blue dream variety. These went in to my 15 gal. jungle tank. It has never held many fish and today it holds around 7 or 8 pond raised white clouds, one juvie albino bn and too many assassin snails. I did nothing special for the tank beyond my normal maint., water changes, feeding and feritlizing. In the next sic months I bought 6 more of the blue neos at one of club's regular meeting auctions.
Since then I have sold well over 100 of the blue shrimp and a similar number of assassin snails. A few months back I decided to see what would happen if I removed some of the adult blue shrimp from the 15 gal. and dropped them into the planted 29 I set up to Q some new fish months ago. I also had so many assassins in other tanks that I added about a dozen of them to the 29 as well. Since then I have truly ignored that tank. I do the weekly water change and often the media doesn't need rinsing. I do rinse the pre-filter in the intake. And I feed the tank a bit for the shrimp and snails. But there is algae on some of the plants.
I do check every week to see if the shrimp are reproducing. Last week I spotted a few teeny blue shrimp. Today I spotted a whole bunch of teeny blue shrimp.
I guess I did not do anything to prevent them from spawning. There are also more assassins in there than I remember dropping in.
Over the last 25 years I have had quite a few fish spawn as as well as the shrimp and snails. Most did it all without my intentional input intended to trigger spawns. The first unexpected spawn were my panda corys. I do not count the swordtails which were among my very first fish. My best guess is I likely have had 20+ species reproduce in my tanks over the years. Many, but not all, resulted in viable fry. But, many eggs usually got eaten as did new fry in community tanks.
I am still amazed that things spawn simply because I basically did nothing that would discourage or prevent that as opposed to trying to do things that would induce spawning.
So I went up the ladder I needed for working in it ready to put the contents into a bucket when I discovered it was filled with shrimp. The tank is still up there today and overstocked with the little guys.
Over the years I was lucky to have a number of the rare B&W Hypamcistrus plecos from the Rio Xingu spawn in my tanks. among other species. What I have come to believe is that we do not spawn out firsh, They do all the work and they do this because they want to do so.. Our job on all of this is not to do things which will work to prevent them from succeeding. If we give them the right environment, if we feed them the right food and maintain their tank, the odds are decent they will spawn/
Now, back to shrimp. Those red cherries above were apparently in a set-up conducive to their reproducing for almost 20 years now. As long as I had a few fish many of the potential new shrimp were lunch, until the past 18 months. Today I am thinking I need to pull out and sell or trade a lot of shrimp. I did nothing beyond weekly, water changes, an occasional rinsing of the filter media and feeding a proper diet. Of course I always add needed ferts and Flourish Excel after refilling my tanks with plants.
About 5 or 6 years a ago a customer turned fish friend on the left Coast (i.e. California) said work and family issues meant she had to shut down a few tanks and she needed somebody to take some fish and shrimp who she knew would give them proper care. I am on the right coast (New York a bit NNE of NYC). I volunteered and among the things I received were about 10-12 neo. davidi, blue dream variety. These went in to my 15 gal. jungle tank. It has never held many fish and today it holds around 7 or 8 pond raised white clouds, one juvie albino bn and too many assassin snails. I did nothing special for the tank beyond my normal maint., water changes, feeding and feritlizing. In the next sic months I bought 6 more of the blue neos at one of club's regular meeting auctions.
Since then I have sold well over 100 of the blue shrimp and a similar number of assassin snails. A few months back I decided to see what would happen if I removed some of the adult blue shrimp from the 15 gal. and dropped them into the planted 29 I set up to Q some new fish months ago. I also had so many assassins in other tanks that I added about a dozen of them to the 29 as well. Since then I have truly ignored that tank. I do the weekly water change and often the media doesn't need rinsing. I do rinse the pre-filter in the intake. And I feed the tank a bit for the shrimp and snails. But there is algae on some of the plants.
I do check every week to see if the shrimp are reproducing. Last week I spotted a few teeny blue shrimp. Today I spotted a whole bunch of teeny blue shrimp.
I guess I did not do anything to prevent them from spawning. There are also more assassins in there than I remember dropping in.
Over the last 25 years I have had quite a few fish spawn as as well as the shrimp and snails. Most did it all without my intentional input intended to trigger spawns. The first unexpected spawn were my panda corys. I do not count the swordtails which were among my very first fish. My best guess is I likely have had 20+ species reproduce in my tanks over the years. Many, but not all, resulted in viable fry. But, many eggs usually got eaten as did new fry in community tanks.
I am still amazed that things spawn simply because I basically did nothing that would discourage or prevent that as opposed to trying to do things that would induce spawning.
