Hawaiian Red Shrimp Issues and Breeding

[xenxes]

Good to hear, I've been keeping mine @ 1.01-1.012. Had some sporadic die offs because my tank crashed when I increased the salinity (used freshwater bacteria, newbie mistake). Have since read that bacteria cycled @ 1.01 is the most tolerant to salinity shifts.

I got mine from manini here on the forums for $0.50 each. Sent me ~62 shrimp for $25+shipping They're incredibly tiny, should have ordered more.

[Koi Kameon]

Yes, it was Ocean Rider.

[jasonpatterson]

Just wanted to post that I've got zoeas! There are at least 4 of them, quite probably more. I'm surprised by their size, compared to microcrabs, ghost shrimp, and amano shrimp, these zoeas are huge, perhaps 3 mm in size with heads that are 1mm across. I knew to expect relatively developed larvae because of the egg size, but this was a surprise. I actually thought that the first zoea that I saw was a fragment of a dead adult shrimp, since it was so red and bulky.

[madness]

Great news!

[jasonpatterson]

Of the 6 zoeas I found, at least 3 survived to transform. They really really like to hide, so it's difficult to tell whether I'm seeing the same 3 shrimp or if they all 6 lived and I only see 3 at once. They are now, roughly 2.5 months later, approaching adult size and doing well. I've got another berried and she should be hatching out relatively soon. If the size of her brood is any evidence, it ought to be quite a few more than 6 zoeas.

The main reason I'm on here right now is an odd reaction that they've just had. I occasionally try feeding them small amounts of various foods, usually spirulina, but occasionally something like pulverized turnip greens or the like. Very rarely I'll give them something with a reasonable amount of protein, but they almost always ignore it (crushed fish flakes, for instance.)

Tonight I decided to try a couple of sinking fish pellets on them and the results were pretty amazing. I smashed two New Life Spectrum pellets and dropped them into the tank. The shrimp are now going insane, dancing everywhere, though they are completely disinterested in the food. Assuming they don't all die tonight or something like that, I'll try again in a couple of weeks and see if the reaction is due to the pellets or another factor. I'm very wary of post hoc reasoning, but I've not seen them this animated except immediately after a very stressful event. Additionally, I'm going to watch for berried shrimp, as that is something that is generally expected after an event like this. If I get several berried shrimp in the next few days, I'd consider that to be relatively good evidence for these pellets acting in the way that breeding drops are generally intended.

Any worthwhile conclusions would require multiple testing events, of course.

[diwu13]

Congrats with the zoea surviving! Hopefully you can perfect the method and survival rate to help the species.

[jasonpatterson]

There wasn't much to it, honestly. Once the shrimp finally berried it became more or less as automatic as any other shrimp. I fed spirulina a few times while the babies were still larval, but I don't know whether they ever actually ate any of it.

My ultimate goal is to have a colony of thousands in a very large tank, but at their current rate of reproduction the population will double once every couple of years, so they'll finally be dying of old age by the time my plan comes to fruition. If they ever really get going breeding that might change, of course, but they're known to be slow, slow, slow in nearly every regard, so I'll keep my hopes reasonable.

[GeToChKn]

Originally Posted by jasonpatterson

There wasn't much to it, honestly. Once the shrimp finally berried it became more or less as automatic as any other shrimp. I fed spirulina a few times while the babies were still larval, but I don't know whether they ever actually ate any of it.

My ultimate goal is to have a colony of thousands in a very large tank, but at their current rate of reproduction the population will double once every couple of years, so they'll finally be dying of old age by the time my plan comes to fruition. If they ever really get going breeding that might change, of course, but they're known to be slow, slow, slow in nearly every regard, so I'll keep my hopes reasonable.

I thought they lived like 20 years though?

[madness]

So would you say that the key was to have an established tank with a lot of microfauna/algae/etc. so that you didn't have to target feed them as much and destroy the water quality?

[jasonpatterson]

I never fed them much or destroyed the water quality, just a tiny amount of spirulina and/or flake food once every other week. Even if they ate none of it and it all decomposed, it was far less than what would be required to overwhelm the algae/filter's ability to clear. I still don't know why they started dying on me, to tell the truth. I suspect that the major factor that caused them to start breeding was that I scrubbed out their tank and then reset everything and just left it alone.

Originally Posted by GeToChKn

I thought they lived like 20 years though?

Yep. I've got something like 35 shrimp left, and if they double every two years, in 20 years I'll have 36,000-ish of them. Should be enough to populate my gigantic aquarium.

[Koi Kameon]

Originally Posted by jasonpatterson

Of the 6 zoeas I found, at least 3 survived to transform. They really really like to hide, so it's difficult to tell whether I'm seeing the same 3 shrimp or if they all 6 lived and I only see 3 at once. They are now, roughly 2.5 months later, approaching adult size and doing well. I've got another berried and she should be hatching out relatively soon. If the size of her brood is any evidence, it ought to be quite a few more than 6 zoeas.

The main reason I'm on here right now is an odd reaction that they've just had. I occasionally try feeding them small amounts of various foods, usually spirulina, but occasionally something like pulverized turnip greens or the like. Very rarely I'll give them something with a reasonable amount of protein, but they almost always ignore it (crushed fish flakes, for instance.)

Tonight I decided to try a couple of sinking fish pellets on them and the results were pretty amazing. I smashed two New Life Spectrum pellets and dropped them into the tank. The shrimp are now going insane, dancing everywhere, though they are completely disinterested in the food. Assuming they don't all die tonight or something like that, I'll try again in a couple of weeks and see if the reaction is due to the pellets or another factor. I'm very wary of post hoc reasoning, but I've not seen them this animated except immediately after a very stressful event. Additionally, I'm going to watch for berried shrimp, as that is something that is generally expected after an event like this. If I get several berried shrimp in the next few days, I'd consider that to be relatively good evidence for these pellets acting in the way that breeding drops are generally intended.

Any worthwhile conclusions would require multiple testing events, of course.

Did you try the pellets again? What happened if so?

[Koi Kameon]

Have you ever tried acclimating them to freshwater (not for breeding)?

[moosenart]

Originally Posted by Koi Kameon

Have you ever tried acclimating them to freshwater (not for breeding)?

+1

also i totally want to setup a small tank with these some day...

[jasonpatterson]

Originally Posted by Koi Kameon

Did you try the pellets again? What happened if so?

I have not yet tried the pellets again. The first time I tried I saw 2 molts in the tank the following day and 4 days after there was 1 additional berried shrimp. I wouldn't consider that to be anything out of the ordinary compared to their normal state of affairs. I've got a bunch (well, 10 of them anyway) of zoeas in there now from another female that was already pregnant, so I'm trying to avoid stressing them out prior to their transformation.

I'll give it another shot once the zoeas have transformed. Again, I'm very wary of poor thought processes with things like this, and it's very easy to fall prey to confirmation bias (only noticing events that support a hypothesis) and post hoc reasoning (Event B followed Event A, therefore Event B occurred because of Event A.)

Originally Posted by Koi Kameon

Have you ever tried acclimating them to freshwater (not for breeding)?

Yep, it's pretty easy, just plop them into fresh water and they live. There's no need for acclimating them, at least in my experience.

[diwu13]

Originally Posted by jasonpatterson

Yep, it's pretty easy, just plop them into fresh water and they live. There's no need for acclimating them, at least in my experience.

Yeah lol... they won't breed or anything but survive perfectly fine. I've seen several LFS keep them in freshwater set ups as well.