Shrimp Journal

Somewhere I've picked up muscles necrosis in my blue velvets tank. It's a bigger tank, lots of plants, rocks, driftwood, so it's hard to see all the shrimp all the time. There's plenty of places for them to hide, and when one dies, I can't always find it. I saw one with a very milky colored body the other night right up in the front of the tank and thought, "Oh crap." I started netting out all the shrimp I could see and separating them out. The ones I could see cloudy bodies, or suspected went into a floating breeder box in another tank. The ones that looked clear went into the hang on breeder on the velvets tank. One of the cloudy has already died  after 4 days. There were six left in the breeder box. I moved them into a floating breeder in the cobalt tank and so I could do a 75% water change in the velvets tank. It was time for a water change anyhow, and the tannins were building up pretty high again since it's a dirted tank.

I was using that hang on breeder for a project. I have what my best guess is some blue bodied red rili that are poorly marked. The red covers the whole top of the body instead of being restricted to the head and tail. The red is low grade. more like a cherry shrimp instead of the nice solid of a fire red. This makes the top red and the underside of the shrimp blue. I wanted to breed them out so the blue was more intense and make the red just a little better. This shrimp already looks a bit purple.

These are the cherries from the jar project. I took most of them from the cull tank in the living room. I had thrown some shrimp that came in with some blue jellies I ordered a while back, and a couple of them turned brown as they grew. I pulled a male blue jelly out of the cull tank for this project. Some of the jellies in that batch were blue/red marked rili. So now I have the velvets, the cull cherries, and the jelly in there. I also have one red rili that looks just like a red cherry with a few clear patches. After the water settles I'll put them all back in the breeder box so I can keep a close eye on them. I don't want to move them again too soon after making them get used to a different water in the cobalts tank.


I got my first berried shrimp from the aura blues, but the silly wenches dropped their eggs.

It's been about a week, and one female is only carrying one egg, and the other has four. I noticed each one had a dangling egg that they were constantly flicking. It's like whatever makes them stick up under the swimmer legs, wasn't sticky. I could see a few, one at a time, just tumbling around when they fanned the eggs. I think that irritates them and then they pick at all the eggs trying to dislodge the tumbler until they pick all the eggs free. It's disappointing. I was really excited for these shrimp to be berried.

My little white shrimp has been making some changes. It was so very white when I got it. I didn't know if it was a golden bee or a snow white. I didn't ask when I got it. It came with the failed shadow pandas and the lady I got them from just casually mentioned as I was leaving that she threw in an all white one too. It's been turning a more cream color, and I noticed it's getting white markings. I asked in one of my Facebook shrimp groups, and was told the lower grade golden bees look really nice white as peewee/juvies, but sometimes lose the coloration on the body and you can see white markings. I think the pattern looks neat even if it's not desirable. These pics make it look more yellow than it is, but I had to play with the settings a little to make the white markings stand out more.

Now I'm not certain if I want to keep it in the BB/Shadow tank or move a couple aura blues, a few of the black tibee with clear spots on the body, and this shrimp into either a breeder or one of the empty caridina tanks, let them all breed and see what comes out.