questions about cherry red shrimps

gagaliya

gagaliya

GNOME POWER!
Nov 20, 2005
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NJ
www.happyreward.com
hey guys a couple questions about those little guys

1) now that i am more experienced with feeding, i feed my fish just enough with the hikari tropical micro pellets. They float on water surface for a few seconds while my fish finishes all of them - so no food ever sinks to the bottom.

I leave the light on for about 5 hrs a day and have about 3 silk plants in the tank.

Do i need to feed my cherry red shrimps or will they find enough food? have 6 shrimps total.

Lately i notice them getting a bit more aggresive, before they always stayed at the bottom, but now they actually swim around like a fish! and actually went to the top of the tank!! Is that a sign they are hungry? They also seem to love my new heater and stays on the heater/wire a lot.


2) how red are cherry red shrimps? from the pics on the web they seems very red, but the ones i have almost look like ghost shrimps - is that normal? they been in the tank for more than a month now. When do they actually turn red?

I bought it the shrimps from aquabid from a high feedback sellers, hopefully she shipped me the correct shrimps...


thanks
 
Feeding depends on algae levels in the tank. If you cansee visible algae anywhere you will not starve your shrimp. I do make sure some food gets tot he bottom for them, but I probably have 100+ in my 15g they breed like mad.

As far as color, they get darker as they approach molt which you should have seen in a month. Females are about 50/50 red and clear right after they molt, and get fully red before the next molt. Males are almost completely clear after they molt and will get close to 50/50 at their darkest before they molt. Almost all of the pictures you see on-line are of Females at their darkest coloration. You may have all males, and you may have the wrong shrimp also.
Dave
 
daveedka said:
Feeding depends on algae levels in the tank. If you cansee visible algae anywhere you will not starve your shrimp. I do make sure some food gets tot he bottom for them, but I probably have 100+ in my 15g they breed like mad.

As far as color, they get darker as they approach molt which you should have seen in a month. Females are about 50/50 red and clear right after they molt, and get fully red before the next molt. Males are almost completely clear after they molt and will get close to 50/50 at their darkest before they molt. Almost all of the pictures you see on-line are of Females at their darkest coloration. You may have all males, and you may have the wrong shrimp also.
Dave
Click to expand...


i dont see any visible algae at all, my tank is crystal clear. So i should buy some bottom feeding algae waffle for them?

as for breeding, i actually saw a lot of tiny baby shrimps but they all got sucked into my stupid filter, which made me very sad:(

i never actually seen them molt but when i was cleaning the gravel i did notice sucking up layer of white stuff that looked like white silk? i guess the color is ok then.

thanks
 
Mine go crazy for algae wafers but if you have any fish that also eat the wafers (like corys) then the shrimp might not get any. They also eat zucchini, and in my shrimp only tank, I've had them eat flake and bloodworms.
 
Mine swim like fishes too and walk usually cling on the surface of the water. I also have not much algae in my tank so i feed them... i really dont know what it is but the LFS said it is for creatures with shells like crabs and shrimps.

You might want to add some place where the babies can hide like a mound of moss etc. mine usually hide underneath the willow moss.
62016962_7576031d82_m.jpg


Most of my CRS are not that red too. My LFS gave me a drop that will make them redder when they molt but i never tried it yet.
62017079_d873df4540_m.jpg
 
My observation is that there are variations of color intensity whithin the species. Some are inherantly more red than others, some never get completely red, or as red as they should (male vs. female). Some say the shrimp have to be this big or that old to get color...I have some only a little bit larger in diameter than a strand of java moss that are as red as red can be. Some grow to be adults and are quite pale, though these are mostly in my higher light tank which leads me to think the lighting has something to do with it, but I wouldn't draw any conclusion just from that. The majority of females are all red, from young to adult. They may darken as Dave said before molt, but if that's true, it seems I have some that are consistantly molting ;) Same as with the males. The majority are 50/50 red, from young to adult, if they're red, they're red. I have yet to witness one molt so as far as I know, Dave is correct.
Back to the lighting concept. I believe that a darker environment causes the shrimp to be darker. If squall_japan had a darker substrate, the shrimp would likely be darker. I'm going out on a limb here because I don't know this to be fact, but given that many aquatic organisms are able to alter their coloration, however slight or drastically that may be, it just makes sense to me.
I have a 15 and 20gal shrimp/plants tank and also have them in my 90gal. I've only been dealing with them for...~2yrs so take my info for what it's worth.
Mine swim wherever they care to. I would take that as a sign that they aren't afraid of being eaten. I feed granules, flakes, algae tabs, veggies, occassional brine shrimp/blood worms.
I have pre-filters on my intakes and I still find shrimp whithin the canister. Makes me think that when the day comes to pull up by RUGF, I'll have some completely white, blind form of shrimp living under the plate! :eek:
 
yeah the filter intake part is already fully covered by a sponge. But those baby shrimps are soooo small it's doubtful anything could stop them from being sucked in.

i just checked my shrimps again, now they are COMPLETELY transparent i can actually see the stomach content which looks like some green goo? anyway only reason i am concerned about it been ghost shrimp is the horror stories i heard about them killing tiny fish like my whiteclouds/zebra danios.

Cherry red shrimp on the other hand never attacks anything, that's why i paid all the extra $ to get them.

squall_japan, that's an awesome looking tank! love the shrimp colors and how they all gather together, mine never stays in a group. Almost terroritorial from the look of it
 
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