Cardina spongicola/woltereckae

[Kingkong]

Hi bro's,

Does anyone have succes on keeping the harlequin and or breeding them?

Anyone can guide me to prior threads on this?

Aprreciated and thanks in advance!

[Emokidz]

I think you should post this under inverts... I've kept them before though... Didn't last very long

[Kingkong]

Oh im sorry, thought i was in the right section.

Could someone move this thread to inverts?

[Zenith82]

Hi KingKong, I think cardina spongicola aka harlequin shrimps highly depended in freshwater sponge to survive.
In order to keep them, first you must have live sponge. But i think the challenge is first to keep the sponge alive, so far online there isn't much info or tips on keeping the sponge. Alot have failed as the sponge starts to die off pretty soon. I've heard about experience keepers only manage to keep harlequins longest for 3 mths. So it's a pretty tough challenge.

As the sponge are like the food for the shrimps, they highly depended on it. I'm awaiting to get some sponge also to try out.
Maybe when Matt who is helping to do a mass order manage to get me some, I'll try to do a journal on it and maybe we could all learn something from my experience.

[Kingkong]

Hey bro,

Well actually there are 2 kinds of harlequin marketed.
The spongicola needs the sponge and can be found in the bay of the lake.
The woltereckae is widely found in the lake and doesnt need the sponge.
What ive heard is that the woltereckae is mostly marketed. There is a paper written about the spongicola. See shrimpnow for further reading.

The difference between these two is colouration and amount of eggs.

I think the key factor is the food. They found diatoms in their guts. A phytoplankton diatom.
So i was thinking, lets make some frwshwater phytoplankton.

In europe we have the sulawesi salt 8.5.. I think ill use this salt to manage my water params.

What i k ow is a couple of germans have managed to keep them alive and breed with them.

I try to get in contact with them. So, i will also keep you posted