I had wanted to keep the (in)famous crystal red shrimp for almost 7 months but every time I reached the tipping point in favour of their purchase, I would shirk away because of their exorbitant (borderline ludicrous) price tags. At my favourite local fish store, SS grade Crystal Red Shrimp are selling at *gasp* $30/each *gasp*. And you can't exactly keep these babies alone. Not only would you probably never really see it do much, but the poor thing might even die from loneliness. It's recommended you keep them in small-large colonies. So it's almost essential you buy at least 6-10 of them to start off. Especially if you want to try and breed them (and sell their babies back to fish stores, or to fellow hobbyists, at cheaper, but still pretty ludicrous prices).
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| Crystal Red Shrimp crowding around some food. How can anyone not instantly fall in love? (Not my pics) |
Enough jib jab. So needless to say, I was hesitant to buy from my local fish store (LFS). But then one day, whilst browsing Craigslist, I stumbled upon a shrimp breeder selling these babies at $5 a pop. Now, if I'd told you right off the bat that I'd bought 20 shrimp at $5 each, you would've called me stark raving mad. However, since I prefaced this announcement by giving you some context (they're normally $30ea), you should now be thinking, "damn, Chesmok, you got an unbeatable deal!".
Yes reader, it was a steal. Yes reader, I paid $100 for 20 little shrimp that measured about 0.5 inches each. If you're not in the know about freshwater shrimp, you'd think I'm a lunatic. But if you happen to know a thing or two about crystals, you'd know that I was one lucky duck.
Most beginners to the shrimpkeeping hobby often start with the easy (and cheap) favorites: red cherry shrimp, ghost shrimp and amano shrimp. I have cherries and amanos. I started with these species because they make an unbeatable and hardy algae/leftovers cleanup crew.
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| Typical red cherry shrimp grazing on some moss. |
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| Amano shrimp (amazing algae eaters) |
Many people keep red cherry shrimp and have great success with them. I will of course, in the near future, be writing more detailed posts about each type of shrimp. For now, this will just be my mad ramblings about my little shrimp friends.
After I placed my order of 10 crystal red shrimp, 10 crystal black shrimp, 5 painted fire red shrimp from the breeder, I had to patiently wait 3 weeks until she restocked. During this time, I did A LOT of reading online about keeping CRS: water parameters, tank size etc. I also meticulously preened and coddled their soon to be home: my 6.5 gallon planted cube. I'd had a history of trouble with the tank and I was really worried a bad pH fluctuation or ammonia spike would wipe out my whole colony.
Luckily, everything's been going right dandy so far (knock on wood). When my shrimp arrived, I floated the bag in my tank and slowly dripped (drop by drop) tank water into the bag for 2 FREAKING HOURS and then finally set them free. They seemingly panicked the first day- mad dashes at the top of the tank, as if they were trying to escape from prison...But then near the end of the day things settled down and they started acting normally again. Of course I didn't put all 20 shrimp into one tank at once. That would be suicide. Too risky given the small tank size. I separated the 20 and put 8 in one tank and 12 in the other. All shrimp are thriving and molting properly.
I ordered these tourmaline balls off ebay and threw one in each tank. They're supposed to slowly supplement the water with essential minerals the shrimp need and maintain the proper gH so they can molt and grow properly. We'll see how well that works.
Anyways, that's enough chitchat for now.
Chesmok.
[If you're out there, let your voice be known!]
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