How do you slow down cherry shrimps breeding ?

MaloK

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Or I could say, help me fix my shrimp tank !!! While I study my stuff, I'm still a newbie regarding any kind of shrimp tank only keeping.

I have a 5 gallons aquarium with mixed cherry shrimps.

My problem is the following, they are breeding so much that I now have more than 300 and babies are coming out all the time and still multiple berried shrimps roaming at the moment.

In the beginning I tough that the adults could be a problem competing with the babies for food. But in reality it's the complete inverse that is happening. Very few adults are able to make it trough, because of all the babies that are literally stealing all the food from their mouth.

I had a total explosion of seed shrimps in the tank lately and I also fear they could have depleted the tank of oxygen at some point. But I always fished them out to near extinction. So once again I did.

At least a third of the cherry shrimps died and where consumed by their piers. I stopped feeding them for all that period. Also note that that the water parameter didn't flinch in any way the last 5 months.

Another observation, all the shrimps that died where the biggest and oldest. only 4 made it and and more than a hundred of teen and babies.

I have some doubt that something came in a water change because the timing was too good. And other problems showed up in other tanks. That's an unknown since the water change done on the shrimp tank was less than 25%,, but the other tank that had a much larger water change was wiped out. Of fear I replaced a large part of the shrimp tank water with demineralized bottled water that I fixed before.

But still the current conjecture in the shrimp tank let presage it is building another baby explosion in the next month.

I lowered the water temperature to 70° in the last month, but there is not much of impact on their activities..

Anything else I can check / do / not do ?

I'm open to any suggestions as long as it doesn't imply chemical castration... Loll.
 
Cull your population based on size or color. Place the culled shrimp in one of your fish tanks.
 
Yeah, you're probably right... But I have no tanks with fish at the moment... One is coming soon, but it need a lot of work.

I love mutts, they all have personal patterns and you can recognize them all the time...

I'm thinking to start to sell berried shrimps for 2 bucks... I never thought they would be more prolific than guppies.

I'm pretty sure that, if I upgrade the tank... It will upgrade the problem...
 
I assume / hope after a couple iterations of these waves... Things will settle down.

For the moment I hired a 5 member Rowdy crew and will be insured water quality is never a factor anymore.

So... If it's me that messes up, I wont be able to blame it on the water.
 
Reduce the temperature and reduce the food going into the tank to slow their breeding.

See if a shop will swap any of your shrimp for plants or fish food.
 
Reduce the temperature and reduce the food going into the tank to slow their breeding.

See if a shop will swap any of your shrimp for plants or fish food.

I already lowered the temperature, it now sits around 70°, same as the room temp.

At the moment I feed them when they start an unstoppable foraging frenzy, I feed them slowly until they calm down (habitually takes a couple hours). after that it takes 2-3 days before another episode starts. Besides that I only dose Bacter AE every other day.

Will ask LFS if they want to trade or buy the overflow.
 
Yeah, you're probably right... But I have no tanks with fish at the moment... One is coming soon, but it need a lot of work.

I love mutts, they all have personal patterns and you can recognize them all the time...

I'm thinking to start to sell berried shrimps for 2 bucks... I never thought they would be more prolific than guppies.

I'm pretty sure that, if I upgrade the tank... It will upgrade the problem...
My first solution: give me some! The one time I had cherry shrimp, they never bred once. But all joking aside, I agree with the above replies: lower the temps to the mid-60s to 70°F, cut back on feedings, and sell some of your healthy adults. While $2 per shrimp sounds amazing from a consumer perspective, your competitors are going for about $3-6 per shrimp. I personally would go for $4 per shrimp and call it a day. People should buy (that price is much lower than it is in my area—even for low-grade shrimp), and you can offer "discounts" on mutts ($2-2.50 per shrimp?) to appease your customers.
 
Over here Pet Stores run easily 120$ a dozen for cherry shrimps that are not all really in top shape. loll. There where no parasites or illness present, still they where looking like it's the third time they have been shocked and tired of it.

But afterward the babies born in the tank are top shape. I'm not sure exactly what caused the step back in the colony... But I seriously doubt something happened with the water.

:) I received my Ro/Di unit and installed it yesterday and gave it a test run... It will eliminate the basic water chemistry factor for good.

My mini water treatment plant is starting to be functional.

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Next Week I'm going to do a little trip to Mosti Mondiale and get a larger container around 15-20 gallons, they have all sorts of food grade containers and plumbing... I will install an overflow on the holding tank, in case I forget to shut it off... And a faucet for easy drawing of water.

It will be installed on a 2 inch blue Styrofoam and have complete removable insulation all sides and top. to be able to do complete cleanup and minimize energy cost as much as possible, it get pretty cold in winter there...

The tank will have aeration from an air pump, a 100 watt heater and a UV light that will run 3 hours a day to maintain perfect sanity.

Will also get some quick connect for the water inlet. So I can still use the sink for cleaning etc...

Soooooo.... That's the project... I'm pretty happy with my installation as it evolve.

I'm starting this week to slowly replace the water of my 3 tanks for 100% pure re-mineralized water.

And see how that goes.
 
If you still having the breeding problem with shrimp put less hours of light for slow their reproductive activity.
Light affect the reproductive activity on shrimps, 12 + = more reproduction activity.
6 to 5= less reproduction activity.
 
Mmmmmm, that is interesting.

Things settled down since, the migration to RO/DI and other events (Water poisoning and Tank smashed), helped a lot to keep the colony under control. Loll

42 days after the tanks was crash rebuilt, The colony is back to 100-120 shrimps. But everything is different... The general mood of the tank is a lot more relaxed than before. I also slowed down on baby food and started to turn down all food in small crumble to feed.

The only thing I changed in lightning is reduced the intensity from 75% to 45% because after the rebuild the plants stepped back a little, and the tank looked too bright.

Things seems good, If I'm able to keep them correctly for a while. I might get to see some becoming adults this time.
 
Great!, I'm sorry for your tank nightmare.
Light reduction helped to reduce your shrimp reproduction then, that's good, shrimps are super cute, glad to read that everything is great, I'm sure your teen will reach maturity 😀.
 
My orange pumpkin neocaridina are out grazing this morning. Breeding like crazy despite sharing the tank with Mollys, platys and endlers.

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