Cardinals and Redlines and Harlequins, OH MY! *how to import shrimp update*

[billb]

Hey Darrin, Thanks! I am open to advice, especially from folks with hands on experience! There is a lot to learn with these guys and I will post more on this over the week end. The water checks out - I made the calibration solutions and the new kits check out. I am working with something near 2ppm Nitrates.

I love these shrimp - they are really cool. Mine all come out in the evening around 7pm or so. My lights go off at 8:30 so I can spend time checking them out. If the room is dark, they don't get spooked. the species definitely have different behaviours, adaptations, and preferences. i am definitely going to keep a log and try to capture my observations in pictures when ever possible!

Drinda, I am glad to hear your plants are doing well. I can now confirm that the tylo snails will take a few bites of the Red Cherry Water Plants. I'm going to have to keep them fed so they don't eat through all my plants! Good thing they eat almost everything I put in front of them.

I have some interesting growth on a couple of the RCWPs - not sure what they are but I will try to take some pictures.

Bill

[lopez_316us]

WOW!!!

Great pictures!!! Thanks man. Your tanks look really good

Subscribe!!

[dxiong5]

Well, some of my RCWPs have started to disappear. Not sure if it's from the snails or poor water for the plants. Update on yours Bill?

[billb]

Hi Don. I can confirm that Tylo's eat them. I am trying to keep them fat and happy but may have to put them in a separate tank. I want the plants for the shrimp. The plants in the Sulawesi tank - no CO2 and water parameters listed below - are doing pretty good. I have two in my High tech tank with hard water and pH of 6.9. Good Co2 and 3 wpg metal halide - are not doing as well but they aren't disappearing yet. here is a picture from my Sulawesi tank

I also have two aeration zones that are supplying O2 to the shrimp but maybe the flow and stable but low CO2 is helping. You can see them in the whole tank shot in a recent post

Water parameters
Temp is 79 degrees
kH 5
gH 9
NO3 less than 5ppm - calibrated with home made standards per Tom Barr instructions
I am still losing a shrimp about every other day - Harlequins or Redlines. I can't help wondering if it is diet related. There are several shrimp hide outs and the dead shrimp seem to be located mostly behind the big fossilized coral (if that's what it is). Definitely hard to know. I am tempted to see if anyone at Birch Aquarium here in SD would be willing to do an autopsy. They might be able to determine if I'm fighting disease, water quality, or empty stomachs.
They might also be able to make suggestions. Hey it would at least get me to go to the aquarium!
I do see shrimp graze on my "feeding" stones but as I said before, they seem to hang around their own turf. I may need to rotate the stones around the tank.
So, on to some good news! I have not had a yellow cheek die recently - knock on wood. Lot's of speculation on a Sulawesi disease that impacts Yellow Cheeks. Maybe the rest are clean. The UV system is running full time just in case. Speaking of Yellow Cheeks, I have a gigantic one. It must be 4 centimeters, but it has been very shy and difficult to get a good look at. Just a murky shadow under the stone ledge. Well tonight it was out, and it is a berried female! Keep your fingers crossed!. I
I tried to take a picture - and did a terrible job. You will have to take my word for it. Here is the best pic I managed to take

The Cardinals are doing great. These guys are comfortable in the tank and generally the most visible shrimp, especially during the middle of the day. I have several berried females and am looking forward to seeing shrimplets. I believe I have 3 to 5 young ones from my original shrimp. Here are a few pictures ( the berried females have an uncanny ability to detect cameras).
My best crack at showing a berried female

A Pack-O-Cardinals plus one large harlequin and one small Red line
The shrimp definitely seem to prefer hanging out under ledges - more than the holes in the fossilized coral. I would certainly suggest incorporating such a ledge if any one plans to set up a tank for these guys
I like this shot! Look at the antenna on this guy. They have these long graceful white antennas and this pic shows one flowing in an arc. Might need to expand the photo
The plants seem to be doing well. One of them has these thin, dark green stems growing out of it. Not sure if this is a normal or if there is another plant - hitch hiker that is springing up. It is hard to see, but it is growing up from the plant in the center of the picture, against the rock.

Bill

[Mustang Boy]

wow the tank is looking great i wish i had the money and expertise to take care of them

i am definitely going to have to make it out to one of the natural springs around here to see if i can find any of that macro-algae you are looking for and i might just grab some for myself too maybe setup a shrimp tank with only macro-algae now that would be cool and it would definitely give the shrimp plenty to graze off of

[justin182]

amazing!
i just want to wish you good luck!

[billb]

Hi Mustangboy - thanks and I think your idea of a macro algae tank is cool - it would be unique.

Justin182, thank you. I checked out your thread and you are making great progress on your tank. Nice drift wood!

Well things seem to be pretty stable right now but I found a yellow cheek with a brown patch on its back similar to what is shown on posts about sulawesi disease. I removed and isloated the shrimp and did lose it. No others with these symptoms right now. In searching for more info, I saw a post by msjinkzd (if i recall correctly) to a German site focused on diseases of invertabrates. The Germans are way ahead of us! This link is for the Google translated version of the page. If you have shrimp or crayfish - check it out
http://translate.google.com/translat...%3Den%26sa%3DG

Bill

[vca2004]

Bill, they have a medication list for shrimp here: Again it's all in German, but maybe you can use it somehow. I know it might be useless like this, but I don't have the time to translate right now.
http://www.garnelenforum.de/board/Heilmittel.xls

[billb]

Thanks Vanessa, I am going to be conservative until I can determine if I am fighting disease or not. There is the Scripps institute of oceanography here in San Diego. I have frozen some of the freshly dead shrimp and will see if some one will look at them to see what has killed them. In the mean time, this brings me to .... (thanks for the lead in Vanessa!)...


Human error - this is the last thing I needed. These shrimp do not allow you to make mistakes, and I did.
My flow had dropped and I knew that my Purigen/crushed shell filter had been packed pretty tight. So Friday evening, I got a new,larger mesh bag and filled it with new Purigen and crushed shells and rinsed them in RO water. I then replaced the two small bags that were currently in the filter with the new, larger bag. Well, I did not rinse this well enough and when I turned the filter on, my pH dropped from 8.0 to 7.5 - the new Purigen must contain a buffer. My shrimp were swimming - a very bad sign with Sulawesis. The only ones that did not seem agitated were the C. woltereckaes, the harlequins! In about 20 minutes, I lost 5 shrimp - two redlines, two cardinals( my first losses but one was berried) and one yellow cheek. I changed 10% of the water when I noticed the pH drop and the stress. Every one settled down and I think the Harlequins were down right happy. Several were sparring for territories.
These were tough losses!
I did lose one more redline Friday night, but nothing last night.
A couple new things:
I found a prepared food that all of the Shrimp go for! Ocean Nutrition Shrimp Wafers

These are definitely shrimp sized as shown on the bottle. I can put them on the large flat rock about an hour before lights out and the shrimp will stumble into them ( these guys are not blood hounds like my CRS) The redlines and harlequins both eat them and ignore any other prepared foods I have tried. So now I have several things I can rotate in to feed them - the cutlured biofilm, the dried Phytomax - both on feeding rocks - and the Ocean Nutrition wafers.
I have a stow away!
There is a very young brown shrimp in my tank. It must have been in one of the bags with the other shrimp. It would have been a tiny thing back then! This shrimp looks like a Malawa and is very active. It swims all over the tank and likes the current from my filter. I will try to get a picture
Yellow cheeks are night owls!
I have been losing these guys more than any others and I have wondered how many I have. I may see one or two during the day but after dark, they come out of hiding. I counted 11 shrimp tonight, incuding the giant berried female. Definitely keeping my fingers crossed.
I got a TDS probe!
I have been using RO water that circulates in a bucket with coral sand - I knew that this has gotten my pH, kH, and gH were I wanted them but was curious about my TDS. Reports I have read suggest that the lakes are soft
Matano had a TDS of 227 and Towuti had 180 or so. Good news, my water is 205. In contrast, my 90 gallon which uses San Diego Tap water in north of 450 ( but my C grade CRS are breeding well) I do wonder if I am missing traces though. Need to do my homework here.
I hope this is helping folks interested in these shrimp. My cardinals seem to be really happy and relatively hardy. There are at least 4 berried females at the moment and i am hoping that they will produce viable offspring. I would recommend you start with cardinals - hopefully tank raised.
The big yellow cheek is hanging in there too. It would be great to get some of these guys reproducing. No berried Harlequins or redlines however. My hope is that I won't repeat my Purigen mistake and that the remaining shrimp are settled in. Time will tell
Bill

[speedie408]

SICK shrimp

[vca2004]

I am keeping my fingers crossed for you too, Bill! So how many of each species should you have left now? I know counting them is impossible, but from how many you bought and how many you lost so far...

I have read reports about captive bred harlequins and yellow cheeks at www.garnelenforum.de, so they do breed in captivity. It's just a matter of time and patience (the later I usually don't have)...

[Rob in Puyallup]

Hey Bill...

Find the news about your shrimp very interesting!

Wondering how you culture biofilm...

[dxiong5]

My RCWPs are no more. Bill, if yours every propagate, I will be in contact!

[billb]

Thanks speedie408 - they are really cool. i am fortunate to have them.

Vanessa - It is hard to tell, I may have to see if I can count them tonight. My best guess:
50 cardinals
25 redlines
10 to 20 yellow cheeks
10 harlequins.

Rob in Puyallup - I bought the two part phytoplankton aquaculture media from Kent Marine. I also bought the sodium metasilicate that they recommended to culture diatoms (details and source listed in an earlier post). I use the term biofilm but really I have been trying to accelerate the growth of surface diatoms and algae. As the Red Cherry water plants were collected from the wild in the Malili lakes where the shrimp come from, I used them to seed the cultures. Currently I am putting small flat stones, red cherry water plants, and dried leaves in the culture trays. These are then put into the tank after a few days. Not sure how well it works but I do see shrimp on these grazing. My guess is that this contributes to the available food sources. I also have a healthy population of pond snails competing for biofilm - and they ALWAYS find the stones or leaves first - so I hope this helps

Don - sorry to hear that. They are tough. The two plants in my 90 gallon are looking pretty sparse. The plants in the Sulawesi tank are not thriving either, the new growth has thinner arms and smaller leaves, The orange tips are gone too. A couple of them seem to be sending out a different type of growth. i tried to take a picture of this in an earlier post. The best plant I have has been in the aquaculture media the whole time. The temps are probably too low so no big growth but it still has the thick leaves. I will keep trying.

Bill

[aquarius45]

Hi billb,
I'm a hobbyist in the UK and I'm hopefully going get a cardinal shrimp tank running!
I've been looking everywhere on the internet for that Red Cherry Water Plant but no luck

Do you know about any other places I could get it? Or if it's ok with you, could you sell me some?

I know it's a lot to ask! Cheers a bunch - Will.