Category: Shrimphaus

Moar baby shrimp!

Posted on by Andy Pierce

Three weeks after the first sighting of a new baby shrimp we seem to have arrival of the next crop.  These guys are really tiny which does suggest the earlier one had been hiding out for a week or so before debuting.  There was a 50% water change today – the usual story with EI dosing – and I was a little concerned the new baby shrimp might get inadvertently changed out along with the water, but they seem to have hung on well and are none the worse for wear.  The successful shrimp breeding suggests we may shortly be inundated with shrimp in the Shrimphaus, but we’ll worry about that later.

Even newly hatched bloody mary shrimp are red

Even the tiniest of these new bloody mary shrimp have an easily distinguished red colouration.  So far the colour has bred really true, which is pretty typical for reports of bloody mary shrimp.  I saw an interesting video where a guy with a pretty normal looking bloody mary shrimp tank went and did an actual count during some rescaping that came in at 600 shrimp in a 5 gallon tank.  That’s about the same size as the shrimphaus!  Everything was looking happy and healthy there so maybe overpopulation isn’t such a concern after all.

Copacetic copepods

Posted on by Andy Pierce
Baby cherry shrimp and friends

All those white things zooming around in the water column whilst the baby bloody mary cherry shrimp hangs out on one of the roots of the Java fern (Microsorum pteropus ‘Windelov’ ) are copepods!

Unintentional yet still welcome residents of the Shrimphaus, copepods are a form of zooplankton.  Like their much, much larger relatives the shrimp, copepods are also crustaceans, and also have ten (?) legs, an exoskeleton, the whole works.  Copepods tend to be sub-millimetre in length, whitish looking, and capable of very rapid jerky movement covering several centimetres at a time, making them the fastest animals on the planet (in terms of body lengths travelled per second).  Happily, copepods eat algae from the water column so can be considered members of an aquarium clean-up crew.  They are a highly nutritious food source for fish, but I don’t think the shrimp eat them.

In the pictures above, both copepods are photographed at 10x optical zoom.  Both are “heading” to the upper right.  The female has two egg sacs to both the right and left of the bottom bit.  The male? copepod doesn’t have these, but that might simply be a female that doesn’t have eggs.  These two were resting on the surface of the glass; the ones swimming around in the water column don’t photograph very well…

Copepods are abundant in the Shrimphaus but I haven’t ever noticed them in the Fireplace Aquarium, either because they were never introduced in the first place, or because the fish do a super-efficient job of keeping the population down.  I might try a water transplant from the Shrimphaus to the Fireplace Aquarium at some point to cross-introduce these little guys.

Baby shrimp in the haus!

Posted on by Andy Pierce

There’s a new citizen in the Shrimphaus!  Recently a juvenile bloody mary shrimp has started openly exploring.  It seems strange that there is only one so far, but there was a mother shrimp that dropped most of her eggs and maybe this is one she held onto.  The new shrimp has already successfully moulted and has been touring the slate and plants in the Shrimphaus.  I take it as a good sign that the shrimp overall are happy and healthy.

The newcomer first showed up about a week ago, which would have been around 6 weeks since the shrimp first went into their home.  If I had to guess based on neocaridina lifecycle, this youngling has been hiding out for a couple weeks before debuting.  I do think there are some other females in there with eggs so there may be some younger siblings on the way as well.

Shrimp like to hang out upside down

The shrimp seem to enjoy hanging upside down from the under surface of the river run.  I don’t know if this is a practice that ordinarily goes unobserved, but it’s a pretty common sight in the Shrimphaus.  In the photo above there are three resting upside down (juvenile on the far right) and one more slightly out of focus right-side up sitting in the river itself on the top of the slate shelf.  Sitting in the flow of the river is something the shrimp also seem to enjoy.

Planting Anubias barteri nana ‘Pangolino’

Posted on by Andy Pierce

‘Pangolino’ from Dennerle is thought to be the anubias with the smallest leaves and thereby very suitable for nanotanks.  I’ve been looking for this plant for a long time but it has been consistently unavailable until very recently when I noticed some in stock at Horizon Aquatics.  As a bonus Horizon is also a sponsor of the UK Aquatic Plant Society so I was happy to be able to pick up some Pangolino and support the society at the same time.  The pots arrived promptly and in great condition.

Preparing tissue culture plants for the aquarium

As usual, tissue culture plants arrive in sealed pots suspended in a nutrient jelly.  You rinse off the jelly, separate out the individual plantlets, cutting them apart if necessary and trimming off any debris, then you’re ready to plant.  I have noticed that it’s not unusual to get some strange growth patterns included in amongst normal growth form plants with tissue culture pots, presumably because the plants don’t always grow completely correctly in culture.  There was a pretty good mass of this material to be removed with the Pangolino, but not to worry, there were still a lot of quality individual plantets to be had.

Anubias barteri nana 'Pangolino'
emersed and submersed Pangolino

Planting emersed and submersed

My main goal with the Pangolino is to try to grow it emersed in the river run of the Shrimphaus, where the hope is the small compact leaves will keep it from drying out and will also maintain a reasonable size anubias for the space.  Eight of the pangolino plantets are planted emersed in lava rock on the shelf of the river run.  With so many nice plantlets I couldn’t resist also planting some submersed – these are the five circled in cyan in the picture.  Tissue culture plants are something of a hybrid situation between emersed and submersed growth so we’ll see how those compare as the plants develop.

Planting Anubias coffeefolia (emersed)

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The goal is to get epiphytes such as Anubias or Bucephalandra to grow emersed in the open-topped Shrimphaus exposed to normal room humidity.  There is a lot of internet opinion, most of which says “forget it”, but some people have managed to make a go of it.  My first try was Anubias nana ‘Coin’  which died gradually over a number of weeks as the submersed rhizome rotted away, but what didn’t happen was the leaves all instantly drying out, which lends some confidence.  I’m going to keep the rhizome out of the water going forward and inspired by a report of success with Anubias coffeefolia, I plumped for a pot of that.

Anubias coffeefolia has interesting leaf texture

The leaves of Anubias coffeefolia have a striking resemblance to those of the terrestrial coffee plant (naturally), and even though Aquadip lists this plant as ‘caffeefolia‘ you understand what they mean.  The plant arrived from Pro Shrimp in great condition, apart from one or two dead leaves which I trimmed off.  Removing the rockwool revealed a very healthy-looking root system.

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River run

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The initial concept for the aquaduct of the Shrimphaus was for water flowing over slate with epiphytic plants and mosses clinging to the slate under the water with leaves growing up out of the water.  That didn’t work out very well.  The underwater rhizome of the Anubias nana ‘Coin’ slowly rotted away, killing the plant.  The Christmas moss and the Bucephalandra pygmaea ‘Bukit Kelam’ didn’t look brilliant either.  Which leads to the new concept for emersed plants in the Shrimphaus…

Riverside planting
Riverside planting

Emersed plants on land

Whilst leaving a channel for water flow, land is built out of black lava rock on the slate shelf.  The lava rock is very porous and wicks up the water so staying continuously wet.  The epiphyte Anubias coffeefolia (replacing the Anubias nana ‘Coin’) and the Bucephalandra have their roots down amongst the lava rock staying wet, but the rhizome and leaves of both are in the open air.  The Christmas moss is simply placed on top of the lava rocks without any attempt at “planting”.  I have tried to keep things moist topside with irregular (when I think about it) misting to try to transition the plants gradually to standard indoor room humidity, but I’m not sure that’s actually necessary.  The wet lava rocks and moss will perhaps provide some degree of elevated localised humidity.

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Shrimp in the Haus!

Posted on by Andy Pierce

Following on from the disastrous experience of adding new cherry shrimp to the Fireplace Aquarium I decided to give the shrimp their own aquarium with no predatory fish!  I built them their own customised Shrimphaus and after a couple weeks of equilibrating the water chemistry and biology I added some Bloody Mary shrimp sourced from Pro Shrimp.  They all arrived alive and in good shape.

Drip acclimatising new shrimp

Shrimp can go into shock when their water parameters change suddenly, so it is recommeded to get newly arrived shrimp used to the new water slowly by adding the new water dropwise over several hours to a temporary shrimp holding container.  When the holding container is full, remove half the water and continue the drip.  After three of these cycles the shrimp will be essentially in the new water and can be safely added to the aquarium.  The acclimatisation setup was easy to rig and went smoothly.  The shrimp never appeared distressed and when added to their new home went off exploring straight away.  I made a video showing an easy way to set this up.

Shrimp keep plants clean

I had noticed the beginning of some type of black algal growth on the plants but the shrimp went after that and cleaned it all up.  In this low-tech set-up the plants will grow slowly so shrimp keeping it nice could be important.  Amano shrimp are well known for devouring algae and it’s nice that the cherry shrimp behave similarly.

Bloody Mary shrimp colouration

Although both Bloody Mary shrimp and cherry shrimp are the same species, Neocaridina davidi, and both are red, they are red in a different way.  With traditional cherry shrimp the shell (carapace) is opaque and contains the pigmentation, whereas with Bloody Mary shrimp the carapace is transparent and the interior of the shrimp is a smoothly pigmented red colour.  Apparently this comes from a heritable mutation common to Bloody Mary shrimp, Black Rose shrimp and Chocolate shrimp.

One, maybe two, of the shrimp are much paler in colour than the others.  Are these still Bloody Mary shrimp?  They have the transparent carapace and pinkish undertones so seem similar.  In some shrimp females tend to be much more strongly coloured than males, but that isn’t well known with Bloody Mary shrimp.  We’ll see how these all develop over time.