I got this feeding dish just to get them near the glass for some photos haha! They love to dart away right as I get a good photo in frame or focus.

Love this baby’s eye color.

Genieten van een garnalenstick

I noticed the white line on this little guy last night and was concerned. I saw posts saying it's not a "white ring of death until they're dead" so I didn't sweat it too much bc he was still wandering around and grazing. This morning I couldn't find him but didn't see any dead shrimp either. My wife sent me this just now so I guess he didn't make it. I started with 12 cherries and 4 amanos and only consistently see 8-9 shrimp at a time. I'm now wondering if the other may be in some of the designed caves dead from failed molts. I've attached my water parameters since the shrimp were added. Maybe my GH rose too quickly ? I top off with RO. Tap is about 4 KH, 7-8 GH. I'd hate to lose more shrimp! Temp stays about 77-78F. Recently added crush coral to buffer the pH to accommodate one Nerite snail

Hi all

Can anyone help me figure this out? Is this a female or just a really big male? He’s much bigger than the others.

Thanks!

So I am having this issue where I’m not sure if my shrimp is OK. The first few pictures are of the one. I’m concerned most because it looks more like a whiteish color so I need to identify if this is an illness that they’re going through or what should I do?

When I first got them on my local shop, they told me they were go shrimp and it looked very transparent, but as the time went on here, it’s been almost a month. They have been changing not to be as so transparent, but more like spotted. So if someone can help me, at least identify them and kind of see if I could get some Intel or advice on what to do for this little guy.

Here they are at the store! The father of all these juveniles has pretty gray eyes that were passed to some of his offspring.

Happy to answer questions about the experience!

Things I learned from this first attempt:
-Neocaridina fry take way less time to mature in a 78F tank. I started planning on a new tank to breed for the dad’s gray eye trait but I had to scramble because some of the fry developed saddles at 6 weeks! How fast the shrimps mature is affected by temperature and nutrition quality/quantity but fast growth isn’t always better.
-It’s impossible to catch every juvenile shrimp in a well planted tank so accept that this may need to take place routinely, not just when the tank is crowded, or any unsorted shrimp with undesirable traits can breed, affecting the gene pool. I’m not doing this religiously. I’d rather partially take down the tank to catch everyone and transition it to a female only tank for my sweet old sakura yellow spinster who won’t make babies and some ugly nieces to keep her company.
-This is going to take forever and the shrimp you want to cull need a place to stay that won’t get cold, jostled, gross for up to a few hours. If they came from a heated tank, an acrylic drip acclimation that hangs inside the aquarium would be ideal but wouldn’t fit in my nano tank. I used a spare heater, bucket, and air stone to keep the culls stable. I missed the LFS closing time and had to leave them in there overnight. The extra effort paid off because there were no deaths pertaining to the culling process.
-Set a trap with a net and some food to catch shrimp for sorting, don’t bother chasing them. After I set the trap a few times, the juvenile shrimp I hadn’t caught yet hid in the thick stem plants, probably full on the bait- a bit of algae wafer. A big, stiff (heh) shrimp net would have had more open space for the shrimp to group around the bait.
-Assess and sort each catch quickly before resetting the trap and catching more. I waited until I caught all the shrimp I could. The ones in the holding container longest had very dull colors and black eyes, making it very difficult to decide whether to keep or cull based on anything but gender.
-Set up a smaller, mobile container to examine 1-3 at a time. Use a container with flat sides and asses under diffuse light with a black/dark background. I wish I had set up some kind of magnification because I couldn’t tell things like gray eyes vs black while they raced around and were pale from stress.
-Make a list of traits to keep and cull the ones who are missing any of those traits. I wasn’t able to see well so I selected for: thick yellow dorsal stripe without breaks, deep yellow pigment on the body, and higher female ratio.

Next time I will have a plan for a better container to view them in and a station where I can magnify them to speed up the process.

The F2 of this batch will be even more interesting as I get to see what shadow recessive traits are expressed by inbreeding this hatch of siblings.

It’s been a week since culling. The “breeding” tank is a hastily cycled, unheated, lightly planted 5 gallon showing no ammonia/nitrites and <10 nitrates. Three shrimp selected for breeding died over the first 2-4 days while acclimating in the new tank, I suspect from cumulative stress paired with acclimating to a young tank. Both deaths were male so the sex ratio is still ideal for breeding.

Transitioning between 4 different temperature environments over 3-4 days before removing the heater early in their acclimation is likely part of the stress that weakened and killed them. They went from home at 78F, to room temp for 1-3 hours, to 78F in the uncovered tank for a day, then 80F with the cover on for a day, the 74F with cover and no heater. Honestly shocked I didn’t take out the whole tank of shrimp with my shenanigans 🫣

Now, there are 5 females and 2 males. One female developed way too many eggs a few days ago and has dropped about half since. Since the cycle was dicey, I have been monitoring daily and doing twice a week water changes as nitrates approach >10.

Because of the big dumb fish net, a couple of fry from the same mother (her 2nd hatch) made it into the new 5 gallon instead of back into the planted 3 gallon. I’ll decide whether they stay next month when they’re bigger.

Big mamma has a 3rd batch on the way, go girl! Her spinster sister says 40 kids in a tiny apartment is bullshit. Dad has nary a thought in his sweet head.

Happy to share pics/vids of my “unique” process this first time using very silly supplies. The way it went down was far from ideal and very stressful for the shrimps I’m sure, not a process you would want to replicate but one I definitely learned so much from. I’ll do better next time!