I am still baffled by the shrimp that keep escaping my breeder box. Is there a ninja school for shrimp out there? the top is almost an inch over the water line and yet they still escape.
Anyone out there have any tips or similar experiences
Archive for February, 2012
I have had a few people ask me if my Orange Eye Blue Tigers are for sale, or where they can get their own.
I do have the answers as I have received my shrimp from several reputable sellers who I can recommend. Watch the Vendor Reviews category over the next few days as I will be posting reviews of my experiences with several several sellers as well as contact information. I am waiting to receive confirmation from those vendors to post such information.
Should have updates on vendor recommendations in a day or so.
On a side note, a second OEBT is berried.
This event happened in my community tank, so my OEBT were not effected nor were any of their tiger shrimp cousins. There were 2 causalities however 1 African Dwarf Frog and 1 Black Kuhli Loach. Both were sucked up and mangled by the pump impeller.
In the future I will be certain the sponge filter is firmly attached.
The dead will be buried or burned or flushed…. according to their last wishes. In all seriousness I need to be more careful to prevent such events in the future.
Tags: OEBT, Orange eye blue tiger, Orange Eyed Blue tiger, Breeding OEBT, Eggs, berried, Dwarf Shrimp, Caridina, BTOE, Community Tank
I have made several purchases from Bob’s Tropical Plants (also known as Mgamer20o0 on Aquabid).
I find generally purchasing directly from the site is https://www.bobstropicalplants.com/ ( http://www.bobstropicalplants.com/shop/en/ store website) to be as good of a deal as from aquabid and you don’t have to wait or compete with other bidders to get what you are looking for.
The quality of the livestock and shipping is high end and very competitively priced. I highly recommend the Indian Almond Leaves for any shrimp tank that needs a slow and mild reduction in PH or just wants to improve the general health of their shrimp. I noticed a spike in successful breeding ( berried females) 10 days after introducing the IAL.
I have Some normal tiger shrimp, some Neocaridina “Orange,” and some green shrimp from Bob’s. All seem healthy and happy and some of the bigger ones have turned up berried.
Shipping is pretty standard and he will refund you if your shipping is significantly less than charged.
After the good news of the pregnant female yesterday, comes a dead juvenile male today.
Water parameters have not changed, going to add a degree of neglect to the tank. I suspect that I am trying too hard at this point. I have mild algae growth in the tank so I am going to stop adding my 1 tiny algae tablet a day to the tank for the next 4 days. Also reducing my 15% weekly water change to 5% as my R/O water seems extremely stable.
Wish me luck. I will keep you updated.
Tags: OEBT, Orange eye blue tiger, Orange Eyed Blue tiger, Breeding OEBT, Eggs, berried, Dwarf Shrimp, Caridina, BTOE
Got eggs?
Well actually it is Austin and we have many eggs. Came home from work and found my first pregnant female OEBT. Took a photo. Enjoy.
update:
So that is 12 days since she was introduced into my tank, I will keep you updated on the pregnancy as it progresses. This particular shrimp had been missing on I could only see her eyes most of the time since that initial introduction, I do believe that I saw her mate on the initial introduction to the tank, Perhaps hiding after mating is typical of these species.
We are at the 2 week mark give or take, the OEBT are growing nicely.
Water conditions maintain constant, and shrimp count is holding steady(I think). It is hard to know because the shrimp like to disappear into cracks, dark spots and anywhere out of site. I think I have as many as 10 OEBT in the tank but counting that at any given moment is near impossible
I estimate these guys will be ready to breed in 2-3 more weeks.
Pictures to come.
I tire of the day by day history, let us get to the good part.
My 25 gallon tank is now full of cycled tea colored water and a variety of plants. The water is reverse osmosis and I maintain a ph of about 6.8. The color is from a large piece of mopani (boiled for 4 hours and 8 water changes) and Indian almond leaves
I started with 12, including 2 very young (about 1/8th inch) 2 weeks ago. 2 have died from unknown causes. I have not seen the very small ones in about 5 days but I think they are probably still alive somewhere. They are all very dark and like to hide on the sponge filters or in the mopani wood.
The water is tested daily and the ph is very stable, the nitrite, nitrate and ammonia levels are all non existent.
They share their tank with two oto cats, and 8 neocaridina heteropoda var. orange (ie orange “cherry” shrimp).
I added the IAL (Indian Almond Leaves) 4 days ago and since then all the shrimp have been far more active and tend to hang around the leaves as well now.
My 55 gallon tank which has normal tigers (with otos, black kuhli loaches, guppies and African dwarf frogs) has 2 female normal tigers who are close to hatching a batch of young) I plan on moving them to my Blue Tiger tank after the hatch (they have been netted off in the main tank) after the hatch until they are berried again. At which point I will return them to my 55 gallon. I hope that I can eventually get all of my Female tigers pregnant by blue tigers so I can get the blue tiger gene into my tiger population and hopefully in a few generations I can be pulling blue tigers from my tiger tank on a regular basis. This is particularly handy because the tigers in the 55 gallon tank have more competition and are generally extremely healthy and hardy by the time they reach breeding age. (the weaker ones tend to disappear, it is rare but it does happen).
I may be buying a second batch of OEBTs today, I will keep you updated.
Well I found someone selling a CO2 system some high quality lighting and the R/O system I wanted, that is the good news.
The bad news they were also selling the rest of there 1600 investment into a hydroponics system.
Yes pot-heads get some mighty big ideas, and I have to hand it to this guy, he got as far as actually buying the equipment, most of them stop at “hey man I have a great idea, lets grow our own.”
Most of them, this seller included never actually realize their “dreams” and the side effect of apathy and lack of motivation set in and nothing gets done. Marijuana man it turns out wanted full retail for his items, so I kept looking.
The next day I found a more reputable guy selling a used 4 stage system with a band new set of filters for only 70 dollars.
Score!
No more dead shrimp (hopefully)
I have ordered online or purchased locally a variety of plants, shrimp and some Otocinclus for the 25 and 55 gallon tanks.
The 25 gallon is lightly planted with has 15 tiger shrimp (Caridina cantonensis sp. “Tiger” http://www.planetinverts.com/Tiger%20Shrimp.html) 1 mystery snail, and 2 Otocinclus cats and 5 green shrimp.
The 55 is moderately planted and has 8 Black Kuhli Loaches, 1 Mystery Snail, 5 Green Shrimp, 3 Otos, 6 guppies, 6 African Dwarf Frogs, and 5 tiger shrimp. Also in this tank are 2 fry nets which I am using to keep the berried shrimp and more rapidly grow a few different plants.
I wake up in the morning and the 25 gallon has almost completely crashed. All but 3 tigers and 2 greens were dead. I tranferd the survivors to the 55 gallon tank, but 3 more died in the next 24 hours.
It took much investigating but it turns out the reason for the mass deaths was related to the water hardness and the natural ph buffering of the water in the area, Since the shrimp prefer a pH around 6.8 I was slowly bringing my water down to 6.8. When I had finally reached that point after several days of regular dosing I was excited, overnight the pH went from 6.8 to 8.2 and I believe that is what cause the shrimp to die.
Lesson Learned, time to find an R/O device.
Jason Wechsler
Orange Eyed Blue Tiger Shrimp Blog (OEBT) 