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The Complete Fairy Shrimp Guide (hopefully, help me fill in the blanks!)

111K views 125 replies 31 participants last post by  bubblerings 
#1 · (Edited)
Thinking about grabbing a few thousand eggs and hatching them as either live food and/or just as a nano/pico fairy shrimp tank.

Anyone have experience with this?:

- What kind of tanks / bowls do you use?
- What substrate/flora/fauna setup would maximize their life-cycle (if any needed)?
- What do you feed them?

Lastly, anyone keep these as pets? Want to see some pics! :D


Findings
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Will update more feedback / info as I find them here. Only good info I can find are from 2 shrimp farms :/ Not sure if this is very accurate:

Wild Habitat:
Fairy shrimp have short life cycles and live in standing temporary water, dry lakes and vernal pools to name some. Many in the wild will also hatch and breed in small puddles of muddy rain water.

Aquarium Habitat:
At home, keepers claim that Fairy Shrimp exhibit brighter coloration when kept under direct light. Use distilled or spring water, and top off regularly. A filter and flow is not required, as Fairy Shrimps live in standing puddles of water in their natural habitats. In fact, strong filters should be reduced and covered with a sponge to prevent sucking away the baby shrimp. Salinity and specific conditions vary based on the species of the shrimp.

Feeding:
In the wild, fairy shrimps are filter feeders. They strain tiny particles (bacteria, algae, spores) out of the water. In captivity, they can live on a diet of “yeast soup”: dissolve 1 packet of dried yeast (bakers or brewers), 1 teaspoon of sugar, and a big pinch of crushed fish food flakes in 1/3 cup of hot spring water. Mix well and let it sit an hour. Store your “soup” in the refrigerator or another cool place. To feed your shrimp, stir or shake the mixture thoroughly. (It settles out quickly.) Use an eyedropper or pipette to drip a few drops of the soup into the water. Give the right amount of food -- the water should be slightly hazy (still see-through), but not cloudy. If it becomes cloudy, stop feeding for a day or two until it clears up.

Genus/Family:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptocephalus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branchinecta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamnocephalidae

Species:

Redtail Fairy Shrimp (Streptocephalus _):

Lifespan: 8 weeks
Full Size: up to 0.5"
Temperature: 50-100F, widest range of survival temperature

Thai Fairy Shrimp (Branchinella thailandensis):

Lifespan: 8 weeks
Full Size: up to 1"-1.37"
Temperature: 50-65F optimal to hatch

Dry Lake Fairy Shrimp (Streptocephalus _)

Lifespan: 3-5 weeks average, up to 9 weeks
Full Size: up to 0.9"
Temperature: can survive up to 93F

Winter Fairy Shrimp (Branchinecta _)

Lifespan: 10 weeks
Full Size: up to 0.8"
Temperature: 40F - 72F (optimal 60-68); can even hatch in icy waters < 40F!

Mammoth Winter Fairy Shrimp (Branchinecta _)

Lifespan: 12 weeks
Full Size: up to 1.2"
Temperature: 40F - 72F (optimal 60-68); can even hatch in icy waters < 40F!

Beavertail Fairy Shrimp

Lifespan: 14 weeks average
Full Size: up to 2"
Temperature:

Giant Fairy Shrimp (Branchinecta gigas):

Lifespan:
Full Size: up to 3.4"
Temperature: 45-60F optimal to hatch


Videos:

2-3" red and green found in a well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftBNnrteoP8
2" beavertails captured from a puddle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xunAaPDOtNs

I think they make an unique addition to an aquarium despite their 3-4 months lifespan. The red/green ones, and the red-tail makes them pretty prominent and easy to spot.

Articles:

Instructions on raising fairy shrimp.
Journal article on using fairy shrimp as live feed to improve growth in prawns.

Personal Experience:

Thai: low hatch rate, longest life span was 3 1/2 weeks.

Trying some Redtails now.
 
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#63 ·
how much yeast solution are you dropping in the water? At this point if the water is even slightly hazy, there is still yeast solution from the last time you fed them. The rest is at the bottom of the container. If you look closely at the bottom, the creatures should be hopping in and out of it. It should be fine to leave them without food for a while as algae should be growing on the root system of the floating plants. Drop some sort of Java moss or plant (frogbit, duckweed, etc.) roots to the bottom to attract the yeast and particles.

the worm like things in the water might be planeria. it probably hitched a ride from your plants. they grow when there is an abundance of food...



as I mention on a post before you can use a sponge filter now. just control the amount of bubbles or get the bubbles to exit near the waterline to get some agitation, but not so much as what you did on the "planting tong-created tornado"

Now, for the film on top of the water, just take a paper towel and lay it on top to soak the oily film. the plastic wrap on the container, I don't think you need, as the temperature where you are is hot enough.

OMG, I just took a look at your last photos. Did you actually go through the microtube of Thai fairy shrimp in that one (1) container of water. if you did, it's ok you can still save the eggs that did not hatch.
 
#65 ·
Pretty much. but I think the Daphnia is more hardy though. I did the same thing as XenXes did but much worse as I agitated the water (with daphnia and fairy shrimp) a lot more and probably put in 2oz or more of yeast solution in a 1 gallon tank. (the dropper bottle slipped.) I just threw the water in my pond and about 2-3 weeks later i filled a small tank for some aquatic plants and noticed things swimming around. they were the daphnia.
 
#66 ·
I haven't fed for 2 days, going to hold off another. I see maybe 20 0.25-0.5" fairy shrimp swimming around, trailing a string of pool 2-10x their body size. Guess I overdid the yeast. Water smelled like old yeast before, doesn't smell now. The frogbits and riccia are growing extremely fast in the container. Lots of nasty particles on the roots.

The saran wrap was to keep dust out, there's holes in it, but I removed it to encourage evaporation so I can top off with fresh water. I only used maybe 1/4 of what was in the tube, it came 1/4 full.

I think it's best without filtration, as they eat the bacteria/algae in the water the filter might otherwise remove. They're like little filters themselves. Smallest I have is a hagen elite mini, and I think even that toned all the way down and stuffed with sponges will blow them around.

The temperature in the container is at a steady 78F during the day, 74F at night. Higher than the optimal hatching rate.



Fairly difficult to get a sharp pic of these w/o a proper macro lens.
 
#67 ·
I must say tho. I am impressed by your camera. Can you tell us your setup. the pictures are clean and crisp.

Anywho...could you take a picture of the bottom of the container where all the gunk is? It's for reference for the others of what it looks like. I highly doubt all the eggs hatched. You can save all that bottom layer and filter it through a coffee filter. Then dry it for a few days and put it in the freezer until you want to try again.
 
#68 ·
Just a T3i with the 18-55 kit lens, for macro I used one of the cheap alternatives I listed here, until I have $800 to fork over for a proper lens. I prefer using the $10 extension tube.

Most of the eggs did not hatch, I didn't want to add more ice cubes to simulate ideal hatching temperatures with the shrimp inside it, the freeze/temp drop might kill them?


Gunk


Mix of old and new eggs I tossed in yesterday


"FTS"


Frogbits love stagnant water, they usually die off a little and regrow in my tanks with movement, here they just stay green and keep growing
 
#69 ·
I think you're experiencing losses because you're feeding too much. When I feed brine I barely add a few drops of yeast solution. I don't know if aeration is necessary for fairy shrimp though. But when I hatch brine I put them in a large graduated cylinder and sink the airstone down. None the less it's a significant amount of flow. They're photosensitive too so hatching should be done under light.
 
#70 ·
I think you're experiencing losses because you're feeding too much. When I feed brine I barely add a few drops of yeast solution.
Yeah I figured :/ 3rd day without feeding, I still see gunk attached to the frogbits roots so I'll hold off until that clears up. Water is a tinge of green, so there's infusoria in there now too.
 
#72 ·
That's what I thought. Unfortunately I don't have any bright enough windows in my apartment, so I've got my tank sitting about 6 inches under a 13 watt CFL that's on 24/7.

I used water from my blue pearl shrimp tank and left it under the light for 2 days before adding eggs. I'm on day 3 with this batch of babies and they seem to be doing well so far. Don't want to jinx myself but I think I might have gotten it this time.
 
#73 · (Edited)
Hmm I do have 20+ shrimp, just couldn't see some at the bottom, so about 1/5 of the hatched batch survived. At night they hang out on the bottom and scrape against the floor, not sure why.. food? Soon as the light comes on they swarm towards the top. Lol they seem too precious to use as feed now, maybe in a few weeks towards the end of their life span.
 
#74 ·
with all the light off/dark, you can use a small bright flashlight and shine it at the side of the container. The fairy shrimp or whatever else you have in there (daphnia, clams shrimp, etc) will be attracted to it and you can better assess how many you have in the container.

@blacksheep : as long as you resist the urge to take your tong and swirl the water around to make tornadoes, you should be fine.... ;P (sorry xenxes, couldn't resist!!!)
 
#76 ·
as long as you resist the urge to take your tong and swirl the water around to make tornadoes, you should be fine
It's rather odd that most of the instructions I see online for hatching fairy shrimp say to use a bubbler for maximum oxygenation in the water. It seems though that they really don't like that. They like totally stagnant water, which makes sense considering they live in temporary ponds without any water flow.
 
#77 ·
Yeah, I'm wondering about ammonia and nitrite levels though, I'm sure their natural stagnant water conditions can't be that good. I should probably test it tomorrow to see, but I haven't had a massive die off which is probably a good thing.

I'm sure putting in cycled media would help, but it would be much harder to collect the eggs from the gunk at the end.

I wish I could get some Branchinecta ferrox and Cyzicus tetracerus from the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftBNnrteoP8. They're huuge and colorful.
 
#78 ·
I feel like based on their habitats they'd have to be very resistant to ammonia and nitrites. Their little pools would probably dry up before they even finished cycling.

If I have good luck with my redtail fairy shrimp I might try beavertails next, just because they get so large. Up to 2 inches.
 
#79 ·
Things were going well anyway. Last night I had well over 100 fairy shrimp happily swimming around. This morning less than half that number are still swimming, though many of the others are still alive on the bottom of the tank moving slightly but without enough strength to get off the ground.

The tank's not heated, so maybe as the house warms up some of those will 'revive'. But I'm not holding my breath.
 
#80 ·
i also started a red tail + clam shrimp culture about 10 days ago from az fairy shrimp, but had only a couple of dozen hatchings. They look about 1.5cm now and i didn't notice any mortality. I think it's because i started with so few hatchlings and i started with a small glass of water (1/2 wine glass) so the fairy shrimp were able to filter the small volume more quickly than if i started with 1/2 gal and leaving less food for fouling. for temperature regulation i have the glass floating in my aquarium.

regarding the ammonia and nitrites, a lot of bacteria form spores. I wouldn't be surprised if the fairy shrimp hatched into a fairly mature nitrogen cycling ecosystem.
 
#81 ·
Tested water, 4ppm Ammonia, 1ppm Nitrite, 10ppm Nitrate. Shrimps still alive, similar numbers. Starting to see a lot of other tiny creatures pop up. I haven't done any w/cs, or fed anything in a week. Water @ the surface is crusty-like-glue, but started clearing up a little. My floater plants are doing extremely well. They grow maybe 2x faster when the water has no movement.
 
#82 ·
Maybe 10 left in the vase, there is a sea of other creatures in there now, and all kinds of tiny algae/whatever growth. The riccia was covered in green hair algae.

Growing/hatching them as feed seems like too much work, but watching the puddle of water come to life sure is entertaining.
 
#84 ·

Adult size now, taken with a regular lens, about 1" long


What is all this gunk on the side of the glass? Some of it moves. There's a lot of little bugs going up and down the sides.


Yum, pasty.

These were fun for a while, too hard to raise as feed, too little and fragile to enjoy. Back to my neocaridinas :)

I'm going to have 2 extra 1g vases when I dump this, wonder what I should do with them? Walstad vase?
 
#85 ·
Yes! Walstad with some yellow, cherry/fire reds/sakuras, snowball (DO NOT KEEP THOSE TOGETHER, they will create hybrids) or tiger shrimp (fine with the other ones) since they're all the same species except tigers. And they're all hardy, tigers are a bit less though.
 
#86 ·
I'm thinking of growing Limnophila Aromatica out of one, they look and smell nice. I could do nano ripariums. Think I'll feed off the remaining fairies tomorrow :p

If I add shrimp I guess I could throw in some moss. How long would it take for a 1g to get established without a filter? I could throw in some substrate from my 20g for speed it up? Lol maybe I could buy 2 more Hagen Elite minis.
 
#88 ·
Not from experience, but I'm not sure it could even cycle since the bacteria needs a steady supply of food which it can't get since the water isn't bringing new sources to it. But with a filter I hear it takes as little as a few days and as much as 6 weeks.
 
#89 ·
Would that be wise? :icon_eek:

Pretty high ammonia/nitrite concentration, I guess the bacteria will make short work of them. Hmm, definitely considering it. A cyclops/daphnia colony will mean food for the platies and longer time before each feeding.

I'm just worried there might be some non-goodies in there :/


Not from experience, but I'm not sure it could even cycle since the bacteria needs a steady supply of food which it can't get since the water isn't bringing new sources to it. But with a filter I hear it takes as little as a few days and as much as 6 weeks.
Yeah, some ammonia / dead matter to kick it off with a small pantyhose of old biomedia on the bottom. Once nitrites level off and plants root/grow I'll add a few culls. Only maintenance would be water top offs.
 
#90 ·
I moved the jar outside, and the last 3 adult fairy shrimp finally died. The longest lived were about 3 1/2 weeks. The gunk on the bottom and stuck to the roots of the floaters probably hold thousands of eggs:



I don't feel like vacuuming it out yet since there's a growing population of daphnia, flea shrimp, and cyclops. Going to culture them some more and introduce them to my tanks with fish. I did not feed at all for the last 2 weeks, everything's living off the decomposing ketapang leaf + whatever else is in there.

In the mean while started 4 more jars (pickle, salsa, peppers):



2 jars of Thai, 2 jars of Redtail.
 
#91 ·
I think you should be fine pouring some of that water into your tank as food. Since your tank is 20G and you pour in 1G, you're already diluting the nitrates by 20fold, so it should be perfectly fine.

Btw... those are a lot of jars. Reminds me of the moss jars cableguy is doing :)
 
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