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A Guide To Crystal Red Shrimp

rudirudi said:
I am planning a Discus tank which will be kept at 28c would this be too hot to keep CRS?

Regards
rudi
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Probably, but I'd be more worried about them becoming an expensive snack too.
 
Also posted under inverts......but something for us all to aspire to here:-

 
Many thanks for taking the time to post this great article Dincho - Its always good to read up on these amazing little creatures.

Best wishes,

Murray
 
I've heard elsewhere of CRS keepers saying their nitrates are kept as close to zero as possible - just wondering how this fits with growing plants? Presumably you don't add any regular ferts to the water column? What about root tabs?
Thanks for the interesting article. I don't plan of keeping CRS just now but always interested to learn more.
 
JMorgan said:
I've heard elsewhere of CRS keepers saying their nitrates are kept as close to zero as possible - just wondering how this fits with growing plants? Presumably you don't add any regular ferts to the water column? What about root tabs?
Thanks for the interesting article. I don't plan of keeping CRS just now but always interested to learn more.
Click to expand...

Plants can grow, just very slowly from the waste produced from the livestock. Shrimp keepers tend to use quite low lighting too so they can keep their tanks plodding away as low techs.

People give lots of reasons as to why they avoid nitrates/micros/oxygen/brain activity but I feel that it's important to say that shrimp aren't affected adversely by fertilising, you have to understand that culturally there's a lot of bogeymen for shrimp keepers and ferts are one of them, with co2 being another. It comes with the pain of being completely unable to conclusively identify why your shrimp die (and they die a lot), so you make up reasons instead. Just look at the growing industry of snake oil bullshit aimed directly at shrimp keeping. Some people's shrimp are better fed than me!

Coming back to ferts though, in my experience, it's largely an unfounded fear. CRS and other caridina shrimp (save for the sulawesi shrimp perhaps - no experience with them myself) are perfectly fine with EI nitrate levels, and will happily breed so long as water quality (TDS, ammonia) stays consistent. The tricky part of fertilising with CRS is maintaining this consistency while also being lazy and doing the typical 10% fortnightly water changes with occasional RO top-ups, which is the standard procedure with CRS tanks because you can happily get away with it (while also saving yourself some pennies with the salty shrimp stuff).

So while lots of shrimp keepers could easily dose ferts and co2 and just do larger water changes more frequently (and buy more salty shrimp GH+!) I think a lot prefer to tell themselves that it's too risky just to stay comfortable! Which would be perfectly fine if they admitted it and didn't get on the Internet and spread misinformation about how harmful ferts can be, (which if it's not nitrates it's bloody copper) as it invariably turns novices completely off of fertilising properly for fear of murdering their livestock and thus find their new lovingly aquascaped tanks with the latest hypernuke Led 9000 light system melting all their plants with no recourse available.

Indeed, as mentioned earlier there are now lots of shrimp keeping brands realising this and coming out with their own "Shrimp safe" ferts which should alleviate some fears of dosing in the hobby, but unfortunately at a significant premium for nothing but peace of mind. Still, as long as when one of their shrimp inevitably dies for no discernable reason they don't automatically go onto a forum and blame ferts, that's progress. Can't blame any one but the shrimp keepers and their silly myths though!

Cheers!
 
Thanks for the detailed reply Finn. I suspected as much, but having no direct experience with CRS didn't want to assume anything. In fact when I read the intro, I thought Aha! crystal red shrimp, super inbred type with extremely limited gene pool and near to useless immune system . . . maybe this is the grain of truth in the nitrates myth?
Hence my question 🙂

What's intriguing is that while one hobbyist can be worldly wise to many forms of 'snake oil bullshit', the very same person can easily be unwittingly selling snake oil themselves if only in the form of spreading misinformation out of a sincere desire to help others. I'm pretty sure I've been guilty of this myself in years past. In normal circs just one to one this doesn't have a huge impact I don't imagine, but when such a person is blithering about nitrates on YouTube to an audience counted in thousands or even tens of thousands of hobbyists, its amazing how quickly total blahblahblahblahblahblahblahs becomes incontrovertible "scientific" fact.

I remember reading somewhere on UKAPS about people remineralising RO using standard EI ferts compounds. I think this was aimed at creating a pretty soft water environment that would also sustain decent plant growth, but I'm a bit foggy on the details and I can't find the reference just now. I imagine it might well avoid spending a small fortune on shrimp specific remineralisation products and combine getting the right TDS range for various shrimp types, with keeping plants happy.

When I have time I'll look into it more as I quite fancy keeping CRS at some point. Right now sadly, they'd just be snacks.
 
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