[madness]

I have a couple of dozen regular Tiger shrimp that appear to be healthy but none of which have become berried yet. They arrived as mostly juveniles but with several adult looking shrimp included and they have been kept in a 16G tank with some Fire Red cherry shrimp that have been breeding and molting just fine.

I plan to move the tigers to a tank with more friendly parameters for them (colder/softer water by themselves) so I am not too worried about things long-term but I have just been curious which of the less than perfect conditions might be the primary culprit in the lack of breeding.

Can anyone tell me what the approx. size of tiger shrimp is when they start to breed compared to that of Cherry Shrimp. I have a heck of a time visualizing small size measurements (especially in metric) but I am familiar with with the size and developmental stages of Neocardinas.

 

[GeToChKn]

I have 14 wild caught regular tigers. They are around mid-cherry almost-cherry size. They started breeding about 2 weeks after putting them into the tank. Its a 5.5gal with fluval shrimp stratum topped over eco-complete, pH is about 6.8, temp is 70F, gh/kh unknown, not tested in that tank. I have I think 3 berried females at the moment.

 

[mordalphus]

Can you see a saddle on any of them? They usually are brown or yellowish brown

 

[GeToChKn]

Yes, I guess Mordalphus's question is valid first and foremost, do you have any females? On my wilds, the saddles on a few were bright neon green.

 

[madness]

Yes, I guess Mordalphus's question is valid first and foremost, do you have any females? On my wilds, the saddles on a few were bright neon green.

Heck, I don't know. Not sure why I didn't check that specifically. I got 40 and maybe only 8-10 looked like they were close to adult size. Several of them are intensely colored and so I sort of assumed that they were females. I really don't see them very often (hiding spots).

I will keep slowly dropping the tank temp. until I get to somewhere around 74/75 degrees and see if that helps as well.

My two best guesses were that the water temp was too high (was 78 to start with and I turned it down a slight bit since then) or that they weren't quite mature yet.

My water is tap water but it is well within what are considered acceptable ranges for Tigers (including getting them to breed) even if it would suck for bee shrimp.

Thanks for the input. I had sort of figured that they would acclimate and eventually berry but it dawned on me a few days ago that plenty of time had passed. Made me curious.

I have a double stand with 2 20H tanks with AS New Amazonia that are cycling so I will move them over to one of those tanks (saving the other tank for OEBT when I find some) when they are ready (and I have the time and energy to fish the little buggers out of my 16G BF tank mixed in with fire reds).

 

[HiepSTA]

i had 7 tigers with my cherries at temps of around 80 and they were breeding pretty often, i had one female that was getting eggs back to back, meaning a few days after her eggs hatch, she had a new set of eggs

 

[GeToChKn]

They seem pretty hardy and I'm not sure if temps are that big. What pH is your tank? Everything I read and asked, was that a 6.6-6.8 was the best range for them.

 

[madness]

Other than the curved underbelly of a female tiger shrimp does anyone have any tips on identifying a non-berried female?

The coloration on mine is too dark for me to tell whether there is a saddle or not.

 

[mordalphus]

It's very subtle, but antennae length. Adult females have antennaes just shorter than their body length, ranging to just slightly longer, adult males have antennaes that are always longer than their bodies (sometimes 1.25x body length)

However, the bad news is, it's harder to sex them via antennae than it is to sex them via body shape.

 

[studentclimber]

When I got mine it took quite a while for them to berry up. After the initial wait, there was no stopping them.

 

[mordalphus]

Try tossing some frozen bloodworms in there, that should get them saddled up pretty good

 

[madness]

Thanks for the tips.