Red Rili Shrimp Sex Identification

[Baccus]

Depending on the type of filter I have had shrimp live quite happily in the filter, crazy creatures

.Best of luck with them, and I hope they throw some rilii's for you

 

[snazy]

The filter is Fluval U2, it hasn't sucked up any fry that I've seen anyway. I've got the U4(1000L/H) version in another tank and I've seen my guppy and platy fry swim by it unaffected even when tiny. They can't go in, because the filter sponges are immediately positioned behind the plastic openings, so generally it's like a sponge filter with the frame being outside.

I was able to count to 7 orange shrimplets in the moss

They look to be around 5mm long.
The sick one is still holding on and behaving fine from what I can see and I haven't removed it yet. Surely he can last a while and infect my others but my heart is not letting me disturb him at the moment. I am trying to get brave enough to do so...

 

[snazy]

I saw little shrimp everywhere. I think the other cherry must have dropped some too. Some are longer than the others. They are even walking on the sand in between the corys not hiding

I hope they don't become snacks. I tried to catch the sick one but he ran and hid in the moss.

Some pictures:

This one is without the zoom and you can see the shrimp molt(white) to the left for size comparison:

 

[snazy]

Well, bad news. I found one of my adult shrimp dead, not the sick one but one of my better looking cherry females. The sick one is actually still alive. I caught it and moved it to my other tank. I checked ammonia and nitrIte and they were bold 0s. There's less than 10ppm nitrAte. I did a 50% water change anyway. Whatever kills them and makes them sick doesn't seem to affect the cory babies.
She was the darker looking cherry female and wasn't berried anymore so she must have held on until giving birth.
By this logic, I would think it could have been something that came from the cherries rather than the rili shrimp. I also can't see the other red cherry anywhere. Hope she isn't dead too and hope some of the shrimplets survive this ordeal

I refrigerated her and I'll be using the microscope this evening to see if I can identify something

Edit: She was as red as when she was alive too if it matters.

 

[snazy]

The other cherry female appeared. She's standing on a leaf not doing much, although the 2 males left are very active. I know the dead female was alive yesterday for sure and I looked at her and remember I thought the same, she wasn't doing the usual thing with the front "paws" .
The sick one is pacing all around the other tank, wondering how much he will last.

 

[Baccus]

Sorry to hear that you lost one of your cherry shrimp. As well as being the darkest was she by any chance the largest? She may have died just from old age. They really do live life in the fast lane.
Hope all your other shrimp are doing fine, and that you keep finding more bubs.

 

[snazy]

Both cherry females were adults when I bought them and are/were quite big. I thought of old age, she seemed fine to me and was dark red all the time, but then considering I have another sick shrimp I am not so sure. If she had anything white inside her like the rili shrimp it wouldn't have been visible. Not sure why after carrying babies and giving birth she would die just after that? Maybe something shocked her. The only thing I can think of is I dosed potassium and phosphate the day before but the dose is spread to several times a week so it's never too much at once. I actually started dosing these two particular ones only just before the rili shrimp got sick too, maybe there's something about it? They were fine with easy carbo and micro ferts all along before that.
I was thinking tomorrow to stop all ferts and carbo besides micro ferts daily to see how it goes.

Edit: The baby shrimp are so cute. Every time I feed the corys several jump on the sand and start picking the 0.5mm cory wafers and they start rolling them between their little "paws". Some are more pinkish/orange, some are a bit darker orange/red.

The dead one is still in the fridge and I can't make myself open it up for the microscope

 

[Baccus]

Yes with the darker body any white inside her would be almost impossible to see, my shrimp often drop some of their colour overnight, so maybe you could try checking the shrimp first thing in the morning as soon you turn on the light and check for any unusual colouration then. I am inclined to think the female died of old age, depending upon what is wrong with your ill shrimp, the main documented disease is thought to be spread by the shrimp healthy shrimp eating the deceased sick ones.

The ferts may also have been an issue, perhaps they don't always kill the shrimp out right but weaken the shrimp or allow later bacterial infections to take hold. I am not saying it is the case, its just a possibilty. Really I don't think enough study has been done into the long term health affects of various ferts on shrimp in an aquarium environment. And most information regarding shrimp health is annicdotal ie other shrimp keeping forums and from commercial shrimp farms which are usually pond based and only interested in shrimp for human consumption.

All I can suggest is keep a close eye on your shrimp and if any start to show whitening in their bodies remove them as soon as possible, even if you need to keep a quarrentine type tank just for them. That way you can also watch for how quickly the illness progesses and how soon it kills the shrimp off. Since one of the suspected precursers for shrimp illness is overstocking (which I don't think could have been your issue), I would be extra vigilent of keeping only the most desired shrimp and selling off all excess shrimp as soon as possible.

And yep the shrimplets are cute little things, my females in with my black male cherry have dropped yet more young, I am seeing tiny little new borns swimming about in the tank. Now I am at the hard choice of leaving the original females in with the male or remove them and just let the male start breeding with his own daughters to strengthen the black gene or any other mutation that I have from the experiement.

 

[snazy]

Thanks Baccus. I'll see how it goes. No ferts from today either.

 

[snazy]

The other three adults are accounted for and don't have any white stuff on them. They all jumped for food when I fed the corys, including several mini juvies
The sick one is still alive and active in the other tank, it seems he'll last a while poor thing.

 

[Baccus]

Yeah, I had a sick wild shrimp for a good 3 months or more before it finally died from the illness. By keeping the sick one in a clean maintained tank and supplying good quality food, they can last quite a long time.
The down side of doing that is your tying up a tank to keep alive an ill animal that has no chance of recovery, and can't be used for breeding for fear of making any other shrimp sick. Its a tricky spot.
As long as the seperated shrimp is still feeding fine, active and has all its appendages (some illnesses cause them to not moult properly) then I would keep it alive and study it.
Loved seeing your little shrimplets, I will have to take some more pics of the young from my breeding project.

 

[snazy]

Yes, no chance of recovery but at least I can see how long it will last. It's the only shrimp in the tank so no chance of infecting others, unless he already infected them. So far the rest of them show no signs of this at all and are active and coming for food. The surviving female is not a very red one so she's definately not white inside either. There must have been something, because it's been two weeks about since she dropped babies and she hasn't got berried again. She's got a saddle though.

And some of the little shrimplets actually look way redder than my pink.....sorry red cherry....
I've stopped the carbon and ferts, hope my plants don't go downhill. Most are easy care ones.

 

[Baccus]

With a saddle I would expect her to be berried again just after her next moult.

The ferts you could probably have reduced gradually, so that its not a huge shock to the plants. I find my plants thrive without any extras, in fact some of my plants are just growing like crazy.

 

[snazy]

I wish they could grow without any additives. I'll have to see. I have 2 tanks that are doing fine without anything and one of them is spotless of algae of any kind, has been like that for a year and the plants are nice and green but it wasn't like that in the beginning. I guess they need time to mature well too.
I was reading about Easy Carbo and Excel and this is supposed to be some toxic stuff. An overdose can kill anything and the process of preparing it, is actually dangerous to humans(Tom Barr is involved with Excell and I was reading his comments on a forum about it, but he couldn't obviously disclose all details)

My biggest worry is the grass, the rest is moss, hydrophila, small anubias and cryptocoryne. The moss has grown out of proportion and I can't trim it because of the shrimplets so it needs to slow down And hopefully algae won't overtake after the balance is disturbed.

And thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it.

 

[Baccus]

No worries, its what we are all here for.

I find when I need to thin moss I remove the clump from the main tank, giving it a good swish in the tank to try and get as many shrimp out of it as possible and then put the removed moss into another container of water, leave it and wait for any more shrimplets to wonder out. From there you can fairly easily catch the shrimplets and put them back into their proper tank.

I know many of the grasses do like ferts, intense lighting and added Co2, but I think that is mainly the hairgrasses. I have grown Val in my tanks easily without ferts of Co2. The hydrophilla, anubias and cryptcoryne will all adjust to the lack of added ferts. They may go backward for a bit but they will get used to it.
Algea shouldn't become an issue, but if it does there are quite a few solutions, such as reduced hours of lighting, nerite snails for algea on glass, and even algea eating shrimp like red nosed or amano shrimp are also options for algea that decides to grow on plants. But really algea generally only becomes an issue if there is too much lighting and to much nutrients not being consumed by other plants. I think you will find your current plants will soak up all avaible nutrients and not give algea a chance.
I know you have probably already seen it but just a reminder of how well a plant that usually does like all the extras can grow without them.

And the measurements are in centimetres.