Cherry breeding hit the emergency brake?

[Dwarf Puffers]

Well, I've been letting my 10g cherry tank go wild with cherries, so I have well over 100 large breeder females. Thing is, for the last month or so, I've seen no berried females and no shrimp under 1/3" long. Now, I thought maybe they just reached their population cap or something, but they stopped not long after I sold about 80 adults out of that tank. Any ideas from the invert geniuses? Is this a seasonal lull (hoping)?

Thanks -DP

 

[deeleywoman]

....maybe you sold all the males accidentally?

 

[bluekrissyspike]

i've had this happen in my tank as well. i have no idea what caused it. i ended up moving all my shrimp to a bigger tank (29g) and now they seem to be breeding again.

 

[Dwarf Puffers]

Hmm... Well, I know you weren't seriously Deeley, but there are a lot of scrawny, less colourful shrimp in there too, so I doubt that's the case

I haven't done a water change in a few months, as the only things in there are around 1000 cherries and ramshorn snails, the water is clear and smells great, and by the vibrancy of the java moss that takes up more than half the tank, there aren't too many nitrates left. Hopefully I don't have to give them a new tank for them to pick up breeding, I've maxxed out my space as it is :bs:

 

[emptywallet]

well i would perform a water change. the same thing happened to me but i seemed to have somehow lost all my males and it took me a couple months to notice that. So one day i went to my LFS speant 8 dollas (yeah i said 8) on ONE male cherry shrimp and in a week there were 3 new berried females.

 

[BioHazard]

When was the last time you brought in new blood? Inbreeding can slow down reproduction rate.

 

[Dwarf Puffers]

Been a while since I had new blood in there, but my shrimp come from 4-6 different sources and vary in colour intensity because of it, I didn't think that would be an issue.

 

[BioHazard]

Eventually it will, no matter how many sources you got them from originally. MsJinkzd has some Thai (I think) cherries right now. They would likely be unrelated to any of yours. I would be tempted to get 20, and see if that solves your problem.

 

[Dwarf Puffers]

I would, but trying to ship aquatic animals across the border is like trying to ship them to Mars, in price and losses.

 

[bluekrissyspike]

i've actually never had any issues getting shrimp shipped across the border. i've done it on 3 seperate occasions and one set came all the way from hong kong and arrived in a week all alive and well. just ship ups or fedex as it's quicker and make sure it's labeled and packaged properly.