Fresh water shrimp

[Noahsnana]

Frank you find interesting creatures to nurture
Do they go in the pond? Fish food?

[matherfish]

The shrimp can go in a pond if they are not allowed to get too cold in the winter, or excessively hot in the summer. They are colorful little creatures which are very interesting to watch as they are extremely active. They do eat algae and are able to have as many as 100 in a gallon of water if conditions are right. They also can be fish food. as lots of fish eat them. I don't think they would be good for human consumption as they are very small. They only get about an inch long.

[matherfish]

My latest acquisition are green jade rili. They are not top grade but hopefully with proper culling they will produce a good line.

[matherfish]

Neocaridina shrimp can be house in a small bowl, as small as a gallon container, although at least a little bigger is better. They feed on algae but shrimp foods are better. They even like some veggies, on occasion. Since their bio load is small, 30-40 can be kept per gallon of water, so their having lots of babies is no problem. I have read that some breeders say that you can have as many as 100 per gallon in a tank. These pics are of baby Blue Jellies eating on a piece of squash. They are about the size of an eye brow hair.

[matherfish]

This Jade green shrimp should be having babies soon. The darker colored shrimp is hard to tell how far along they are because it is harder to see the eggs they are carrying.

[gold4me]

It gets a little harder to say not yet on the shrimp every time I look at your babies.

[matherfish]

Look at the first pic. You see the waste from the bottom of the tank that I sucked up with a turkey baster? Do you see a baby shrimp? This pic is what you would see with the naked eye. Now look t the second pic. See the baby Blue Jelly baby? That is the part of the first pic where the baby was after the pic was blown up 10x! The hornwort leaves make it a little harder to find the baby because it looks like they may be it.

[gold4me]

Again I love those baby shrimp.

[matherfish]

I like watching the shrimps little legs going 90 miles an hour ( figure of speech, not literally), and also trying to find the shrimp in the plants. I have to set up another tank now, as I got another new variety of neocaridina shrimp in yesterday. My new ones are called Black Rose.

[matherfish]

Took a pic of some of my Black Rose shrimp. They do look to live up to their name! Five of the females seem to be carrying eggs. With neocaridina shrimp, the female's ovaries are on their back and the eggs form there and are fertilized there. You can see the eggs under their shell in most shrimp colors, and they are called "saddled" because of this look. Once fertilized, the eggs passed down through a tube to the females abdomen where the eggs are held against the shrimp's body and cared for by being rotated and moved around by the female. They are held there until they hatch and released by the mother. This process takes approximately a month or a little longer.
The biggest shrimp in the pic is carrying eggs, under her stomach, and they call that “berried!”

[matherfish]

Here is a pic of a snowball shrimp that is berried, means carrying eggs, and you can see the eggs under her. The shrimp is upside down so in the pic the eggs are on top. 😃 The reason the shrimp are called snowballs is because the shrimp are so transparent that the eggs look like snowballs.

[matherfish]

I got in a shipment today of 65 snowball shrimp. They were advertised as peewees and juveniles the price was cheap enough but I didn’t realize peewees meant newborns. These guys are indeed tiny. From above they look like dots with long tails. The first pic is either no magnification and the second pic is with 10x zoom. Can you find the second group of 3 babies in the first pic? These little guys are fully formed and look their adult parents but do not have color for the first few weeks of life. Easy to see how they hide so well in a tank until they are almost a month old.

[gold4me]

It’s so cool to see they are perfect little mini me’s I am definitely a crustacean fan

[matherfish]

Those last pics are a little younger than the ones in these pics by about 2 weeks. See, they are born mini “me’s”.

[gold4me]

Please keep the pics coming ‘cause’ I’m enjoying vicariously through yours

[matherfish]

Noahsnana in post 41 had asked about the shrimp bing fish food. Many people do raise with a duel purpose. They enjoy keeping them and watching the but use the culls (wild type off spring or not as colorful) as live food for fish or Axolotls. They also use excess shrimp as feeders. You can, however, have as many as 500 in a five gallon aquarium so if you want to raise them as live food like glass shrimp, only more colorful, these could work for you!
Just for fun, can you see the babies?

[matherfish]

Today it’s “king of the hill!” The one tiny shrimp is up on top of the snail and the other little guy looks like he is thinking “ how do I get up there?” These little guys are so little they are almost impossible to see unless you are using a magnifying glass. Not much bigger than an average eyebrow hair. p.s. The shrimp on the ground is a lighter blue than the one on the snail.

[gold4me]

Thank you Until yours I never realized that they came in such a beautiful variety of colors. I enjoyed the narration too

[matherfish]

These neon yellows almost like like Christmas tree ornaments on the pilo moss this afternoon!

[*Ci*]

Here’s a question for you - do you keep all of your colours separated or together the same tank?

I have neocaridina shrimp in one large tank (68g). Started with blues and later added reds and yellows, but as they breed the offspring are becoming more and more muted (greys, browns, almost blacks) or pied (white and red, white and blue). I’ve read that this happens when you mix colour strains. I still like them, they are fascinating to peer at and intersting to see the different colours and patterns emerging, but a bit disappointing as well.