different kinds of shrimps

[SGTTS]

HI All,

After i read alot of articles, I realised that my pervious experience were totally WRONG

before i went back oversea, i started a native tanks specially in shrimps due to the addictive of other fresh water shrimp at oversea.

I catched the shrimps from different river and i puted into tank. I was using the aquarium shrimps info from oversea so i setup my tank at 28 degree, and all natives seems cook very WELL DONE.

sooner i gave all up since I decided back to my home country. 2 years later i return to NZ and I AM GOING TO START AGAIN.

however i need to start everything again as i gave all my equipment away. I am starting to gathering up information of how to setup my native tank. and my objective is to successfully breed them WITHIN MY TANK.

I have read a few post and i found that the shirmps need to be breed in saltwater OR it is possible to breed in fresh water?

my first question is. what happen if i increse the salt level in the tank. like adding saltwater? does anyone tried that?

From different river, i found different kind of shrimps. I am living in Auckland, i want to know what kind of shrimps i can get within Auckland area? it would be nice if someone can post up photos so i can have a look.

would be nice to have some good reply for this post and wish everyone here can help me out.

kind regards,

SGTTS

[A-town...]

just like fish, shrimp would proabably change colour depending on their enviroment and feeding habits. I would assume they are all the same type of shrimp.

[Stella]

Hello and welcome back!

Native shrimp need high oxygen levels. Warm water has less oxygen. Some people have been able to keep shrimp in warmer tanks - there is another thread currently running about shrimp viewtopic.php?f=41&t=48268 where FuglyDragon put them in tanks of different temperatures and like you found that 28 degrees makes a shrimp cocktail.

Of course if you want shrimp as your main feature, don't heat the water at all, and watch that it doesn't get too hot over summer (think tank placement, cooling the room, then fans on constantly for evaporative cooling or icebottles).

There is only one species here, but there can be slightly different patterns and colours, although these made fade in captivity (thought Fugly found one set went darker!)

Remember they start as boys then change into girls as they get bigger - very clever!

Some here have managed to breed them.

Do a search in the archives, there are lots of threads about shrimp

[spoon]

ihave some glass shrimp living in a saltwater reef tank they breed all the time just none of the eggs survive

[SamH]

I now have two living at 24 degrees with adult guppies, they are very lively and like to hang out on the moss.

[dreams]

I seem to have a redish one among the ones I have..the rest darkened up as well

In terms of breeding them, I haven't done it, but the first batch of shrimp I received was from someone who said

that they received 2 pregnant shrimps and lucky enough, the babies survived and grew up...which I ended up with..

The babies grew up in 25 degrees water, but I dont know if they added any salt to their tank, may be a possibility

as they were keeping mollies

I'm keeping 10+ shrimps at 26.4 degrees atm with pressurized Co2 and they have done well these last few weeks

though I did have an adult gold ram hunting and eating them...now relocated to a different tank

anyways, good luck :bounce:

[SGTTS]

Dear all,

First of all, thank you very much for everyones help. i think this time i started the native tank again will be alot more interesting. information is more indepth and well explained, which im very appreciated.

my first concept at the moment will be a tank around 60 x 20 x 20. with a canister filter. i'm considering buying a water cooling as i can get good deal from HongKong. i'm not quite sure how much it cost in NZ but i guess it might be quite expensive....

i also want to get co2 set from HK, but recharging the co2 bottle is it expensive in NZ? i'm in Auckland area and most close to me is Animate or Hollywood Fish Farm... anyone know the prices for recharging? and is it anykind of bottle they can recharge??

thx all again.. wold be nice to see more people's native tanks with shrimps and upload to this post. so i can get more ideas~

SGTTS

[SGTTS]

ihave some glass shrimp living in a saltwater reef tank they breed all the time just none of the eggs survive

thx for your comment spoon, i just wonder why no eggs survive?

[SamH]

wold be nice to see more people's native tanks with shrimps and upload to this post. so i can get more ideas~

viewtopic.php?f=41&t=49199 There's a video of my two new shrimp.

Not sure about CO2, the natives need high levels of oxygen apparently.

HTH.

[Stella]

Quoting from 'An Introduction to the Freshwater Crustacea of New Zealand' (1976):

It is really a semi-estuarine shrimp, since it occurs, often very abundantly, but only in the lower reaches of streams, particularly near their transition from fresh to brackish conditions. In the truly lowermost zone it is replaced by the taxonomically quite distinct mysid shrimps, which in turn are replaced at the coast itself by other decapod shrimps such as Palaemon affinis.

The food consists of bottom detritus and material which accumulates on the leaves of aquatic plants. It is scraped up by some or all of the chelipeds which reach out well beyond the sides of the body and bring detritus to the mouthparts. When all four of the chelipeds are sweeping the effect is reminiscent of a small child grabbing sweets as fast as possible.

:lol:

Neilson [New Zealand Limnological Newsletter No. 8 919720] found that the first stage larvae would not survive more than about a week in freshwater, but was able to rear them through three or so larval stages in the laboratory in seawater. On the basis of these culture experiments and of examinations of the size range of the animals collected at various distances from the coast he suggested that the very young shrimps may (like young whitebait) migrate either to the sea or at least to the river mouth, to undergo their early development in saltwater, before returning upstream to complete their development and to breed. Also in a stream near Raglan very small shrimps were found only near the mouth in brackish water, and as in the Canterbury habitats, egg-bearing females were not present in April-June, but appeared in July.

The Atyidae are believed to be an ancient freshwater group which probably separated from their marine ancestors in the Jurassic period.

Fascinating book with everything you could ever want to know about the structure and biology of ostracods, isopods, cladocerans (daphnia), copepods and more!

It also has the lost lovely dedication I have ever seen:

TO OUR MOTHERS: This book is dedicated to our mothers, who cheerfully fished us out of numerous wet and muddy situations when we were very small, and later listen patiently to long and enthusiastic monologues on the fascinations of lakes, ponds, streams and crustaceans when we were students. Their interest, encouragement and toleration of our often inconvenient and somewhat incomprehensible activities meant a great deal to us.

awwwwwww! (How many of us can relate to that I wonder?! )

[dreams]

That's a nice dedication! Might do something like that for my thesis...

In my tank I've got good surface movement, so it may help with the oxygen bit...but it seems shrimps in generally may also have high sensitivities to PH swings with Co2, but so far so good..They really like the tetra colour bits, they'd grab a whole pellet, hide from other fishes then take their time eating it

My 1kg Co2 bottle costs about $17 to refill, so its pretty cheap. I'm not sure what bottles they can refill, but my one is an UP AQUA branded bottle from Asia

[preacher]

Lol, Stella I just had this lovely vision of you starring down a microscope trying to attatch a GPS device to the back of a shrimp so you could track it! Thinking about it, if Shrimp do migrate back and forth to the river mouth to breed that would have to be one of natures truly great journeys given how far inland they can be found. I've seen Shrimp with eggs and young in the river where I am at Totora Park, thats around 30km from the river mouth. I can see it would be fairly easy for them to get downstream (ie drift with the flow), but thats a huge journey back home for such a small creature.

P.

[Stella]

:lol: if only they made trackers that small! One day...

It is impressive eh! I saw a single solitary shrimp up by Massey (Palmerston North), which is something like 60km (according to rough googlemaps estimate) - a crazy long journey! Maybe she was avoiding all the juvenile behaviour at the coast

Not sure how long they live.... would be interesting to know.

[Stella]

(Dreams, what are you studying? I am doing a masters in ecology on native fish habitat, no surprises there... :roll: :lol: )

[dreams]

I'm doing architecture, finishing in a few weeks once I finish writing this thesis :evil: !

Almost totally unrelated to fish keeping apart from where I find aquascaping to have elements of it such as

Form, concepts, proportion and aesthetics :bounce:

[SGTTS]

Once again, thank you for all the replies...

interesting adn impressive reseach about these tiny creatures, i'm suprised that they really have to travel that far to up-stream.. from the place that i first catch these tiny shrimps. i only catch in a water pond under a bridge. and now i'm thinking that how far that have to travel to get to the river mouth.

Dream: thank you for your helpful information, very apprecitated

I'm wondering. the water from tab contain lots of chemical,will that be harmful with the shrimps? Refer from the oversea forum, keeping the native creatures alive needs to simulate their living environment. do i have to do that also when i setup my tank?

SGTTS.

[spoon]

thx for your comment spoon, i just wonder why no eggs survive?

lots of things to eat them including the shrimps themselves and mysid and my fish

[SGTTS]

i'm considering of how to setup the environment within the tank?

any ideas of what i should do or what i should not do?

thx heaps~

[Stella]

I would avoid using chemical additives (like to remove chlorine or 'age' or 'condition' the water). These are known to be toxic to crayfish. Since shrimp are crustaceans too, I would avoid these chemicals with them.

Seriously, I wouldn't worry too much about simulating the environment. Just make sure the water is clean, cool, well oxygenated and is growing algae and biofilms for them to eat. Use gravel from the river as substrate, and they like hiding in plants if you have some.

Shrimp are so cute and really easy to look after.

[SGTTS]

Stella:

Thank you very much for your prompt reply, appreciated. do i need a thick layer of gravel, my pervious experience was i bought the gravel from petshop and it's acoung 3-4cm thick, once i change the water for the shrimps, due to it become cloudy, many of them die instantly... also I'm notice about the chemical from the tap water.. what should i do to remove the chems within the h2o?

thx alot

[preacher]

I have a tank with 10 shrimp and 4 bullies, I just use ordinary tap water. I haven't had a problem. Temp can spike to 25 and I feed tropical fish flake to mine. No heating or cooling and a single pump. The tank is set up with garden soil, topped with river sand and coloured stones from the Warehouse. Some plastic plants (all I have at the mo) and some left over bark slabs at the back from the firewood. They have been ticking along for about 2 weeks now. I add fresh water every few days.

I've not had a tank before so this is something of a learning experience for me. I am adding some mountain minnows tomorrow, see how they do too.

P.

[Stella]

SGTTS, how much of the water are you changing, and how long is the interval between changes?

As it is a new tank it is 'cycling' (growing the bacteria that convert toxic ammonia wastes into less toxic things). Not sure what your experience with fishkeeping is, but it might pay to read up about cycling. There are some good 'sticky' threads at the top of the freshwater or beginner forums, and do a google. This will also tell you why the water goes cloudy (bacteria bloom).

Not understanding the cycling that happens in a new tank is a common disaster area for beginners. Indeed even people who have been keeping them for years (self included) could do with refresher reading on cycling.

As for gravel, it doesn't need to be thick unless you have undergravel filtration or digging fish. Just a thin layer will be fine for your purposes.

[SGTTS]

Preacher: Thank you very much for sharing your experience to me, and you gave me a lot of good ideas of setting up my tank. but, the garden soil will it make the water very dirty?

Stella: I have a lot of experience about having a Fish tank, when I first immigrant to NZ. within 2 months of settlement, i already bought my fish tank and feeding guppies. most of the time I'm on tropical fish, i did switch to sea-water before, however, due to lag of time, i just feel that all the money spend on chem salt and coral are waste of money. and one most bad thing is.. once i stopped doing a fish tank, my mum would love to give all my equipment away.. therefore. whenever i want to start i have to buy EVERYTHING again,,, and again.... and... so as this time..

being 2 years more, i keep reading the forum overseas about how people having a shrimps aquariums and how to breed them. understand the shrimps are very sensitive creature,, they investigate the PH rate, gH rate, how to grow bacteria using those bio rings etc. they even running a external tanks of water for just growing bacterias to have a balance environment for the shrimps. of course, they are doing this for reason, and the reason is because the shrimps they feeding is about 50-60NZD per shrimp. that is why they doing all possible way to keep the shrimps alive.

Anyhow. due to the last experience with native shrimps. i totally wasted their life, which i was thinking was there anything wrong with the setup. but with this time, i should be able to manage.

Stella, do i need to have fine gravel or large gravel is better for the tank?

anyhow, thank you for every one here. which able to help me out. special thanks to stella.

any memeber is keen to post up their shrimp tank so i can have some ideas?

thx.

[preacher]

No, the tank isn't dirty at all. Probably because of the sand on top of it. The bark did turn the water into a rich tea colour for a while though A few water changes sorted that out.

[SGTTS]

thank for your comment preacher, very interesting idea that i might give it a try.

i just searching on trade me about what filter i am going to get. planning to get canister filter with bio media. saw the filter with UV filtration, is that good to have UV filtration?

will the filter over-killed the tank? i'm planning to get a 600mm tank.

cheers~~~~