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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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#6 · (Edited)
Excellent post! I've kept triops in the past and tried fairy shrimp but never had any luck. I've got several thousand triops eggs in a ziploc on the shelf though and have been thinking about getting them going again.

I did keep triops with my cherry shrimp with no real problems. I don't know whether they ate the cherry babies or not, but the level of predation, if any, wasn't enough to cause a problem for my colony. They also weren't cannibalistic as is usually advertised. I suspect that a major part of their good behavior is that they had plenty of food that they could eat without bothering to chase it down. When these have been introduced in mosquito control trials that has been the problem: they are voracious but lazy and won't bother chasing the larvae around.

I'd also love to keep mysis relicta or bloody red shrimp. Not really the same thing, but similar in that they are non-shrimp shrimp. Unfortunately nobody sells these as live shrimp, and the second may not even be legal to keep where I'm at.
 
#10 ·
I have a baggie of beavertail shrimp I have yet to hatch. I kept fairy shrimp until their tank exploded (no, I don't know how....) It was just a round glass vase I kept on my dresser. When the water evaporated about 1/3 of the way, I added distilled or spring water and new babies would hatch. It also had seed shrimp and clam shrimp, but the clam shrimp never laid eggs.
 
#13 ·
Mine had more coloration when I let them get direct sunlight, I've found the arizona shrimp are the most colorful (are we allowed to post links to other sites here?) arizonafairyshrimp.com had bright green swimmers and red tails. The ones you get as betta feeders on ebay tend to be pink or white.
 
#15 ·
Yeah you can (just no eBay or Aquabid links), that site is where I got most of the info and pics from. There are not a lot of vendors. But I ended up grabbing Thai ones for cheaper on eBay.

I guess these will be clear / I'll use them as food. I might pick up some prettier & bigger ones later to add to aquarium life. These are more for experimental purposes :icon_bigg

TY for the direct light & distilled water tip.

Also, hatch those Beavertails before they expire (though I think they're good for 1-2 years)! And post pics!
 
#16 ·
Back when I used to keep triops I had an occasional fairy shrimp pop up and always liked them. They never got more than a half-inch though.

But they look very cool and the redtail shrimp eggs are very cheap on e-bay $5-10 for 10k eggs. I've got a mini 2 gallon tank laying around I'm not using that I think I might set up for some of these guys. Is it really as easy as just letting the water evaporate and then add distilled water to make the babies hatch? And would RO water work as well as distilled?
 
#18 ·
I think distilled or RO would work (so long as it's not tap). The Thai breeder site recommended spring water to mimic the water pond environment in the mountains. They're very hardy and hatch/live in almost anything, I think the Red-tail variety is the easiest by far.

Hatching % is higher in cool water (50-65F). Not sure how to mimic this, maybe I'll keep it under an AC vent or throw in tiny bits of ice.

And replacing the water isn't necessary, they feed off the bacteria & microorganisms in the water. Just don't feed anymore if the water is cloudy and wait for it to clear up by itself.


Nah shrimp eggs have been known to last ten years I'm good! Arizonafairyshrimp is on ebay too- eeandss. Dadasis is a great seller too, byt he mainly sells triops.
Had no idea they lasted that long, still, throw a few in and take pics! :D
 
#20 ·
Went to setup my triops tank again.

Me: "Honey, where is my stuff from this shelf?"
Wife: "I needed the space."
Me: "That's not what I asked, where is my stuff?"
Wife: "It was just junk."
Me: "Was there a baggie filled with sand?"
Wife: "Yes, it broke open."
Me: "!(@#*&(@!*&#!!!"
--fin--

I scoured the shelf and swept up the bits of sand from the corners. Out of several thousand triops eggs I had harvested, I'll be happy if I have 10 left.
 
#23 ·
Me: "Honey, where is my stuff from this shelf?"
Wife: "I needed the space."
Me: "That's not what I asked, where is my stuff?"
Wife: "It was just junk."
Me: "Was there a baggie filled with sand?"
Wife: "Yes, it broke open."
Me: "!(@#*&(@!*&#!!!"
--fin--
LOL.

There are people who sell the eggs on both ebay and thetriopsforum, but they're really hard to kill I've boiled sand to kill the eggs hoping I could reuse it for another species and the stupid things still hatched.
Triops eggs enter a state of extended diapause when dry, and will tolerate temperatures of up to 98 °C (208 °F) for 16 hours, whereas the adult cannot survive temperatures above 34 °C (93 °F) for 24 hours or 40 °C (104 °F) for 2 hours.​

Triops look creepy. Hatch some fairy shrimps ;)
 
#21 ·
Similar thing happened to me. I had left the sand containing eggs in the small tank I'd been raising them in, and it got dumped out by someone who thought it was trash. I attempted to recover any eggs from the corners of the tank and even had 2 hatch, but they died after a couple days and I'm not sure why. That was the end of my triops adventure though.
 
#24 ·
Just thought I'd give a quick update since this thread was supposed to be a guide.

I got my fairy shrimp eggs yesterday and started them last night in a 2 gallon mini bowfront tank I used to use for guppy fry. I used pure RO water and the only other things in the tank are a small driftwood chunk and a piece of java moss, both from an established tank so they should be nicely coated in algae and microorganisms. The tank has a heater but no filter and I've left the light, a 13 watt 6500K CFL, on continuously since I know light is supposed to help hatching rates.

This morning I checked and there's hundreds of them swimming about, I guess I added too many eggs. lol

The instructions are poorly translated and hard to read, but they appear to say to feed them the bakers yeast formula daily starting on day 1. This goes against most of the guides I've read, so I gave them only a tiny amount.

Anyway, that's my day 1 update. If things continue to go well there will be further ones.
 
#31 ·
Time to head to the grocery store!

I tried to hatch out my triops. I had a couple of larvae, but they didn't survive past the first day or two.

I decided to try something new and so I got some clam shrimp and beavertail fairy shrimp eggs just the other day. I'm trying to figure out where I'll be housing the critters as well.
 
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