I've had a rough time since starting my first tank last June/July. Heater blowing a fuse (three times!) broken air pump, lots of guppy fry born, some losses, battle with ich and later with worms, guppy fry getting sucked into canister filter (but most surviving!), filter output flooding my floor and draining half my tank... it's been a steep and often stressful learning curve.
Long post ahead, I'm sorry. I'd like to keep a record of my shrimp keeping progress. Re-visited my tank logs to remind myself how long it took to finally get a shrimp colony established.
My main tank is a 15 gal guppy/oto community tank, heavily planted. 20-25% water change every 10-14 days, has a small canister filter and a double sponge filter that has bio-media compartments. Nine adult guppies, several babies which get moved to a grow out tank periodically, and seven otocinclus.
8th July 2019: First fish added after a seeded, planted cycle. Heavily planted because I knew I'd want shrimp. I let the tank establish for a while and kept adding new plants now and then.
October 3rd, 2019. First batch of shrimp. Three red cherries, two blue diamonds. I lost one by the next day, but the others seemed to be doing okay, but lost more sporadically, without knowing why.
2nd of January 2020: I only had one shrimp left, a blue male.
January 9th 2020: I got a batch of five red cherry shrimp. I felt like I was failing at shrimp keeping, and questioned whether I should get more, but I felt bad for the lone remaining blue boy, and wanted to give him some company, and give it another try. Lost one by the next day, others survived for months, but no breeding, then would lose one now and again, for unknown reasons, again. They didn't die off all at once, would just lose one one month, then another a month later sort of thing.
1st Feb 2020: One big female looked berried to me, but never saw any babies.
18th Feb 2020: That last blue shrimp died, some red cherries remaining.
16th March 2020: Lost another red cherry, still had two large (female?) and two smaller, less red (males?) red cherries. No signs of berrying or babies.
3rd May 2020: I rescaped the tank a little, and could only find one large and one smaller red cherry shrimp. Looked like a big female and a male. Still no breeding, so I decided I wasn't knowledgeable enough for shrimp keeping yet, and that I wouldn't get any more until I'd figured out why my tank wasn't working for them.
Success!!!
29th May 2020- Stopped breathing when I looked in the tank... a small red shrimp! Not one of the adult pair, I couldn't believe it! Spent so long hunting for more, final count was five young shrimp, plus the two parents. Was over the moon that I finally had babies, eight months after I first added shrimp! Weekly gravel vac/water change becomes even more challenging, with careful syphoning into white buckets and checking for baby shrimp to rescue before dumping the water. Luckily, saving guppy fry from water changes has trained me well, but baby shrimp are even more challenging to avoid and to spot in the bucket!
15th June 2020: Shrimp explosion! Relatively. Counted around 12 young shrimp, plus the parents. Did they just colour up enough/get big enough to come out of hiding, for me to be able to spot them? 14 shrimp is a pretty small colony, but it seemed as though there were shrimp everywhere, when compared to only ever having 4-5 in there before!
27th and 28th of June 2020: Huge re-scape. I wanted to add some more substrate, and move all of the plants, since I had some large plants at the front, smaller plants at the back, and the hornwort and duckweed was taking over the tank. I'd delayed it since finding the baby shrimp, but now they were big enough to avoid, and spot easily in the bucket if they did get sucked up while cleaning the gravel. Set aside two days to move all of the plants to another cycled tank, using the same water from main tank. Deep cleaned the gravel over those two days, moving hiding decor and floating plants to one side of the tank and cleaning the other side one day, then moving them to do the other side the next day.
Slowly added and mixed in more gravel, one small handful at a time, gently nudging shrimp and guppies away from the spot I was working on. Put plants back in, slightly better arranged.
Had a surprise though once I'd removed all of the plants and began gravel vac-ing - tiny, almost completely see through baby shrimp everywhere!! Made the rescape super challenging! Had to carefully syphon into white buckets, nudging shrimp away gently with the syphon, then carefully sifting and netting the removed water and rescuing shrimp from the buckets and putting them back in the tank. They were almost invisible among the mulm too, so had to let things settle and look for movement, rescue, then stir, pour some into a different bucket, wait for that settle, look for movement... the whole process took hours longer than it would have without those tiny shrimp, but I didn't care at all, was so delighted that I finally had lots of babies!
July 2020: Shrimp have put on a lot of growth, some seem to be fully grown, or close to it. Can see saddles and the rounded back end that females have on some of them. Hard to know the number since the tank is so heavily planted, but I can usually count 30 or so without searching too hard, so I think there are between 40-50 shrimp in there now. All from that single large female I had left!
23rd July 2020: I found that big momma original female dead this morning. Far more gutted over losing a shrimp than I ever knew I could be. Looks as though she had some trouble moulting perhaps, can see a line around the mid-section where the moult usually splits. Actually bought to tears when I found her, and will bury her in the garden. I'm very grateful to her though, she gave me my first colony, and I think her daughters will be breeding very soon.
One of her daughters, taken this morning.
Not the clearest photo, sorry, but all the red bits you can see in the gravel are shrimp.
Pic of main tank, taken yesterday, 22/07/20
Long post ahead, I'm sorry. I'd like to keep a record of my shrimp keeping progress. Re-visited my tank logs to remind myself how long it took to finally get a shrimp colony established.
My main tank is a 15 gal guppy/oto community tank, heavily planted. 20-25% water change every 10-14 days, has a small canister filter and a double sponge filter that has bio-media compartments. Nine adult guppies, several babies which get moved to a grow out tank periodically, and seven otocinclus.
8th July 2019: First fish added after a seeded, planted cycle. Heavily planted because I knew I'd want shrimp. I let the tank establish for a while and kept adding new plants now and then.
October 3rd, 2019. First batch of shrimp. Three red cherries, two blue diamonds. I lost one by the next day, but the others seemed to be doing okay, but lost more sporadically, without knowing why.
2nd of January 2020: I only had one shrimp left, a blue male.
January 9th 2020: I got a batch of five red cherry shrimp. I felt like I was failing at shrimp keeping, and questioned whether I should get more, but I felt bad for the lone remaining blue boy, and wanted to give him some company, and give it another try. Lost one by the next day, others survived for months, but no breeding, then would lose one now and again, for unknown reasons, again. They didn't die off all at once, would just lose one one month, then another a month later sort of thing.
1st Feb 2020: One big female looked berried to me, but never saw any babies.
18th Feb 2020: That last blue shrimp died, some red cherries remaining.
16th March 2020: Lost another red cherry, still had two large (female?) and two smaller, less red (males?) red cherries. No signs of berrying or babies.
3rd May 2020: I rescaped the tank a little, and could only find one large and one smaller red cherry shrimp. Looked like a big female and a male. Still no breeding, so I decided I wasn't knowledgeable enough for shrimp keeping yet, and that I wouldn't get any more until I'd figured out why my tank wasn't working for them.
Success!!!
29th May 2020- Stopped breathing when I looked in the tank... a small red shrimp! Not one of the adult pair, I couldn't believe it! Spent so long hunting for more, final count was five young shrimp, plus the two parents. Was over the moon that I finally had babies, eight months after I first added shrimp! Weekly gravel vac/water change becomes even more challenging, with careful syphoning into white buckets and checking for baby shrimp to rescue before dumping the water. Luckily, saving guppy fry from water changes has trained me well, but baby shrimp are even more challenging to avoid and to spot in the bucket!
15th June 2020: Shrimp explosion! Relatively. Counted around 12 young shrimp, plus the parents. Did they just colour up enough/get big enough to come out of hiding, for me to be able to spot them? 14 shrimp is a pretty small colony, but it seemed as though there were shrimp everywhere, when compared to only ever having 4-5 in there before!
27th and 28th of June 2020: Huge re-scape. I wanted to add some more substrate, and move all of the plants, since I had some large plants at the front, smaller plants at the back, and the hornwort and duckweed was taking over the tank. I'd delayed it since finding the baby shrimp, but now they were big enough to avoid, and spot easily in the bucket if they did get sucked up while cleaning the gravel. Set aside two days to move all of the plants to another cycled tank, using the same water from main tank. Deep cleaned the gravel over those two days, moving hiding decor and floating plants to one side of the tank and cleaning the other side one day, then moving them to do the other side the next day.
Slowly added and mixed in more gravel, one small handful at a time, gently nudging shrimp and guppies away from the spot I was working on. Put plants back in, slightly better arranged.
Had a surprise though once I'd removed all of the plants and began gravel vac-ing - tiny, almost completely see through baby shrimp everywhere!! Made the rescape super challenging! Had to carefully syphon into white buckets, nudging shrimp away gently with the syphon, then carefully sifting and netting the removed water and rescuing shrimp from the buckets and putting them back in the tank. They were almost invisible among the mulm too, so had to let things settle and look for movement, rescue, then stir, pour some into a different bucket, wait for that settle, look for movement... the whole process took hours longer than it would have without those tiny shrimp, but I didn't care at all, was so delighted that I finally had lots of babies!
July 2020: Shrimp have put on a lot of growth, some seem to be fully grown, or close to it. Can see saddles and the rounded back end that females have on some of them. Hard to know the number since the tank is so heavily planted, but I can usually count 30 or so without searching too hard, so I think there are between 40-50 shrimp in there now. All from that single large female I had left!
23rd July 2020: I found that big momma original female dead this morning. Far more gutted over losing a shrimp than I ever knew I could be. Looks as though she had some trouble moulting perhaps, can see a line around the mid-section where the moult usually splits. Actually bought to tears when I found her, and will bury her in the garden. I'm very grateful to her though, she gave me my first colony, and I think her daughters will be breeding very soon.
One of her daughters, taken this morning.
Not the clearest photo, sorry, but all the red bits you can see in the gravel are shrimp.
Get a 30 gallon tank, get 3 mollies and 3 swordtails and I promise you hours of enjoying them and you could get corydoras aeneus too 
