Red cherry Shrimp culture expansion/ multipurpose tank

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:09 pm

I have RCS well established in two 10 gallon tanks and to a lesser degree in a couple of fry rearing tanks of only 4.5 gals.

Today I moved a hundred or so RCS into an established 20Long. They are mostly less than 10mm on down to the new hatched or early instars of a few mm. lengths
.
The tank has two large sponge filters; one airlift and one powerhead driven.

Substrate" 1cm of #16 white quartz sand.

Various notched clay pots, notched clay pot drainage pans both inverted, 4 in lengths of 1/2 in PVC pipe and several lengths of bamboo whole and split halves. Plus pieces of Malaysian bogwood complete the furnishings.

Plants include natant Najas and Ceratophyllum and a couple potted Kleiner Bar Echinodorus hybrids

I placed my collection of six L10a Red Rhinoloricaria in and they are just maturing. It appears I only have one male and five females. The male has recently grown a thick fuzzy beard and the females appear very ripe.They are no more than 4 in TL.

The Red Loricaria were raised with several groups of young discus as they went through the stage where I could keep a spawn in the 29 and then moved them out to more space and replaced them with another 4 week old spawn of discus. It always assured the catfish were being liberally fed and given lots of water changes.

I also added two trios of very young Apistogramma baenschi Inka to finish growing up and hopefully will begin breeding.

In the meanwhile, none of these fish present a serious threat to the shrimp. I may add a few choice adult females, too.
I am anxious to see what kind of RCS numbers this "new" set up will produce. Even the ten gallon tanks have vastly exceeded my expectations. If they do the same in the 20 Long I could afford the occassional shrimp salad!

My real purpose is to see if it is possible to pursue simultaneous and complimentary propagation projects in the same space.

Post by **Mustafa** » Sun May 06, 2007 9:00 pm

The red plecos you have won't harm the shrimp but the apistos will eat at least the young. I doubt you'll have many young survive in that tank. A population *might* keep itself going if you have some type of java moss jungle in there, but even then you'll barely see the young shrimp. Even the adult shrimp can be in danger. It varies from dwarf cichlid to dwarf cichlid if they decide to snack on adult shrimp. There is quite a high chance that they will sooner or later.

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » Mon May 07, 2007 2:45 am

If the RCS population shows signs of loosing ground I'll remove the Apistogramma.

There is an impenetrable jungle of plants in this tank and I made a point to stock small shrimp to get an idea of what the survival rate is going to be rather sooner than later.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Mon May 07, 2007 3:51 am

My experience with ABNP's was that for what ever reason, the shrimp population just never did anything. The adults were fine, but the females rarely berried and young rarely made it to adulthood.

My most productive tanks are all fish free. I find that snails and even dwarf cajun crays make good tank mates, but no fish of any type seem to work well.

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » Mon May 07, 2007 7:47 am

Fortunately I have so many shrimp I can afford to experiment a litle.
I am sure and as Mustafa said, the L10a and shrimp will prosper together.

It is possible that in this case, at least for awhile, that the shrimp will be able to produce enough to actually benefit the A. baenschi Inka as a contant source of good food in addition to the bbs and blackworms. It is also that time of year when I begin to culture live bloodworms and mosquito larvae.
I raise quite a few Apistogramma but these are a new species for me and a rather beautifl one. The shrimp in this tank may help breeding and even improve the Apisto's yield. I can sell the Apistos for $30/pair vs $1.00 per shrimp.

I have more tanks and enough shrimp that it is possible to set up another 20Long as a shrimp only tank and a population boom is assured. The RCS have surprised me before. I have had them reproduce to incredible numbers sharing a tank with my breeding group of Corydoras hastatus. In this case, it was the shrimp who preyed on the Cory eggs although I see now that many Cory fry made it anyway and there are quite a few survivors after all.

In my other shrimp tank I have 8 breeder Corydoras duplicareous and 5 Juvenile L46 plecos and hundreds of shrimp. I only started this one out with about 20 shrimp.

shrimper Bob · Post by **shrimper Bob** » Tue May 08, 2007 12:07 am

I just moved 5 of my RCS, 4 females one which was berried and one male into my heavily planted 55 gal. Tank of 5 young Discus which are around 80mm long, pair of Bristlenose Plecos, 3 small zebra Loaches, 3 otto algae eaters. and 7 Zebra Danios and 3 ghost shrimp. The Zebras will be moved out soon, there a little to high strung for the Discus. Was curious about the Discus, they a hungry little buggers. Have you seen them eat any of your shrimp? I've seen the Discus peck at the ghost. Seems that red means food in the fish world, as many of the flake and pellet foods are red. Would love to get a colony going in that tank, but I don't want to see them being constantly harassed either.
My 15 gallon shrimp tank has 50 or so RCS and around 25 Zebra fry 10- 15 mm size, seemed a little crowed. Also starting a 10 to breed a couple of choice female RCS. I keep running out of space for them.
Please keep me informed of your project.
Thanks
Bob B.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Tue May 08, 2007 7:37 am

Inverts are definitely on the discus menu. I am astonished that the ghost is still in there.

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » Tue May 08, 2007 8:47 am

badflash wrote:Inverts are definitely on the discus menu. I am astonished that the ghost is still in there.

I have kept a crew of 25 Ghost shrimp I raised in with my ten Heckel Discus for almost a year and a half. They do great together. What surprised me was that they were able to live that long at the 84 to 86 dF temps I keep the discus at. I did have one cherry shrimp that hitch hiked into the discus tank on some plants that lasted a couple weeks. I removed it when it finally appeared in a location among some floating plants where I could finally easily catch it. It was an adult female.
They even coexisted with the green Dwarf Pike Cichlid Crenicichla compressiceps. This particular dwarf pike is a specialized micro-predator and will not bother anything they cannot swallow in one gulp. They are also preoccupied with trying to kill each other.

The Ghost Glass shrimp is a good shrimp to keep in most any peaceful communitity tank.

The RCS are another matter. I think they will be fine with discus but will not successfully reproduce. The green Dwarf Pikes would eat the RCS.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Tue May 08, 2007 9:53 am

Ghosts have no problem in warm water. Most are farm raised in Florida and do great in ponds that get really warm.

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » Tue May 08, 2007 11:08 am

True, and all mine were raised in my own tanks so they were well adapted to my conditions.

apistomaster · Post by **apistomaster** » Sun May 20, 2007 5:06 pm

The experiments with maintaining RCS with selected other fish breeding projects has been working out.
The Apistogramma baenschi are rearing families and the shrimp are not disappearing in a shared 20L, well planted; lots of hiding places.
Also in one of the primary RCS prop tanks many odds and ends Dwarf Corydoras fry are coming along. I have fry from C. hastatus and C. habrosus in this one tank plus a few C. sterbai I rescued from a recent spawn. I really raised enough C. sterbai for awhile but I couldn't resist tossing some new one in with the shrimp.

These young RCS and Corydoras fry were pretty small for my camera but I did the best I could to get this:

and this:

To provide some perspective, the larger RCS in the background is 1/2 inch and the Corydoras habrosus fry are ~3/16 to 3/8 inch. Small size closeup placed constraints on the focused DOF.