My Trip To A Wholesalers & Red Crystal Shrimp

Hi Guys,

Around a month ago I was asked if I would like to help out at weekends at the LFS so that I could help give advice to customers about keeping and breeding Discus and Angelfish. Im also regularly asked about plants and algae and generally point them in the direction of this forum as what I have learnt has been mostly from you guys.

Anyways I was asked if I would like to go to the wholesalers this week to hand select the fish for the shop. Obviously I couldnt turn this down!!

Well I went yesterday & the place was huge!!! There must have been at a guess well over 500 tanks. It was awesome!! I came across one tank and started jumping up & down, I couldnt believe it!! It read SPECIAL!! Red Crystal Shrimp.

I have just set up a two foot tank that was simply going to be for me to experiment with High lighting and EI. I was going to eventually just put in some cardinals but when I came accorss these my ideas changed completely. They also had cherry & Tiger shrimp!

Well the Crystals were quite expensive but I bought 15 & I got 20 cherries & 20 tigers.

Can anyone here tell me whether it would be ok to keep some of each in the same tank & will they still breed with different shrimp in the tank or should I stick to having a go at the crystals??

Id also like to be able to offer these for sale to people as I know how rare they are but I have yet to have a go at sending by post. I know there is a guy on Ebay that sell Cherries & Tigers & uses Royal mail special delivary. Can anyone tell me how he packages them and there experiences after receiving them? Any loses, condition etc??

Regards

James

I would think all those shrimp would be ok in the same time, I know of people who mix and match shrimp in their tanks, wihtout any problems. Not sure about the breeding though, never tried it.

I would love to go to a wholesalers! You must have been like a kid in a sweet shop! I want that one, oh and that one, and that one, oh a I definately need one of those, and two of them, whats this? Not seen these before had better get 5, and I've been looking for these for years best get a could of these too, and one of those and one of those...(I think you get the idea )

Post some pics of the shrimp if you're able

Sam

Sounds like a good find ... I'd love to get my hands on some CRS (seem very hard to find in UK).

jkc said:

Well the Crystals were quite expensive but I bought 15 & I got 20 cherries & 20 tigers.

Can anyone here tell me whether it would be ok to keep some of each in the same tank & will they still breed with different shrimp in the tank or should I stick to having a go at the crystals??

Click to expand...

Not sure about keeping them together with the tigers. An article on Wikipedia says they will interbreed.

Wikipedia - Crystal Red Shrimp



I'm not sure about the best way to package and send them ...... but if you want to do a 'test delivery', I'll happily send you my address


Mr G

Themuleous said:

I would think all those shrimp would be ok in the same time, I know of people who mix and match shrimp in their tanks, wihtout any problems. Not sure about the breeding though, never tried it.

I would love to go to a wholesalers! You must have been like a kid in a sweet shop! I want that one, oh and that one, and that one, oh a I definately need one of those, and two of them, whats this? Not seen these before had better get 5, and I've been looking for these for years best get a could of these too, and one of those and one of those...(I think you get the idea )

Post some pics of the shrimp if you're able

Sam

Click to expand...

Thanks Sam, Im gonna do a bit of research on breeding them now! I bought a Eheim Aquaball for the tank & now im thinking I may have to go with just a sponge as the shrimp are still quite small & I dont want them to be sucked in!!

It was absurlutely awesome. I had a £500 budget and after walking around writing down what I wanted I still managed to rack up £750 worth. Had to sit down and scrub some off the list!! Great fun spending £500 on fish though!! They also had a small breeding room which was excellent, they had some absurlutely huge rams & some gorgeous angels but he just wasnt going to let me have them!!

Ill try and post some pics later, am going to the shop this arvo to see if everything settled in ok!!

Oh something else I had to get (which was quite expensive as well!!) Blue Panaque!! Absurlutely stunning and havent seen any for a LONG time!!

Mr G said:

Sounds like a good find ... I'd love to get my hands on some CRS (seem very hard to find in UK).

jkc said:

Well the Crystals were quite expensive but I bought 15 & I got 20 cherries & 20 tigers.

Can anyone here tell me whether it would be ok to keep some of each in the same tank & will they still breed with different shrimp in the tank or should I stick to having a go at the crystals??

Click to expand...

Not sure about keeping them together with the tigers. An article on Wikipedia says they will interbreed.

Wikipedia - Crystal Red Shrimp



I'm not sure about the best way to package and send them ...... but if you want to do a 'test delivery', I'll happily send you my address


Mr G

Click to expand...

Thanks Mr G, good find about the Tigers & CRS! Ill think ill stick with Cherries & CRS then, dont want any interbreeding!!

Do you know of any good articles on breeding the CRS? Im sure ive read something about them in a topic on The Planted Tank Forum!?

If you want to purchase some Mr G and do a test on the delivary for me im sure we could sort something out, I would have to find out how much he's selling them for in the shop first but I do get discount!!


Pm me if you want to sort something!!

If Bloo's around maybe he can advise on packaging & delivary, I think he may have recently purchased some cherries from the guy on Ebay!!

You have a PM.


Mr G


P.S - Have a look at Bloo's profile ... I'm sure She'll forgive you

OH Whoops Sorry Bloo

jkc said:

Not sure about keeping them together with the tigers. An article on Wikipedia says they will interbreed.

Click to expand...

I've seen a few articles that mention possible inbreeding - so though you can peacefully keep them together, if you are successful with breeding, they will almost certainly inbreed. That said, unless you have a shrimp only tank (no fish at all) you are probably highly unlikely to see any offspring.

If Bloo's around maybe he can advise on packaging & delivary, I think he may have recently purchased some cherries from the guy on Ebay!!

Click to expand...

I'm most certainly a "she" - thank Mr G!
Nope - I did not buy Red Cherries from eBay and have in fact never had shrimp posted to me. However shrimp notoriously don't post well and it shouldn't come as a surprise to have some DOA's and some die within the first few days of their new home.

Mr G said:

.S - Have a look at Bloo's profile ... I'm sure She'll forgive you

Click to expand...

Btw, I also managed to pick up some Red Crystals a number of weeks ago. Sadly they were extremely small and even though they went into a mature tank where I successfully keep Amano shrimp, they slowly dropped off one by one
I have some interesting articles on RCS though - and if I'm back at my own pc, I'll post them to you.

Plllllllease post some photos of them very soon !

Sorry about that Bloo, I could have sworn earlier that I saw Bloo on the guys feedback comments on Ebay. Double checked and cant see it. Must have been having a funny five mins!! If you could send me the links to the articles you have that would be fantastic.

It will be a shrimp only tank. Id like to keep the Cherries & CRS together but if this isnt feasable then CRS it is!!The only thing Im a little concerned about is the filter. I bought an Eheim aquaball for the tank but im worried that they might get pulled into the filter. I may have come up with a solution though, im gonna put a stocking over it. Ill see how it goes and report back. If it doesnt work ill have to use a sponge filter!

Just popped into the shop to see how all the shrimp are getting on. Unforunately we put the tiger shrimp in with some algae shrimp & the algae shrimp seemed to think they were food! Unfortunately we lost 5. No Red Crystal or Cherry shrimp losses though!!

As they were only moved yesterday im not gonna move them into my tank probably until tomorrow. Dont want to risk lossing them. I have taken some photos however the shop is very light & I only had the camera on my phone so the pics arent good but as soon as there home ill be able to take some better ones hopefully!! The tank there going in has a black background & substrate so they should look great!!

Anyways heres some pics

Hi jkc - though those pics are a bit blurry, they look like some really good grade shrimp there (I'm ultra jealouse ).

Here are some of those links !

Grading (scroll down for prices )
Another good grading link.
CRS - Care and breeding
Some general info and more grading

You're not by any chance popping down to London to bring some down for me ?
I probably have some more links on my other pc (too many pc's !) and will let you know if I find more.
Good luck with them

Ps: I found mine were always around the filter (in the shop too), so you might want to make sure it's indeed safe for them.

Thanks for that Bloo. Ill have a read through the links now!!

I put a stocking around the filter this evening and it seems to work fine so hopefully shoouldnt have a problem there!!

Where abouts in London are you?? I often visit a friend in crawley (about 30mins from me) which is near J7 on the M25. If your really after some I could meet you some time?

I will be looking at the best way to send them as I know already there's quite a few people interested in them but I can understand why you may be a little wary of them being sent.


Regards

James

That's a very kind offer James - and I'd certainly love to take you up on it, but seeing as I've already lost 6 for reasons unknown and unexplained to me, I'd like to hear how you do with them first and perhaps try and understand why they didn't survive in my mature rock stable tank
It's not even like I had a mass death - it was more or less a case of one death a week or so. Never even had any disease or illness in the tank.

I'm near Richmond (Surrey borders) but sadly I have no car. Crawley isn't that far at all though and I can easily reach by train

Look forward to some more pics in time.

Well the offers always there Bloo. I think ill start a Journal as its a new planted tank, keep your eye's on it for progress reports. Hopefully ill not lose any, but we'll see how it goes!!

There's a whole section on APC about shrimps, im not on there much so didnt realise, been doing lots of reading so hopefully ill be successfull in breeding them! Fingers crossed!!

Cant wait to get them home!!

Ill get some better pics asap

Regards

James

Here's another link (UK site).

Shrimp Crabs & Crayfish

This has some info on CRS breeding. Most of the stuff I've seen says they are fairly easy to breed ... If that's so then how come they are so hard to find !

I've already got some Amano shrimp and 1 Bamboo Fan shrimp (I lost one ), once my 240L tank is established I'm looking to include a Cameroon Armoured shrimp, but at 6" fully grown they're only really suitable for that tank. (have a look at the pics under 'fan shrimp' on that link)

Hopefully we can sort out delivery of some CRS, even if I need to travel down to London for the day, or get a courier to collect/deliver !


Al

From what Ive read so far CRS were first started from three shrimp that were found in thousands!! Ok that doesnt really answer why they havent found there way into the UK as from what I have read so far on APC they do seem reasonably easy to breed. There are pics of one guys tank on APC where he reckons he has around 400 in one tank.

The guy at the wholesalers though that showed us around did say that he had spotted them on one of his trips abroad and has been working on getting them imported for a while. Hence why they are reasonably expensive for shrimp!! He's not even sure if he will be able to get more over!! For this reason I believe he is attempting to breed them as well in the dedicated breeding room!! About 100 tanks lucky sod!!

After doing some reasrch on them last night I cant wait to get them home and study them in detail!! Starting to wonder what grade they are. I cant believe some of the prices I have seen on the links Bloo provided!!

Wow, just been looking through all of Bloo's links and they look so good compared to any of the shrimps I have seen at LFS's

WMD