Turbo...is that all that is in the 10g tank 15 yellows?
You should always see them swimming, or walking around the tank looking for food. Are they at all lethargic?
I'd try feeding some fresh vegtables, like a piece of squash, or blanched skinned peas. Within a minute or two you should see a dog pile on the food. If they don't your overfeeding.
It's taken me a while to finally see my first batch of baby red cherries. My water is nice and hard. GH = 15, KH = 11 (finally tested it after all these years!) I was under the impression that you grew some male and females up and bam.....a gazillion babies in no time. I have been extremely observant with them and this is what I'm thinking....
I'm not sure how long it takes for each of these steps, but the period covered definitely is several months. It takes a few months for the babies to get big enough. Once they are saddled isn't it something like 5 weeks or so until babies? To me it looks like every female has dropped her first batch of eggs into the moss. Easy to spot in my tanks. Now they have to saddle up again and grow the next batch of babies. Several more weeks go by. So if a lot of the females do drop their first batch of eggs, it's going to take 6+ months from the time you buy baby shrimp until you may see your first batch of young. Probably a bit longer than that. And that seems like forever. I asked once here if other people noticed their females dropping their first batch of eggs and didn't get any responses.
In my experience, it's about 3 weeks from berry to shrimplets and probably about a week from saddle to berry, though I could be wrong about that. I have a number of saddled yellows at the moment (finally, after months!) and Thursday will be 1 week saddled so we'll see how quickly the eggs come.
I didn't observe any of my first-time mother shrimp dropping their eggs, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Edit:
Actually, in looking at my logs, my first RCS female took just over 2 weeks from berry to shrimplets hatching. I don't have any stats on saddle to berry though. Additionally, my logs say that my first berried yellow shrimp back in November took only 2 weeks from berry to shrimplets. They quit breeding shortly thereafter... but the babies survived. So I'll have to change what I said above to 2 weeks from berry to shrimplets. My cajun dwarf crayfish also seem to take only about 2 weeks.
PB max, you mention you're stopped breeding- then restarted recently any details you can offer on water stats during that time? Anything you can think of that might explain it?
My 10 gallon has only those shrimp and european ramshorn snails (the small sideways kind).
the duration the eggs take to hatch seems to vary on my tank. It has usually been between 2-3 weeks.
My first baby yellows seemed like they took forever to hatch, it was well over 3 weeks, closer to 4. Since then I have seen them hatch in 18-19 days, and up to about 23-24 days.
I know temperature is important, I keep my tank at about 76-78F
Ah, the great yellow shrimp / cray-killing tank mystery That tank killed a sexed pair of CPOs, 2 berried female dwarf cajun crays, and one male cajun cray before I figured out what I think was causing the problem. The yellows simply quit breeding... many of the babies survived, but I just saw no more saddles or berries. My parameters were the same as the rest of my tanks - A/Nitite/Nitrate 0/0/0, PH just below 8, temp about 77F. By process of elimination I believe that in my case, it was electrical conduit (grey) PVC that I put in the tank for cray hides that did it. The pigment they use for it contains lead, which shouldn't have been an issue because it's bound up in the PVC itself which isn't water-soluble. Interestingly, after removing that PVC and many 80% water changes, I did find a saddled yellow in there. I've since moved most of my yellows to a new planted tank where they seem to be saddling up very well. The old yellow tank also has brown rams, lots of MTS, and lots of planaria (yuck!).
Maybe it's just time to try a new tank? I'm in the process of decommissioning the old yellow tank... though I may use it for some platy fry which I seem to have a glut of lately (and maybe they'll eat the planaria).
One thing I've learned about freshwater shrimp (and crays) is that while there are some big reasons they're not doing well, sometimes it's something else and no one has any idea what. It can be terribly frustrating... hang in there!
I've been following, and had on and off successes, freshwater shrimp for three years. I have successfully reared several generations of Crystal Reds and thousands of red cherry shrimp and know others who have had the same success. I know people who have successfully reared the blue pearls and tigers.
I do not personally know anyone who has successfully reared yellow cherry shrimp. Obviously it is doable as people sell them.