Red Cherry Shrimp...Anything I should know?

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Destroyer551

Gambusia
MFK Member
Mar 19, 2009
548
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Orlando, Florida
Hey all, after pondering about the idea of breeding rcs for the past year. I finally figured, what the heck. And bought my first batch off aquabid. I just emailed the dude, so technically I haven't purchased them yet. But they should ship next Monday, or if I'm lucky, today. I plan to put them in my 10 gallon. I've had it setup for about 5 weeks now. There's some driftwood, a rock, broken pieces of terracota pots, and a small but fast growing bunch of floating anacharis. I have a HOB filter on, but with a sponge rubberbanned to the filter intake. A few rosey reds have been in the tank. Everything checks out, but my water is a bit hard. (8.2) Mostly cause I live in Florida, but I'm hoping the driftwood will bring it down. The foods I plan to feed them: Hikari Algae Wafers-Tetramin Tropical Fish Flakes-Frozen brine-various blanched veggies-Sinking African cichlid pellets-Shrimp pellets. Is all that good? I just need several opinions/experiences other people have had with breeding rcs. I plan to breed them for fun and just to make a few bucks. Maybe feeders too. Thanks, Jon.

P.S. I'm getting 20+, would that be enough? How long until the colony produces shrimp every few days?
 
Seems you got everything down. Tank set up sounds good, food sounds good. PH is kinda high but I dont think too much. Its gonna take them awhile to breed. They will need time to settle. Once settled, they should start. You will see females with yellow on their back, this means they are producing eggs and ready to mate. Soon after you will see eggs hanging on the tail. It will take about 20 days for them to hatch, sometimes sooner. 10-20 babies each batch is average. You gotta be a little patient in the beginning. But once it starts you will have shrimp producing like crazy. Try not to disturb them too much in the beginning. Let them get a good population going and then you should have a sustainable amount. I started with around 30, took me around 2 months to start seeing breeding behavior.

I ended up getting aorund 100 of them, and then I would thin them out. I always kept like 50-60 of them to keep the production going good. The more there is the faster the losses are replenished. I wound up with around 30 or so abut a month ago. SOme died off, and I had fed like 30 of them to my fish. But a month later and they are breeding crazy. Tons of females with eggs and tons more are saddled. The thing is, if you feed the shrimp well, dont disturb them too much, they are happy, it will be breeding galore. It just needs that time to kick off, shrimp need to be settled and happy.
 
Maybe i didn't read your post correctly, but i didn't notice you mention anything about having a substrate for them? Coz when i was breeding them, i used special soil used for both Plants and Shrimp... since, just before they lay their eggs, they do seem to like to bury themselves...

Otherwise, it seems you have all your bases covered and given enough time they should breed like mad... oh btw, you may want to consider giving them foods high in calcium as well so that it helps them with shedding their shells...

Oh and lastly, when you finally put your Shrimp in, you may want to consider removing your fish, otherwise, they may end up eating all the young shrimp as they are born...
 
Yeah keep no fish with them, not even guppies. Snails are ok, some other species of shrimp are ok too. Ive used sand with my shrimp, I never observed them burying themselves though.
 
Your Ph may be an issue.. or may not.. mine did fine until I decided to feed them Hikari Carnivour pellets... (aka mini massivore) Copper Sulfate is a killer!... I'm not 100% sure if this is what killed mine, but after feeding the tank for about a week w/ these. They all started to drop over dead. I had changed nothing else in the tank. So just beware, more often you find it in meds, I didn't even think to check the food container for it.

They are fun and interesting gems, and I started out w/ 6... and ended up w/ well over 30 dead shrimp in a week. lesson learned. Hopefully one you won't have to make :D
 
The PH in my RCS tank is around 6.5. Fairly hard water and I use ADA Aquasoil as my substrate. Just have lots of moss and they just LOVE to pick at algae off of the side of the glass.

One of the most important things for shrimp is to acclimate them extremely SLOW. I take 1-2 hours to acclimate all of my new shrimp.
This is very important.

Steve
 
I'd go with a darker substrate so they will show their best coloration. The lighter the substrate the lighter the color of the shrimp. I's stay away from feeding them flake foods and go with something like the Hikari micro pellets instead. The number one killer of shrimps is overfeeding. So go really slow with the feedings and skip at least one day a week. I usually feed my shrimps every other day or so.
 
I'm not sure if I can get a darker substrate. But I'll try. I don't mind them no being their best color, but I don't want them ugly. They should arive on Tuesday, the seller only lives 4-5 hours away from me.
 
Bubbles2112;3672849; said:
I'd go with a darker substrate so they will show their best coloration. The lighter the substrate the lighter the color of the shrimp. I's stay away from feeding them flake foods and go with something like the Hikari micro pellets instead. The number one killer of shrimps is overfeeding. So go really slow with the feedings and skip at least one day a week. I usually feed my shrimps every other day or so.
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Very good advice.

I feed all of my shrimp. Morusa shrimp food, Ken's Premium Vegetable Sticks with Calium, and flakes once in a while. I would say that the Ken's food is their favorite. but they are not too picky.
Feed no more than once a day.

Steve
 
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