Which shrimp to breed?

Do you have experience breeding and keeping shrimp?

mordalphus had the best response for your posting. ;-)

Since you didn't list experience, I'd suggest getting the highest grade CRS you can afford and working with them. All the young will be salable at some grade.
If you can make that work really well then consider moving on to a more challenging variation.

You're really going to need two tanks at some point. One for breeders and one for culls waiting to be sold.

Start out with some cherry shrimp.

Cherry shrimp would be easy to start, more than one tank will make things easier.
Low grade crs are cheap enough, but a little more challenging to breed.
Shipping shrimp and coordinating sales can be a pain, get ready for lots of questions and requests from people. Things to think about!

I should've given my CV, I'm sorry. I keep forgetting that very few people here know me. I have or have had: RCS, yellows, blue pearls, low grade CRS, malawas, amanos, dark greens, red nosed, orange Sulawesi, Indian white banded, bamboos and vampires. I currently have growing populations of yellows, malawas, RCS and I'm waiting on my CRS to start breeding, but I've only had them a few weeks. The yellows, malawas and CRS are in a tank together so I'd have a hard time separating the populations for sale if they ever got numerous enough to sell. The RCS are mostly the wild-type that no one wants, and even if they did, these guys are in my 3.5y/o's tank so they aren't eligible for sale. Don't want to invoke the wrath.

I'm going to experiment with one of those Satellite external breeder boxes as a shrimp "tank" so I'm not going all out with SSS CRS in case it fails. Ooh, maybe I should try CPOs...

-Lisa

I would say snowballs, havent seen many available for a while now.

I use those satellite boxes for holding tanks, I'd be wary of trying to actually use the thing as a breeding tank for shrimp though, the vibration from the air/water mix being pumped up the tube and into the tank might be a bit much. Also the temperature fluctuates in it quite a bit since the flow is so light.

If you were going to breed CRS for sale, I'd invest in at least a 20 gallon tank you could dedicate solely to that species. And really right now CRS are one of the more profitable shrimp.

If you could weather a potential loss of a few hundred dollars of shrimp you could always set up a sulawesi tank and start breeding cardinal shrimp... They still fetch an excellent price, but they are a bit more delicate than your average dwarf shrimp. They take a bit of getting used to since their care is different than the soft/acidic shrimp.

You should raise shrimp because you to, not to produce a profit.

Still, if you're looking for money, I vote you go sulawesi as well.
They are expensive, but once you get a colony going money could roll in.

-Gordon

I was thinking snowballs too, either that or blue pearls.

I'd love to set up a tank devoted solely to a breeding shrimp colony but my husband has forbade me from having any more, which is why I'm trying my breeder box experiment. I also don't have the money to put into sulawesis. I'm not trying to make a living off of the shrimp, just some spending money occasionally. I haven't kept shrimp solely for the purpose of breeding them before, so this is my next new venture.

I have toyed with the idea of offering a shrimp mix from my 13g when the populations reach a critical mass, but I don't know if people would be interested.

-Lisa

Snow balls are super cool. Here is a shrimp compatibility chart for reference if you didn't already have one or aren't sure about crossbreeding.

http://www.theshrimpfarm.com/articles/dwarf-shrimp-compatibility-chart/

Are people interested in buying Blue Pearls or Snowballs? Those seem like really boring shrimp. LOL

IMHO the safest bet is CRS. The "intense" Yellow shrimp seem to sell pretty well if you want something Neocaradinia.

I've read that CRS prefer a 20g tank to breed in. IOW, if you put them in a 10g, then moved to a 20g, you'd see an increase in berried shrimps in the 20g. I am setting up a 20Long for CRS.

I'm thinking of breeding CRS in the 20 and putting intense yellows in a 10g. Or possibly Fire Red RCS.

I just don't see the appeal of the Blue Pearl or Snowballs, but I have never seen either in person.

Sulawesi, OEBT.

forddna said:

I've read that CRS prefer a 20g tank to breed in. IOW, if you put them in a 10g, then moved to a 20g, you'd see an increase in berried shrimps in the 20g. I am setting up a 20Long for CRS.

I'm thinking of breeding CRS in the 20 and putting intense yellows in a 10g. Or possibly Fire Red RCS.

I just don't see the appeal of the Blue Pearl or Snowballs, but I have never seen either in person.

Click to expand...

The bigger the tank the better off you will be with any shrimp. The system is just less susceptible to changes the larger it is. I have a 5.5g mini-m that is popping out shrimp like crazy. Its all in how you work it.

Really blue blue pearls are really cool looking.

My rationale for the snowballs or blue pearls is that they're easy like RCS, which makes them great for beginners looking for something different. Even with my rash (stupid) boldness with my shrimp collecting, I held off on CRS for a long time, and I only bought the ones I have on impulse at the LFS.

-Lisa

It seems impossible to make more than a tiny bit of money selling rcs. Fire red and tiger shrimp are easier to breed than crs and they always seem sell well.

Yeah, there's no money to be had in RCS on the scale I can do. I was thinking tigers as another possiblity.

-Lisa

OEBTs breed real easily. And you can sell the plain colored ones as regular Tiger shrimp while you hoard all the nice blue ones for yourself.