Exciting Snowball sight (and other shrimp too...)

Awesome to hear that one of my babies is now a mother. You will have plenty of snowballs soon, so be prepared Looks like it is saddled as well. That is a sign of good tank conditions, as well as egg maturity. When you start to see the eyes of the babies appear in the eggs then you know you are close. I would say less than a week is when they hatch once you see the eyes.

About a week after those eggs hatch there will be another batch of eggs released. Those snowballs (and most other shrimp) will breed like clockwork if they are healthy and happy in the aquarium.

Here is a close-up of a berried and pregnant female Snowball. You can also see the eyes of the babies still in the eggs. Most of you may have already seen this pic. Sorry but I just had to show it off again

You'll be happy to see these pictures then Wood...

I was perusing the shrimp tonight, and while my camera (ok, it isn't even mine...) is not as good, you get the idea...

The third one back in this photo is berried. None of the berried ones wanted to cooperate tonight to get pictures. And any ideas why that one in front is kind of pale? There are two of the 14 or so that were pale tonight.



I thought this was the same snowball that was in the previous picture...


But then I saw this one...

Is she just that big, or are the eggs starting to come out or what?

And of course, always tons of berried cherries...


But this by far was the most exciting sight of all, and also the worst picture. A berried tiger shrimp. I had a few tiger shrimp before the planetinverts order that I got from a LFS, but they never seemed to reproduce and eventually just...disappeared. So it is exciting to finally see a berried one. The cherries, snowballs, and yellow shrimp I keep in tap water (pH 8.2 or so...) but I thought tigers would not tolerate this, so they're in half RO/half tap.




Just thought I would share the excitedness...I know they aren't the best photos.

Indeed I've been bitten. I got my first cherries probably about a year ago for free from a local club member when I was picking up some other things from him...I was excited by the success of them, so decided to branch out a little bit. My roommate had the tigers in her work tank, and says she saw a few babies once but they never survived...so since otherwise they were doing well...we went for some that were supposed to be as easy/adaptable as cherries, and so far...seems to be working. Since we'd picked up an RO unit otherwise...we thought we'd give the tigers another go.

And I realize...no going back now. Instead, it is time to spread the shrimp love to other club members. I've been able to sell/give away...about 10 dozen cherries thus far and as you can see, I have more I can thin

I really enjoy the shrimp, they're fun to watch and let me experiment with taking better pictures too. I still keep some in my original tank which is a planted 2.5 (there is a thread here somewhere about it...) but I have to thin that regularly too.

That sponge there is one of the ultimatesponge.com ones. Mainly I had that around when i was starting this tank.

Overall, I like the sponge, there isn't a lot of room inside for stuff to get in.

When it comes to shrimp? As long as it sits flat, that's fine but otherwise they get under it. And angelsplus sells a similar sponge, but the tube is shorter, I'm thinking that is a little better because in a 20L, the ultimate sponge is a bit too tall and the top easily comes out of the water, but I'm sure that could be trimmed down too.

You'll see it is a hodgepodge of sponges that I have in those tanks because last minute I realized that I hadn't thought about what I needed. I'd say the difference between ultimatesponge and angelsplus is the smaller/shorter tubes I said and from angelsplus, I have the easier clean ones or whatever they are called, and the holes/pores are slightly larger than ultimate sponge.



There you can see the bigger angels plus sponge.

Update: Feb 18

Thought I'd add a few more shrimp pictures to this thread.

cherries are looking very red...


And the tigers are finally social enough for me to get decent pictures of them

I took this one yesterday, it amazes me how red they have gotten lately.



The snowballs and yellows are over running the tank, not that I doubted they would but...wow. The yellows took off first but now the snowballs have them beat out for sure. The tigers are doing their thing too.