Orange Eyed Blue Tiger Shrimp Blog (OEBT)

*BUYER BEWARE*

The Shrimp arrived quickly and professionally packaged; however this was obviously a cull of unwanted shrimp and not a random mix of shrimp and didn’t resemble the shrimp in the auction photos at all.I will say the general color grade of the shrimp was rather low, judging the shrimp after 36 hours acclimation to near perfect water parameters based on the scale provided HERE 1 is Dark Blue, 1 is Semi Dark Blue, 2 are  blonde, 6 are lighter than light blue. Update the Shrimp didn’t color up more than the initial picture.

Link to the Auction: http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/closed.cgi?view_closed_item&fwinverts1329620272

Photo of the actual shrimp

New arrival OEBT shrimp

My biggest problem with this seller is that instead of admitting they sent a cull of unwanted shrimp, they insisted that it was shipping stress and then when that didn’t pan out said I needed darker substrate. While I sit there looking at my awesome shrimp from aquaticacafe that are a deep dark blue on the same substrate as the cull sent by this seller. For a reference here are two of the shrimp from AquaticaCafe and two from Wicca. I ended up taking the 2 blonde and the 4 lightest blue males and moving them to my community tank and plan on letting them “mingle” with my established Tiger colony as an experiment and the rest are in my OEBT tank(turns out was a bad idea). I didn’t notice at the time but you can see a slight cloudiness in the shrimp sent by Wicca as well, a sign of a bacterial infection (that has since infected part of my native populations in 2 tanks)

Top were from AC and the bottom from Wicca25

To add further proof to my claims of infection and coloration here are two posts made by Wicca(27) on plantedtank. This is in a thread about her own losses to what I attribute to a bacterial infection where she claims that she cannot tell because all of her shrimp are deep blue/almost black oh and they are dying.

I used screenshots to prevent future edits (click to enlarge)

*Update* I have requested that the seller refund part of my money to help pay for the cost of treating my 2 tanks and cover some of the lost shrimp and have not heard back from the seller.

*Update 2* The seller refuses to even acknowledge that she could be the source of the infection, and have refused to refund any money. Seller has not disputed the fact that she sent me a cull of low grade shrimp despite what was pictured in her auction. Seller asked me to post a link the the above mentioned thread, I have no desire to do so, it is worth noting that the seller changed her claim of an infection to a claim of a contaminated drainage/fill hose after I mentioned that the shrimp she sent me were showing signs of bacterial infection.

*Final Update* – Almost all my tiger shrimp in 2 tanks were killed. 23 OEBT and almost 40 Tigers/Super tigers. Very few of my other shrimp were effected.

Final thoughts

I will not do business with this seller again and suggest you take great caution before purchasing from this person. Honestly I don’t mind being sent a cull of shrimp (even if it was deceptive), I don’t mind that they happened to have an infection, my problem with this seller is that they consistently told blatant lies to try and cover their ass instead of owning up and working to make the customer happy or at least giving me a chance to fight off the infection. The seller stated they don’t care about making money(while refusing a partial refund) and this was just a hobby so they didn’t care about negative reviews and loss of profits. This translates to me as the seller does not care about her customers and only sells things to further fund her hobby at the expense of others.