quote by norder69: Hi just want to know what ever happened to the shrimps hobby in the GTA?  It seems to have died down significantly.  And I rarely see anybody selling CRS or high quality RCS anymore.  What about the other ones like the green shrimps, orange and snow ball?  Anyone have any success with the Sulawesi shrimps? It seems like the entire shrimp hobby left with her, when Katalyst (Kate) left for the states ...

Just you wait

After I get the new fish room fully settled at "you know" ...I'll be getting all kinds of cool shrimps including a few Sulwaesi's probably late November

quote by psyfish: quote by norder69: Hi just want to know what ever happened to the shrimps hobby in the GTA?  It seems to have died down significantly.  And I rarely see anybody selling CRS or high quality RCS anymore.  What about the other ones like the green shrimps, orange and snow ball?  Anyone have any success with the Sulawesi shrimps? It seems like the entire shrimp hobby left with her, when Katalyst (Kate) left for the states ... Just you wait After I get the new fish room fully settled at "you know" ...I'll be getting all kinds of cool shrimps including a few Sulwaesi's probably late November

Please keep us posted

The only places that seem to carry shrimp and crayfish on a regular basis that I have seen is the Indoor Jungle (has nice CPO's, tigers and orange) and Lucky's

Too bad since they look great in a Nano set up!

quote by psyfish: quote by norder69: Hi just want to know what ever happened to the shrimps hobby in the GTA?  It seems to have died down significantly.  And I rarely see anybody selling CRS or high quality RCS anymore.  What about the other ones like the green shrimps, orange and snow ball?  Anyone have any success with the Sulawesi shrimps? It seems like the entire shrimp hobby left with her, when Katalyst (Kate) left for the states ... Just you wait After I get the new fish room fully settled at "you know" ...I'll be getting all kinds of cool shrimps including a few Sulwaesi's probably late November

Thanks, I'll be looking forward to them.  Maybe I should jump start my CRS program again.  We are falling behind from the rest of the world.  We are still struggling to get a S grade CRS while the world have moved to King Kong, Panda and red wine variants.

I wish I had bought the Blue tiger from Kate.  That would've been a nice thing to breed pass around locally.

Have to agree with you on this... The shrimp and snail market seems to have gone. Wish I could dedicate some tanks to some shrimp they sure liked my water, maybe in a few years. Hopefully someone will pickup and take over Kate's great work with inverts.

not much of an option out here - still looking for some decent Crystal blacks - and gold -

will have to wait to see what harold brings in november end.


wish shipping was much easier from the states - most of them dont ship up here.


need to take a trip to see what shrimps indoor jungle has

I breed the Cherry Reds in rather embarrasingly large numbers. I bought them so that I would have a regular supply of live and disease free treats for my Tanganyikan Lamprologines.

I don't mind giving some away from time to time if anyone wants some. I thought the Cherry's were pretty common though, and not as interesting as some of the rarer variants. Would love to try some of the Sulawesi's at some point, but not at their current going price.

i have cherry reds for anyone who wants them. snoball struggle in identical water and maintenance to the cherry success. both blue tiger and low grade crs experiments failed in same water. the 20g. tanks are gravity fed drained to a common sump, to assure all parameter is equal, and each tank has an additional sponge filter. if anyone has an interest to discuss shrimp success vs. failure, i would surely be interested in tagging in. and i am always interested in trying crs or tigers again, if anyone has import options.

quote: quote by lloyd: i have cherry reds for anyone who wants them. snoball struggle in identical water and maintenance to the cherry success. both blue tiger and low grade crs experiments failed in same water. the 20g. tanks are gravity fed drained to a common sump, to assure all parameter is equal, and each tank has an additional sponge filter. if anyone has an interest to discuss shrimp success vs. failure, i would surely be interested in tagging in. and i am always interested in trying crs or tigers again, if anyone has import options.

OK, if you are interested in knowing more, take a reading of your water parameter and let me know what kind of plants you have in the tanks (if any).

For starter, I don't get the idea of how your "gravity fed drain" works.  But if you have a sump running it's a challenge to get any kind of decent breeding going on as there must have been countless shrimplettes that get washed down to the sump and get grind up by the pump.

Strong currents = bad for shrimps.

Slow water flow = good for shrimps.

Here is what I started out with:  This was a quarantine tank that eventually turned in the my starter breeder tank.

STARTER TANK:

The madagascar eventually died in that tank and I took out the skinny plant(forgot the name).  I drop some java/x-mass moss in there.  That single Amazon sword plant became the tree of live in that tank.  It practically gives live to this tank for generations of CRS.  Snails are ram horns and MTS.

Here are my findings for this tank at (Home aquarium 5G acrylic tank, I think):

- What the Amazon sword did for this tank ... is that it lowers the pH, given time.  I change water only once every 3 weeks.  I leave the dead leaves in there as long as there isn’t too much dead leaves that it will spoiled the water.  The decaying dead leaves; I suspect is what lowers the pH naturally.

- The Java/X-mass moss is where algae are grown; a must for all shrimp tanks.  With the proper lighting, it provided a constant source of algae for the shrimps to munch on all day.

- The gravel is a mixture of fluorite and some kind of pretty white pebbles.

- I have to wrap a sponge (those flat ones I bought from BA) around the filter intake.

- Temperature is around 24C – 31C.  This is because the temp is set at 24C to keep the water warm in the night.  In the day, the PC light heats the tank to 30C-31C.

- Tank is ½ open top.

- Absolutely no ferts are added. (more on this later)

- Food are carefully chosen. (more on this later too)

- From this one tank, they keep multiplying and from here, I started pulling sets of 10 and 15 out of the tank and populate 5 other tanks.  Including a breeder tank I purposely setup for the pure purpose of mass breeding the CRS.

They don’t do well on the other tanks.  Basically because I neglected to treat them properly.  I also setup a mirror tank (Another 5G) that failed for some odd reason.

Failiure tank:

After the success of my first tank.  I setup a duplicate sister tank just incase the first one crashes.  Surprisingly, the sister tank was a complete failiure.  It's a shrimp killer tank.  Even today I am still not %100 sure why it failed so miserably.  But the lessons I have learned from this tank and research online gave me the things I needed to do my breeder tank.

The things I think I did wrong:

- CO2 injection (some of the times) - I was lazy and did the DIY CO2 when ever I feel like it.  This lead to a wide swing in gH, kH and pH.

- I didn't have it here in this picture, but I did have a Anubia nana petite.  People over the net have complain that this plant kills shrimplettes.  Not sure if that is true or not.  But I did have one in this tank.

- One year ago, I treated this tank by overdosing it with Flourish Excel.  Then, I went on to overdosing it with a 3% Hydrogen peroxide solution(it's a cheaper alternative to ODing with Excel and much more potent at killing algae.)  This, I suspect is the main reason for making this a death tank for shrimps.  I've never been able to really breed shrimps from this tank since the OD.

i built a rack capable of hold three rows of 6-30x12x16 tanks. each tank is drilled. a floor sump sends water to a ceiling manifold, where valves control water distribution to each tank. i have the option of restricting a tank to Q, allow it to overflow directly to sump, or overflow to a tank below it. approx. half the tanks are complimented with sponge filters, so i can move them about as desired. a 60 gal. drum is used for weekly water changes. i close it's feed valve, drain it completely via floor valve, refill it with new water, treat lightly with Prime (free form chlorine only), and next day reopen the valve to allow water to return to circulation. i can also sponge any overflow, and adjust that tank's flow rate accordingly, to restrict migration.

water parameters are consistent with tap. ph=6.8-7.0, gh=high, and kh=mod high. to be honest, i have stopped testing gh and kh a long time ago. i only test ph and nitrates these days. my tank ph is consistently .2 lower than tap. i conclude my ample wood decor to be responsible. tannins are also heavy in this system for same reason. room heat controls temperature. early morning is 76-78, and by evening, has risen to 78-80.
plants consist of java fern and anubia. i used to have a ton of moss, but i tired of cleaning under it. only two tylo snail tanks have deep sand. the remaining tanks are very shallow sand or glass bottom.

quote by lloyd: water parameters are consistent with tap. ph=6.8-7.0, gh=high, and kh=mod high. to be honest, i have stopped testing gh and kh a long time ago. i only test ph and nitrates these days. my tank ph is consistently .2 lower than tap. i conclude my ample wood decor to be responsible. tannins are also heavy in this system for same reason. room heat controls temperature. early morning is 76-78, and by evening, has risen to 78-80. plants consist of java fern and anubia. i used to have a ton of moss, but i tired of cleaning under it. only two tylo snail tanks have deep sand. the remaining tanks are very shallow sand or glass bottom.

Wow, I have to say, you have one sweet setup.  Very good for my plecos.  Your gH and kH seems a bit high.  pH is very good, but a 6.4 or 6.6 pH would've been even better.  If all the other parameters are OK.  Then I would suggest looking at your gH and kH again (I hesitate to say this because I really forgot what my gH and kH where, but I don't seem to recall that they are in the high range.  I'll come back to correct this one when I get my computer formated and fully install.  Then I can fetch my tank's history chart again.)  This might be the reason your tiger shrimps aren't doing so well.  There are other factors that I will highlight later on that you might find useful.  Do you have any light source to grow algae?

lighting: i set up this system so that a window allows light to hit all of the left side tanks. these are the easiest tanks to grow diatom and algae. brown diatoms do very well. green algae is a bit tough to get established. moving brooding bn males to these tanks has really helped my bn fry success. the excess of diatom seems relevant to boost the initial rapid growth of these fry. all other tanks are room light only.
i also have a 48" 50gal. that houses 5 l046. they are still small (2 inch), but recently i have noticed a single in each of two other caves, while the other three continue to surround their first choice cave. initially, all 5 kept to one cave area, so this is the first time they appear to be separating themselves at will. this tank is sparsely planted and has a fair bit of wood litter on floor. i introduced a few snails to this tank a few months ago and they appear to be doing well, and i tolerate a few endlers as well, but keep their numbers below 10-12. i am not really convinced this tank is ideal to the zebra pleco, but they appear comfortable, because they often come out to eat with lights on. i am tempted to try crs in this tank, but the endlers would have to go, IMO.

i just noticed, during an edit to the above post, there is an added option to browse my folders at that point of posting. is this how i include pictures to my post? or is there a method to include pics that i appear to miss during initial reply writing?