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Trying to Breed Neo Shrimp

4K views 22 replies 9 participants last post by  Zoidburg 
#1 ·
Hi all,

I have attempted to breed Carbon Rilis in a 10 gallon planted tank before, and was not successful. I had roughly 10 that I bought from my LFS, kept them for about 6 months with no breeding activity before i took the tank down due to BBA attack that I couldn't stand to look at anymore. Put the remaining shrimp in my other tank, which has a lot of fish, and haven't seen one in a couple months, so i assume they're either constantly hiding, or have been eaten..

Either way i'm considering setting up my 10 gallon again with the ultimate goal of getting some fire red cherries breeding. I just really want to see if they'll breed for me, I am not really interested in this being a display tank. So i wonder if anyone knows the best possible environment to get them breeding? My LFS pumps out carbons like a machine, and he keeps his colony in a 40gallon breeder with only a piece of driftwood and no lights on it at probably 80 degrees, minimal filtration and flow. I am not sure if/what he feeds the tank. Is it more likely that they'll breed if kept in the dark and with low flow? Also, one of the issues I think I may have had with my original tank was my water hardness and high pH. I'm on a well system so my kH is off the charts and pH is around 8.0. Gh is actually fairly soft, i assume because my apartment has some sort of way of softening the water. Would a pH and kH so high stunt breeding?

Just looking for tips here, i've read probably a dozen guides to breeding cherries and have for the most part followed the guides when trying with the carbons, but the guides don't say much because in theory, it shouldn't take much to get these guys to breed. Just wondering if anyone with a real success story could maybe fill me in on what i'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance!
 
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#2 ·
Wish I could help, but I can offer my story.

I also have hard water with a high PH (~8.3) and GH/KH (around 13 for both)

The first time around I bought around 40 neos online and did everything "right". RO remineralized with shrimp remineralizer. Established planted 10G with a sponge filter. Driftwood, cholla wood, IAL, special shrimp foods, etc. Drip acclimated them, etc. Those 40 slowly died a few got berried but I think dropped. I never saw any babies. On the other hand copepods and hydra were growing like weeds. Tore it down.

Set it up again with some guppies sometime later with tap water, same sponge filter, same plants, etc. At my fish store they had great RCS on sale so I thought what the hell and bought 6. Brought them home, quick acclimation and threw them in the tank and neglected them. I would occasionally throw some snowflake food in, but otherwise nada. I have like 60 now and they are thriving.

I think the biggest difference was the first time I ordered online I am sure the source water params didn't match what I was remineralizing too. My LFS has water params like my tap so acclimation was easier on them.
 
#10 ·
So I'm coming back to this thread after a while to say that I finally bought a GH and KH test kit from API. I may have mentioned at some point that when i used test strips, they indicated very low GH and very high KH, and this test kit confirmed that. Straight out of the tap, I saw roughly 1 degree GH and 17 degrees KH. I'm sure this is due to the softening system in my apartment. After doing some research on KH i understand that basically all it does is buffers PH higher, which makes sense since my PH out of the tap is roughly 8.0. I understand Cherries are happiest around 4-14GH and 0-10KH. My question is, if i can get them to be happy in my high PH, does KH really matter? I have some GH booster i ordered a while ago that i can use to boost GH, and i may not even need that because my Carbons have molted in my untreated water just fine for a long time. Any opinions? I'd really rather not go the RO/RODI route simply due to cost and complexity, and i live in an apartment with limited space and options for plumbing customization, etc.. Any thoughts? Does anyone have experience keeping Cherries in water like this??

Thanks in advance!

Bump:

Any chance the first time around your tank was not fully cycled? My first ever try and keeping cherries a very long time ago, i experienced a similar slow die off and I fully blame the fact that i did not cycle my tank fully.
 
#3 ·
I have attempted to breed Carbon Rilis in a 10 gallon planted tank before, and was not successful. I had roughly 10 that I bought from my LFS, kept them for about 6 months with no breeding activity
How did you cycle the tank?

Do you know what the water parameters the shrimp came from vs the water you put them into?

What substrate did you use?


So i wonder if anyone knows the best possible environment to get them breeding?
Inert sand is fine. Some boiled driftwood. Aquarium safe leaves. Moss.

If you can, try matching the water parameters that the shrimp are coming from. This may require using distilled water/RO water and a remineralizer.


My LFS pumps out carbons like a machine, and he keeps his colony in a 40gallon breeder with only a piece of driftwood and no lights on it at probably 80 degrees, minimal filtration and flow. I am not sure if/what he feeds the tank. Is it more likely that they'll breed if kept in the dark and with low flow?
Plenty of people keep shrimp with lights on and have no issues having them breed. They do prefer low to medium flow though.

They can be kept in aquariums with sponge filters, HOB's or canisters.

Also, one of the issues I think I may have had with my original tank was my water hardness and high pH. I'm on a well system so my kH is off the charts and pH is around 8.0. Gh is actually fairly soft, i assume because my apartment has some sort of way of softening the water. Would a pH and kH so high stunt breeding?
Maybe, maybe not. Did you buy adults or young shrimp?

What are your tap parameters? To include GH, KH and TDS?





A lot of people say that tap water is just fine for Neos, but it's not exactly true... because tap water can vary a lot depending on where you live. I found out the hard way that our tap water is too soft. The GH and KH is 3-4 with a TDS of 40-60. My sister lives less than 15 minutes away, on the outskirts of town, and her tap water is hard! Her GH is 19, KH is 10 and TDS is 475.

Using pure tap water, my shrimp end up having molting problems and die. Could have over 10 berried females at once, but never saw more than 3 baby shrimp survive over a few days old, and they, too, died.


Most people try to keep Neo shrimp in a TDS of 150-200, although some people have managed to keep them and breed them in water with 400+ TDS. I have one tank at ~200 TDS and another at ~300 TDS (which I'm trying to slowly bring down, actually).
 
#4 ·
I'm not sure about Neos but Red cherry i have a TON of luck with.. I use fluval substrate and seiryu stone (no wood) in one of my tanks and eco complete with drift wood in another. Both tanks are pretty heavily planted (1 6gal, 1 5g), both are co2'd both are med-high light with EI dosing. I do have a heavy bioload in both tanks and dont clean the substrate, straight tap(dechlorinated) WC and filter cleaning. Hiding places are an absolute must esp for the fry. I might be crazy but i feel like a SUPER clean tank is a no no for shrimp.

my KH is low, my GH is low, my pH is in the mid 6's in one tank and 6 or below in another during the day and these shrimp spread like wildfire. One of these tanks is in my business in a VERY high traffic area and i cant get them to stop breeding. To a point i have to sell them to the LFS on a monthly/bimonthly basis 40-50 at a time.

I know this hasn't been very informative but i hope it helps at least a bit.
 
#6 ·
My LFS is on city water (pH around 7-7.2) while I am on the much harder well system (8.0), so yeah they had to be acclimated to pretty different water params. As far as GH and KH I have only used test strips (not accurate, i know. Just haven't gotten around to getting a real test kit) GH reads on the soft end and KH is off the charts. I also don't have a TDS meter, but since its well water i'd assume its on the higher end. I did keep the shrimp for 6 months though, they all molted very regularly from what i could tell and were always active, eating, displaying normal behavior, Just never saw any berried females. Actually two of my females when i bought them were berried and in the process of acclimating, both dropped. So i know for sure I had at least a couple mature female and at least 3-4 males, and the rest were juvenile. Like I said my LFS has a large colony, so his selection as far as age goes is diverse. He kinda just dunks the net in and whatever you get, you get.

The tank was a fish only tank for a while before i turned it into a shrimp only tank. It had a good amount of algae on the stones and was well cycled. I had inert pebbles as substrate, a piece of mature driftwood with a good amount of java moss attached which the shrimp enjoyed grazing on. Some crypts and anubias, nothing too fancy. The wood actually had open cavities within it that the shrimp would sometimes hang out in. Pic is attached.

At the end of the day maybe I just wasn't patient enough, but i've heard that when shrimp breed they do it quickly, so i kind of lost hope and I wasn't enjoying the tank anymore because it was kind of boring to look at (not to mention the annoying BBA). I was hoping to have a big colony at some point because that would be very fun look at! Anyway thanks for the advice. I'll have to give this another go someday soon.
 

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#11 ·
RO/DI water can be purchased for 28-50 cents a gallon. There are plug and go RO/DI units on Amazon for $50-$60 mark, which reduces the need to do any plumping. If you wanted, you could do 2-3 parts RO/DI to 1 part tap, then add in GH as needed.


Alternatively, just remineralize your water to about 6 GH and see how well shrimp do after acclimating them to the water.



I have learned that shrimp can molt fine in soft water for a while before it affects them due to lack of minerals.
 
#12 ·
I've had decent success keeping my cherries in tap water, but then mine is "in spec" straight out of the faucet. I also keep a few little pieces of cuttlebone in the tank for peace of mind. The big thing I learned (the hard way) is that planaria can and will kill your shrimp - even adults - and should be dealt with immediately. I was experiencing a slow population decline and kept finding shrimp mysteriously dead, like they had failed to molt but without the usual signs. Took me discovering that white planaria are predatory to put 2 and 2 together. Note, I don't have any experience with hydra but I've read they can cause the same problems.

In short, make sure you don't have a hydra or planaria problem because that will definitely put a serious damper on your shrimpkeeping.
 
#13 ·
Is there any way you can tap into the well water before it reaches the softener filter? I would test the straight well water before it gets softened. Softening 'filters' takes out calcium and magnesium carbonates and other minerals. The carbonates of which are used by shrimp for growing new exoskeletons after their molt.


Test the untreated well water and use it instead of the softened well water for diluting with RO water.

You should succeed.
 
#14 ·
Okay, so this just in... I've discovered a source of R.O (i don't think it is D.I) water at my local grocery store which is less than 5 mins from my apartment. 39 cents per gallon with a $16 initial cost of the 5 gallon jug i would need to collect the water each time. I've determined that this is a feasible option for me since i only have a 10 gallon, so i went and got a sample of the water to test. Found it to be about 6.5pH, 0GH, 0KH. The fact that it came out to be acidic is curious to me, I wonder if this will remain constant over time... thoughts?... but bottom line is if this does remain constant than this water will work very well for keeping any kind of shrimp i can dream of which is very exciting to me. Not gonna lie the first thing that popped into my mind was CRS. Figure if i'm gonna go all in, i might as well go ALL IN. Still deliberating on just what i want to keep at this point, going the R.O route opens a lot of doors. Clearly I will need to do some remineralizing. I'm also thinking about going with an active substrate now such as ADA amazonia as oppose to inert sand. In that case I would do an all out aquascape. No CO2 of course, i still have the shrimp at the top of the priority list. We'll see what i decide to do, i may just stick with the idea of high grade cherries just because i know they'll require less attention.
 
#15 ·
Cherries (and Neos in general) do prefer higher pH water, which is not something you can easily achieve with active substrate, but some breeders do have them in Caridina parameters and they are breeding fine.


I just went with $5 buckets that you can buy in the back of the store (paint section) or from a Home Improvement Store such as Lowes or Home Depot. Usually get funny looks though when leaving the store!
 
#17 ·
The containers are usually unmarked or they are by a brand that supplies the stores with products. Not their own product.



I've never had an issue, nor have I heard of anyone having an issue. It's pretty much bring your own container or buy and use one of theirs.
 
#18 ·
Environment wise, if you can get a mat of java moss to start growing, then that would be good. Also water lettuce is nice as well for the shrimp. Make sure the filter you have running is either sponge, or covered with sponge to keep shrimplets from getting anywhere. Oh, and I like to use gel feeder blocks, like the tetramin ones: they're super great for feeding my shrimp, since you can kinda drop them in the tank and forget about them until they're gone. I also supplement with Catappa leaves as well.
 
#20 ·
I did end up using RO water from the grocery store. I picked up ten gallons with 2x5 gallon buckets. After aging the water tested pH:7.0 GH:0 and KH:0. I used this to set up my 10 gallon tank and remineralized with a small amount of my tap water as well as some Tom Barr GH+ and Epsom salt for GH. My parameters are now pH: 7.4, GH: 7, and KH: 4. I added a couple of low grade cherries that i got from the LFS to see if they would survive in the water, just because i'm too paranoid after previous experiences to jump right in with the expensive high grade shrimp. They've done well for 3 days now, and so i just ordered 10 fire red cherry shrimp from theshrimpfarm and should have them within a couple of days to add to the tank. Hoping all goes well! I'll give full detail on the setup in the Tank Journals section of the forum in due time. Thanks for all your help.
 
#22 ·
Coming back to this thread after the tank has been up and running for about 2 months. After all of the acclimation/cycling/growing out, the tank is finally stable with 5 females and 6 males all adults. The males were just added about a month ago because my original order had all females. A week after males were introduced, i had a berried female. I watched her for about a week and eventually was no longer able to see the eggs, so I think she may have dropped them. Since then I haven't seen this or any other female with eggs. Anyone know why the shrimp may want to drop their eggs? Every other day i add pure RO water to top off evaporation, rarely do any water changes and when i do it is small. TDS stays right around 300. PH:7.6, GH:10, KH:5 and all very stable. Java moss is growing rampant, the shrimp seem happy. Am I just being impatient?
 
#23 ·
Could be water parameters, stress, new time mother, or?


I'd say not to worry about it too much right now.


You could try feeding some higher protein (i.e. frozen bloodworms) then doing a big-ish water change (at least large enough to drop the temp of the tank several degrees) and that could induce breeding/molting... just caution needs to be taken for any berried females as that could cause them to molt and the eggs will be attached to the molt.


DIY egg tumblers are possible for shrimp eggs, too.
 
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