How to raise baby Malayan Shrimps?

[wahboy]

Hello everyone,

This afternoon I added some Malayan Shrimps into my planted tank. I could see eggs in many of the shrimps' stomachs. After 3 hours, I realised many tiny similar organisms moving in the water and I turned off the filter immediately. Each of them look like a dot with a tail attached. I think those are the shrimps' babies.

How do I raise these baby shrimps? Can someone please advise?

Thanks in advance.

Wayne Wah

[Nicky]

When I was having hair grass as foreground plants my baby tiger and malayan shrimps did not need any special care. I was running 2 Eheim filters at that time and some shrimps eventually grew up in the filter. I think the babies can survive by feeding on the leftovers and mulm in the tank.

[byronshoh]

And how do the baby shrimp look like? I have just notived a lot of small creatures moving in my tank

[Jinduan]

There is no need to really do special things, but you may want to consider the following actions that I took whenever my shrimps are pregnant (which is ALL the time).

I have a two feet tank with the following fishes:

5 x Cardinals (about 2-3cm)
6 x Rummy Nose (largest is 4 cm, smallest is 2 cm)
2 x SAE (about 6 cm long)
4 x mini-Cories (about 2 cm max size)
60+ x Cherry Shrimps (largest 2cm, smallest is 1mm!)

I started with 40 cherry shrimps, and notice after about 2 weeks, more than 5 of them were pregnant.

1. Provide Hiding Places. One of the main factor for successful breeding is to provide lots and lots of hiding places especially in my tank where Rummy Noses hunt down baby shrimps (those less than 2 mm) as tibits.

[Jinduan]

oops.... accidentally hit the enter button and submit.... paiseh, let me continue.

1. Hiding Places. One of the main factor for successful breeding is to provide lots and lots of hiding places especially in my tank where Rummy Noses hunt down baby shrimps (those less than 2 mm) as tibits. Many of the baby shrimps can be seen hiding amonst the riccia and also underneath the wire mesh that i used to weigh down the riccia. There is also plenty of food (read leftovers) that the fishes can reach but the shrimps can. I think I have a photo somewhere, I try to post it. So during this period I try very hard not to do any maintenance (ie cut or re-tie) the riccia. Although there was once I did, but it did not affect the survival of the shrimps, in fact because of all the debris were kicked up during my maintenance a few of my cardinals died! Although I had to manually pickout one or two shrimps that stubbornly clinged onto my riccia. I also noted that they survived the process.

2. Water Change/pH Swing. During the period when you notice that lots of 1mm shrimps around, try to minimise water change. I think once a week is ok. And also do no more than 25% change as a rule of thumb. Because large pH swing is no good. The pH in our tap water is about 7.0 so it is suited for shrimps. Surprisingly, the cardinals and rummy noses also adjusted well to the 7.0 pH. The concern is if your current pH is low like 6.5, then a large water change will increase the pH and that is harmful not only to shrimps but also to your fishes.

3. I consider my shrimps stablise once they are large enough/confident enough to survive during their swim out of the riccia. So far I have had at least 4 spawnings. Those from the first batch is already about 1.5cm long. I know because my initial purchases were matured ones all at least 2cm long. It took the first batch about 3/4mths to reach this size.

I will try to post some photos when I reach home tonight. cheers