The Planted Tank Forum banner

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
--------------------------------------------------
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.
 
See less See more
7
#96 ·
Not really, I have a little fish food growing area (few tupperwares and jars) on my balcony, here are the latest pics.

I've switched to growing daphnia because they're sustainable, with fairy shrimp you have to keep siphoning out eggs after each cycle and get a batch of fresh water. I do have a few shrimp over 2 months old now, over 1". I think they make better pets than food, fresh-water sea monkeys if you will.
 
#103 ·
the red tail fairy shrimp are capable of forming self sustaining colonies. every few weeks i do a water change on my live food tub and more and more fairy shrimp hatch. right now i have about a thousand more that just hatched out.

i have red tail fairy shrimp in most of my tanks. i use them to feed the fish, but if they are already too big for them, they just swim around and live happy lives.

i grow them in a continuous culture of green water:

every once in a while i get black worms and freeze the water i use to rinse them, in ice cube trays. every few days i toss one of the ice cubes in the tub and it keeps the green water going.

here is a video of some of the fairy shrimp in the tank i breed my E. gilbertis in.
http://s1242.photobucket.com/albums/gg522/sjveck/?action=view&current=20121125_024244.mp4

im my experience, you cant beat green water for raising fairy shrimp.
 
#104 ·
here is another video of fairy shrimp in a tank i grow fry out in. the fry are all rescues from my display tank. every couple days i swipe the hair grass with a fish net and catch a few more. i grow them out in this tank until they are big enough to return to the main tank without being eaten by the adults. that usually only takes a few weeks at most.

obviously, the fairy shrimp can get too big for the fry pretty fast, so i usually have to net them out of this tank to feed them off.
http://s1242.photobucket.com/albums/gg522/sjveck/?action=view&current=20121222_143749.mp4
 
#107 · (Edited)
to be honest, im not sure. back in north carolina the temps would get over 100 degrees and the fairy shrimp survived in a tub in full sun.

my guess is that redtails like warmer water, somewhere around 75 degrees, but will tolerate very wide ranging temperatures. i know they can survive for a week without the temp ever dropping below 100 degrees...

at the same time, they live much longer in cooler waters. my suggestion, try to get them on green water if you can. if you cant, just find something that works and stick with it. i have never met any two people who raise these things the exact same way.
 
#108 ·
Cool thread. I used to catch fairy shrimp in a pond near the local junior high school when I was a kid. They'd show up in late winter. Would have them in coffee cans and jars in my bedroom.

Could be fun keeping them now...

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S III using Tapatalk 2
 
#109 ·
#110 ·
I just wanted to add to this forum. I hatched red tail fairy very easily and love watching them. I had a ton of them and the water looked terrible so I changed the water and lost many of them. Tonight I was looking at the shrimp and noticed babies. Now I ciphered them out and don't think any were eggs, however even so I thought the eggs were to be dried out before they would hatch again. Well something is definitely happening with my lil tank of RTF shrimp. Oh and they absolutely LOVE the nasty water. Not sure when I will change it again.
 
#112 ·
Didn't think they did

I have no idea about their colonies. I thought they only hatched. As far as the "kind" I purchased red tailed fairy shrimp from a website. They do have the Thai Fairy Shrimp too. I just purchased them to hatch them and watch them. I like water fleas better. At any rate when I did a water change there were babies. I thought the eggs had to dry out and then re-hatch. Oh well just learning stuff, which is good for me. :D
 
#113 ·
Hey guys,

I've finally hatched my fairy shrimp. I set it up last night and they're already swimming around today! I just made some yeast 'soup'. :)

Here's a photo of my little hatching bowl that I got from the dollar store. (sorry you can't see the mini shrimps! they're too small now)
 
#114 ·
I've been checking out the thread since I just picked up some redtail eggs to help feed my finicky Scarlet Badis. I followed the instructions with a few eggs, then decided to throw a few eggs in a small bowl I had planted with Glosso, Hygro and Blyxa the day before.



I didn't hold out much hope for the bowl because I used Amazonia and it releases a lot of ammonia in the beginning, but WOW! They really took off. After 12 hours I could see about 6 wiggling dots. The next day (36 hours) there were about a dozen. The following morning there were almost 30 and this afternoon (4 days) it looks like there are around 60. They seem to be all different sized, perhaps from hatching in waves. I've been giving them a couple drops of yeast-water each day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx4mLI0pLY0

The bowl I followed the directions with only has a couple. In another day or two, I'll siphon some out of the planted bowl to feed to the Badis.
 
#115 ·
I just purchased some red tail fairy shrimp. And will be using a 1G mature planted bowl, that houses thai micro crabs and sakura red cherries. Is planted with Hair Grass, Java and willow Moss. Sits in the shade on the windowsill. would this be suffecient. Will feed with Spirulina powder
 
#117 ·
reviving this thread... as you did!

to answer your question, yes, they typically need to be dried out.
that said, some of the eggs dont actually need to be completely dried. some of them will hatch out just by doing a water change. my guess is that a water change increases the osmotic pressure. after a while, the water gets saturated with dissolved solids, and doing a water changes tricks the eggs into hatching again, despite the fact that they never actually dried out to begin with.

its kinda like triops. most of the eggs need to be dried out, but a small percentage(maybe ten percent?) will hatch without actually being dried out, they just need fresh water, which might simulate a new rain.

by doing water changes after the fairy shrimp have been laying eggs for a couple weeks, i can keep a culture going for quite a while. and if it ever does completely crash, i just dry them out, rehydrate, and THOUSANDS hatch out.
 
#119 · (Edited)
Just read this thread.. as I've ordered some Thai fairy shrimp.. and been looking at the Arizona site's red tails as well. Would the consensus be that the Red tails are the easiest ones to manage ?

I have various fish, including some dwarf chain loaches, that I'd much prefer to feed with live food. The response they show to, say, black worm or adult brine shrimp is much more enthusiastic than the one they show for dry foods.

I also keep Bettas in 2.5G tanks without filters or bubblers, instead, they have plenty of plants and a light. The fish are doing fine, testing always shows 0, 0 & <10. About half floaters, frogbit mainly, half a mix of fern, moss, anubias, H. difformis. Anyone think a tank like this would suit keeping the red tails or the Thais ? Temps might be a problem, it's hot here in summer, but they changed the heating system so it's fairly cool in winter now. The tanks in the one room, that I don't have heaters for yet,run around 70 - 74, and I'm debating whether I need to put heaters in or not. Before the change, it was always about 90F, and I ran fans all winter instead.. so still trying to figure out if the fish will be all right without additional heat or not. The shrimp sure don't mind the temps.

I am actually hoping the fairy shrimp eggs will also contain other critters. I'd love to get some more Ostracods, and would not mind other things such as cyclops or rotifers, etc, they all make great fish food. I had Ostracods for some time but they didn't breed well, and I might not have been keeping them in the right conditions.. they came from pretty stagnant pots of Lotus plants, and I had a sponge filter going in their tank, and only a few duckweeds for plants. They might have preferred still water, like the fairy shrimp seem to. Haven't been able to find a source for Ostracods on their own, unfortunately.

And I also have a bunch of moina eggs coming, which I hope to be able to keep going well enough to use as live food. I'm a big believer in living foods, and two of my four Bettas are seriously picky, often they refuse anything that's not alive. Frozen BBS are taken, sometimes they'll eat frozen bloodworm but mostly, they want it wiggling before they try it. Hence the fairy shrimp.

I'm not very keen on trying brine shrimps, don't really want to deal with the salt water at this point, though I may later. Currently also trying to get a colony of scuds established for feeding, the one Betta is a dead keen scud hunter, he actually killed off all the scuds in his tank, he's got a 5G to himself and some snails. He wiped out the scuds in a week or so of enthusiastic hunting. He seems to prefer bottom feeding, odd fishie that he is, often ignoring fruit flies or other insects I put on the surface that the others take pretty eagerly.

Anyway, just wondering if setting up another small tank like I have for the Bettas is likely to work with the red tail or Thai fairy shrimps.. Feeding them shouldn't be too hard, I've fed moinia before with yeast, and normally have cultured green water on hand too, which I feed to larvae and filter feeding shrimp and clams. If keeping them in green water works, that wouldn't be that hard to arrange.
 
#121 ·
wow, this thread just doesnt want to die...

anyway, i have been extremely busy since i last posted. i have moved across the country, gone to a whole lot of training events for my job, and bought a house. my current job takes my away from home for all but a few months a year, so i have pretty much abandoned all of my aquarium and fish projects for now, to be restarted when i get done doing what i do for a living.

vernal pool critters, however, are still game. right now, i have six triops in a one gallon tank. they have already laid a whole lot of eggs, and i expect them to lay a whole lot more before i leave again. yeah, im going to be that weird guy that takes egg laden sand and fish food with me on deployment.

whatever. its what i like. if my employer wants my skills, they can deal with my eccentricity. they need me far more than i need them. ill have my darned triops!

honestly, i dont know why more people dont grow triops. the darned things are like mini horse shoe crabs in a fresh water tank. only, more active and more interesting.

besides, if you get tired of them, you can drain their tank and set it aside for years on end and start them back up the second you feel so inclined.
awesome little critters...
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top