Netting (quick) fish in established (planted) systems

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danotaylor said:
Oh no…fresh back to the community and already showing as another tosser who thinks someone with a different opinion is arguing…what has the world become.

I too use paragraph breaks when I write. Nothing to do with dramatic pauses,IMNAO (in my non-argumentative opinion) it’s simply easier to read the small print on a hand held device for those who need glasses 🤓
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You know this place has certainly had its loud mouths come and go over the years. Welcome to the club.
 
TheWolfman said:
You know this place has certainly had its loud mouths come and go over the years. Welcome to the club.
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People like you who send rude and snarky replies are the reason they go. I’ll decline your invitation to the club El Presidente
 
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Did I miss the fun?

How long does it take for cherries to start to loose their colour? I’ve only got yellows and they seem as bright as ever. I need to start selling them because they have started cannibalising, even eating snails.
 
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RyanScanner said:
Did I miss the fun?

How long does it take for cherries to start to loose their colour? I’ve only got yellows and they seem as bright as ever. I need to start selling them because they have started cannibalising, even eating snails.
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It's not that your existing individual shrimp lose colour, I've never had that happen. It's the succeeding generations that start to contain more individuals that are reverting to their natural brown/green/grey dull colouration, and the problem gets worse quickly once it gets going. To prevent it you need to remove any new individuals that don't display the nice bright red or yellow or whatever you want. Ideally you want to cull them before they mature and pass on their less-attractive colouration to succeeding generations.

If it sounds like a PITA, well...it kinda is, but if you stay on top of it it's not too bad. My big colony really got going in a heavily planted 120-gallon tank that was loaded with moss, Guppy Grass and Hornwort, and contained only small fish. I would occasionally see one of the fish catch and eat a shrimp, but that casual predation didn't make a dent in the population. There were so many shrimp that when I collected the culls using a half-inch clear rigid tube and siphon tube, leading to a 5-gallon bucket on the floor, I couldn't help but suck up some nice red ones as well. Then when you're done, it's easy to net out the nice ones and return them to the tank, but it's certainly not necessary. A thriving colony can easily handle those small losses.

It seemed to take at least a year or two before the natural-colour ones started to show up in a newly set-up colony.
 
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Cheers jjohnwm jjohnwm I might have a look next WC. I can only cull adults because the males are always duller.

Funny thing about the tank is that I put a pinch of live black worms and now it’s infested

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RyanScanner RyanScanner & jjohnwm jjohnwm I'm still on the F0 generation from the breeder - I expect they were just too small for me to be disappointed by the colour rather than having dulled-down as they grew :) ​

Not seen any pups yet, they may be tiny-tiny in the decoration (or gobbled by the tetras...)​

 
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It would seem that I'm the only PhD'd lifelong (45yrs or so) practitioner of the aquarium-arts unable to keep a colony of basic shrimp...
6 low-quality blue shrimp (outbred?), eggs indicators if not eggs present repeatedly, habitat, plants, good water etc etc etc. Happy, eating.
One shrimp visible last week, not finding anybody now. I kind'a suck at this, apparently :)

I'll tear the system down & try again next time the breeder's selling.
 
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Why tear down? IMHO, shrimp need a quiet, established, long-term peaceful environment, as little disturbance as possible. And they need time; this experiment is only, what, a couple months old?

The first time I tried shrimp, plain ol' Cherry Reds, I bought 6 and introduced them into a tank that had been operating for years and was crammed with Java Moss, Guppy Grass, Hornwort, Duckweed. They disappeared and I didn't see one for many weeks. Decided shrimp weren't for me.

One day, I spotted one of the original adults, and I was over the moon. Then, more weeks later, I realized I was looking at a tiny red baby shrimp in the moss. I peered closer; yep, and there was another one over here, and a couple over there, and a bunch in that corner, and...they were all over the place. A year later, that tank was crawling with hundreds of shrimp of all sizes, and for several years I was able to harvest at least 200-300 every couple months and found a ready market for them. I also had to start culling as more and more brownish throwbacks started to appear. They sneakily start to take over, and they are much tougher to see than the red ones.

If you must have fish in there with them, be aware that even a Neon Tetra or other teeny-tiny fish is a Tyrannosaur-ish predator to these little shrimplets. And a planted tank is nice, but for maximum shrimpability, you want a jammed-solid-with-moss, barely-room-to-swim PLANTED tank. Lots of leaf litter on the bottom, too.

Patience, Grasshopper...they will come...:)
 
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