African Giant Filter Shrimp

[sammydee]

Hi, I saw one of these at my LFS yesterday and thought "ooh that looks interesting" so I bought it.

I love the way it's little hands scoop food into it's mouth, but I have since discovered that it is extremely rare in this country and I was quite lucky to have found one. It is much larger than it's cousin, the see-through bamboo shrimp.

This is the more common bamboo shrimp

Here is the larger african shrimp

Now that I have found out it is quite rare, I'm not sure what to do. Apparently it needs a special tank to itself to really thrive, and needs to feed off fryfood or similar in the water. However, it seems to have found itself a little niche under the filter where a lot of detritus gets sucked up, so I will try feeding different things to it. Perhaps egg yolk would do, as it breaks up into hundreds of tiny cloudy fragments in the water?

Any ideas?

 

[cometcattle]

I'd feed it some daphnia.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Not too rare at all we have been stocking these at work for months and do fine on crushed flake on what the fish leave.

many have moulted in the tanks.

at there moment ther ein with parrot fish and doing fine.

 

[keane]

He is a beast!!!

looks like a cross between a lobster and a tarantula!!!

steve

 

[red-devil0602]

I've got 2 of these in my catfish tank and they love it, they hide inside the tree trunk, i feed them crushed flake. i have heard that they are rare but our lfs has got loads of them in

 

[sammydee]

Well he is now hiding beside the flower pot (not in it, strangely) and isn't feeding and just generally looks a bit miserable. i tried putting some crushed food near him but he isn't eating it.

Maybe I should just wait for him to settle in?

 

[sammydee]

Hey he's gone into the flowerpot and is feeding now. I got some pics of the little guy:

That's him eating. Then he saw me and darted into the flowerpot. Maybe he's camera shy

Isn't he cool?

Sam

 

[Million]

He's awesome! I have to make a rock stack for mine, I think he's camera shy too - Mine's a lot darker blue, they're seriously cool looking beasties

 

[raptorrex]

i love these guys, though space means i dont keep any, they are high on the list thought.

they tend to do will in heavily planted tanks, lots of places to hide. as with most inverts the need well filtered and high, ish, O2. they are very vulnerable just after the moult, being nothing more than jelly for a while. not sure, but when i had filter shrimps i crushed the feed so it almost dissolved in the water, and they thrived. they will forage for scraps on the floor, so mixing the method of feeding should ensure it gets enough.

 

[squeakytoy]

Back to the top with you!!!!

With filter feeders, would a UV sterilizer effectively destroy their food supply? Anyone mixed the two yet? Pretty cool looking, but I would hate to starve one, if I can find one.

 

[Wolfenrook]

Like all fan shrimp, they also like a LOT of flow! They do very well in river type tanks because of this. Their favoured feeding technique is to stand directly in front of the outflow from a powerful water pump catching any food as it blows by. This can make target feeding them easier if you give them a perch in front of a filter outlet, flow pump or the like, and then drop some crushed food directly into the flow. In a well matured tank they can usually get a fair bit of food from the water column anyway, in the form of infusoria and the like.

Ade

 

[squeakytoy]

No issues on that front... I have a 77 TALL lol, caps on the tall because its 38" tall, and it has a 300 gph on the sump, a magnum 350 on mechanical (350 gph), and koralia 4 (1200 gph) so water flow is quite present. My question is whether or not the sterilizer (25 watt, 75% overkill for the tank) will romove the primary food source, free floating algae. The tank water looks like drinking water.

 

[Esfa]

http/www.ukshrimp.co.uk/index.php?view=a...t&Itemid=54

here's a great caresheet for them!