[Roboto]

Not fancy, but it's fun! A tank for breeding blue dream neocardinas.
I ended up having a berried shrimp pretty quickly, she made a lot of dark blue shrimplets so I figured I'd start my own line.

Here's my tank:
10gallon Aqueon - $1/gallon Petco special - $10 total!
Hygger sponge filter - Less than $20!
A piece of driftwood
Some stones and a sandy substrate (I have another tank started with eco-complete that I'm going to move all the shrimp over to once it's more established)
Hornwort keeps my nitrates at zero
And some other plants that will go in other tanks eventually.

Currently there are three adult blue dreams and somewhere between 30-40 shrimplets who are almost 3 weeks old.

 

[rwong2k]

Beauty

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[Roboto]

Some photos of the little critters at 3 weeks old.

 

[rwong2k]

Wow I need to see more photos. How's the culls rate. I just sold all my dark grade blue dreams and getting tuesday some mucha ones that are more colbalt

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[Roboto]

Wow I need to see more photos. How's the culls rate. I just sold all my dark grade blue dreams and getting tuesday some mucha ones that are more colbalt

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I'm going to let them get to 6 weeks or so before I start moving them to other tanks and making final decisions, but I think 80% of them are going to stay in the tank to breed some more.
I may take a few of the deepest colored ones and move them into their own tank and see if I can get some really deep blue ones.

From what I understand, I need to introduce another line as inbreeding will surely start bringing about lower quality, but I feel really lucky with this round.

 

[Blue Ridge Reef]

From what I understand, I need to introduce another line as inbreeding will surely start bringing about lower quality, but I feel really lucky with this round.

In my experience, that won't be needed for some time. In fact, I'd put that off for as long as you can. When you introduce a new line, there's a solid chance that the gene that make each blue won't match up as well as keeping one line. But yeah, I kept a cherry colony for about 10 years, and by the end they threw pretty much everything. The biggest factor is pulling out any that don't meet your standards before they reach breeding age.

 

[Roboto]

In my experience, that won't be needed for some time. In fact, I'd put that off for as long as you can. When you introduce a new line, there's a solid chance that the gene that make each blue won't match up as well as keeping one line. But yeah, I kept a cherry colony for about 10 years, and by the end they threw pretty much everything. The biggest factor is pulling out any that don't meet your standards before they reach breeding age.

Great! Thanks!
This seems like a pretty good line so hopefully they will stay nice and blue as the colony grows.

 

[Roboto]

Inspired by another thread, we'll have a bit of an experiment with this one.
Hypothesis: Neos can happily and healthily breed in a 0kh tank.

I use RO mineralized with seachem equilibrium.
I have a small Seiryu stone so perhaps that delivers a touch of kh.
Sand substrate (not buffering).

I'll get a TDS meter and start tracking water parameters more closely in this log.
As of today, shrimplets are 3 weeks old. There's been no detectable die off (started with more than 30, still have more than 30).
Female likely came berried from the LFS as she had her shrimplets about 3.5 weeks after I added her to my tank.

 

[Roboto]

The lady shrimp who delivered the first 30+ shrimplets to this experiment is showing a saddle so looks ready to put out some more!

Measured my kh today and the seiryu stone I added last week seems to keep the kh around 2-3 so our 0kh experiment isn't going to work out.

 

[Jane of Upton]

That piece of driftwood is really cool!

 

[Roboto]

I'm up over 50 little shrimp now. In a couple months the numbers will probably be astronomical and it will be time to make my rounds to all the local fish shops so that they can sell them.
I think I got lucky with a high quality group as they are quite solid in their blue coloring. I'll start culling soon and the "muggles" as I'm calling them will go in my community tank where there are bolivian rams who will likely enjoy chomping on any shrimplets that are born. Cycle of life!