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Amano shrimp breeding project bis
- Thread starter Hanuman
- Start date
Yes I do use CO2, but minimaly. The drop checker barely changes color from a dark blue to a less dark blue. PH drops barely ~0.2 at most, so that can’t be it.
I totally agree re temperature overall, without any doubt the temp is most important driver of their activity and life span (apart from food haha), however it still seems to me extremely quick, do you know what exact temps they were kept in?
I had success in both of those levels you've mentioned, however higher rate of survival was much closer to 30-35ppt than within brackish range.
that's actually the tricky part - I keep them all the time in my conservatory room which is approx 5+ or so Celsius deg higher than whatever temp is outside - lower temps are especially visible in winter, for warmer months it's quite similar to what's going on outside (LDN area).
I think the lowest temp recorded was around 3-5 Celsius deg or so (winter time ofc), surprisingly 100% of survival of the shrimps - seriously 1st year I was feeling like big WTF, later on I've got just used to it - and because of that I did a little bit of research of yearly temps around Japanese sea - pretty much within the yearly range my amanos were kept in so I'm assuming they can survive quite broad range of temps, especially at lower level. And their activity decreases within winter-ish months for sure.
Probably one or two droplets of that water will do the trick (assuming it contains some algae and other living stuff apart from sewage rubbish), within few weeks you should have massive amount of live shrimp food.
Unfortunately due to environmental laws being pretty relaxed there is a massive problem of sewage being dumped straight away into the seas in UK (similarly to Thailand). In my most favorite places I was digging in the past for crabs, oysters and other stuff I've seen massive changes of water quality and I'm not collecting any occasional wild food anymore. I'm just wondering where are those "Just stop oil" and other f.ckers when we really need them? Probably they are not paid to protect the environment where it's really needed but to only do some sort of domestic terror.
Not sure to be honest.
My tank hoovers around 29-31C. Summer is hitting us hard this year. Outdoor temperatures reached 44C last week. I can't do much about it other than leaving the air-con all day long but that's not an option considering the cost of electricity. So it will either work at these temperatures or it wont. If it doesn't then I'll move along and carry on with other projects.
I have exhausted all possible avenues to source live phytoplankton from any organisation here in Thailand so I will revert to using sea water. Shouldn't be that hard to get some. The sea is just an hour or so away from where I am.
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To this date no buried female which is odd. I decided to change a few things this past weekend to see if that changes the dynamic.
Before (see left tank - adults ; right tank is for virtual juveniles
)
After: Tank looks darker in real life than on the picture.
Most plants ended up in the juvenile tank currently hosting 3 guppies for the sake of keeping the tank lively. CO2 was also moved to tank but that is temporary. I will probably remove it if I ever have baby amanos. Eventually, I will probably have to reshuffle the tank as well, like I did with the adult tank.
- removed 95% of all plants as well as all the aquasoil and replaced it with river sand.
- added more floating plants to reduce light.
- removed CO2 since the remaining plants in the tank don't really require it anyway. It was already very low (1 bubble/5 seconds) anyway.
- reduced light from 80% to 50% and I am pondering reducing it even further to maybe 35%. I just want to leave enough light for the 2-3 plants in there but make it dark enough for the amanos to have intimacy . In all seriousness I think the higher light intensity was probably stressing them and I think this could be the reason why they were not breeding.
- I will add a few more coconut shells/wood for shelter.
- I'll be reducing GH to 5 since I am also feeding some fresh vegetables as well as Shrimp King mineral along other foods.
- I'll be looking into my water report see if I can change from RO to TAP water but for now I'll stay with RO.
Before (see left tank - adults ; right tank is for virtual juveniles
)After: Tank looks darker in real life than on the picture.
Most plants ended up in the juvenile tank currently hosting 3 guppies for the sake of keeping the tank lively. CO2 was also moved to tank but that is temporary. I will probably remove it if I ever have baby amanos. Eventually, I will probably have to reshuffle the tank as well, like I did with the adult tank.
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I had an outbreak of this in my tank and it killed all 60 amano shrimps over last 2 weeks - every single amano shrimp died. Cherry shrimps, ottos, snails and rasboras are all healthy and happy. The only thing that changed in my tank was the water temperature, I cannot keep it below 25-26 deg. due to weather - normally I have heaters set to 21. I have some house plants above my tank and dropped a little bit of soil in when I was watering them - fished it out asap. That's the only thing that I recall that happened out of the ordinary, no new plants/fish - no clue what caused the outbreak. RIP amano shrimps... I have seen this many months before as I mentioned on one of my shrimp in another tank and the shrimp just molted out of it... Not this time around....
Myrtle
Member
Just to give you some hope, I have had a group of yellow cherries for almost a year with zero breeding until bam! they started breeding 2 months ago and I finally have shrimplets. They've been in the same tank with the same parameters for the whole time...
Could it be that the soil was loaded with some nasty stuff?
In my case, I've had the worst project so far without even having a single buried female. I've lost already 8 shrimps, on average 1 every month for reasons I can't explain. This morning was the latest casualty. I am close to just calling it a day. Every-time this happens I just feel hopeless. Dam shrimps should talk to tell me what the hell is wrong, unfortunately that's not happening.
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How old are the females? I see you've started this thread at Oct 22 so it's roughly 8 months till now.
I'm guessing (as I was never sure how old were my females when I bought them) that Amanos become fertile in not less than 1.5-2 years since birth, probably even longer - and when I've bought them females were at around 1.5 inch in length at the time of buying and the biggest/oldest were at approx 2 inch - those biggest ones started to release fry almost immediately. Also those which were coming from my own family have become fertile roughly in around two years since birth - they were also close to 2 inch in size (definitely longer than 1.5 inch when they've started to release eggs at all but birth rates were very low in the beginning - I've seen only dozens of fry at that time instead of hundreds or so).
The fact that smaller females are not buried is not really concerning to me and it is in fact understandable, but the older ones which were easily above 1.5 inch should have been buried IMO. Most importanly, it's mostly the fact that I have lost shrimps on a regular basis (~one every month) which is definitely the reason why I wanted to do something about that tank. If I didn't have any casualties I wouldn't have changed anything and would have let things be.
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Ladies and gentlemen.
I have decided to pause this project due to what I have stated above. I can't find the exact reasons for the shrimps dying and I think it would be unfair to let those shrimps keep dying like that. I have several hypothesis as to why this is happening. I will list them, from most probable to least probable IMO.
1. plastic crate in the UGF leaching some unwanted chemical;
2. silicone used to make the UGF leaching some unwanted chemical;
3. pumice being contaminated with something and leaching unwanted chemicals
4. disease affecting all shrimps;
5. lack of oxygen? I am doubtful. There are 4 micro air pumps plugged to the UGF + one canister filter.
6. high temperatures (29C-31C) which seems not likely but can't be excluded.
I will re-scape my main 90cm tank this weekend, and will move the shrimps there once the tank is cycled. I will then strip down the current amano shrimp and remove at least the 3 first reasons stated above. I might move back the amano shrimps to the tank to see if that solves the problem or I'll simply move on to other ventures. Let's see.
I have decided to pause this project due to what I have stated above. I can't find the exact reasons for the shrimps dying and I think it would be unfair to let those shrimps keep dying like that. I have several hypothesis as to why this is happening. I will list them, from most probable to least probable IMO.
1. plastic crate in the UGF leaching some unwanted chemical;
2. silicone used to make the UGF leaching some unwanted chemical;
3. pumice being contaminated with something and leaching unwanted chemicals
4. disease affecting all shrimps;
5. lack of oxygen? I am doubtful. There are 4 micro air pumps plugged to the UGF + one canister filter.
6. high temperatures (29C-31C) which seems not likely but can't be excluded.
I will re-scape my main 90cm tank this weekend, and will move the shrimps there once the tank is cycled. I will then strip down the current amano shrimp and remove at least the 3 first reasons stated above. I might move back the amano shrimps to the tank to see if that solves the problem or I'll simply move on to other ventures. Let's see.
MichaelJ
Member
This is heartbreaking to hear @Hanuman
Everything you did so far sounded to me as the right approach. Could you post all water parameters? I assume you’re all RO so we can exclude metal poisoning (copper, zinc, nickel) ? A diseased stock is definitely a possibility… and while the high temperature is a concern, I don’t think it would be lethal, but I honestly don’t know the upper limit for amano’s.Considering the efforts you put into this I’d say take another shot at it with Amanos from another source.
Cheers,
Michael
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I don't test since I am using RO and the only thing I am adding in there is the CaSO4 and MgSO4. Nitrate levels are on the low side according to my red floaters. I have done several water changes in the past 2 weeks. Usually around 20%. For ammonia and nitrite I don't even bother, it's highly unlikely that's the cause. Tanks have been running for nearly 8 months and the last time I checked 3-4 months ago they were at 0. Not sure how they would go up but I can retest that just to make sure.This is heartbreaking to hear @Hanuman
Considering the efforts you put into this I’d say take another shot at it with Amanos from another source.
Cheers,
Michael
Yes I put lots of effort into this project but also some money and I don't want this to be an endless money sucking hole. I'll do the changes I stated above and see if that solves the issue. If it doesn't then, hasta la vista baby. At the end of the day I need to be realistic. I wouldn't even be able to make this a profit making project even if I succeeded in breeding them. I would need to breed them at a larger scale to consider any profit.
Parameters summary:
GH ~7
KH ~0
Temp 29-31C
NH3 = 0
NO2 = 0
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MichaelJ
Member
Its pure speculation but my guess is that the pumice could be at fault. I bet your pH is mostly below 7.... While generally considered inert, nothing is really truely 100% inert especially in an acidic environment - even tiny trace amounts of metals over a longer period of time (say several months) could be an issue (it will usually accumulate at the substrate level) - of course none of this would be detectable unless you submit a water sample to a lab. Also, using RO water is not a 100% guarantee that you're not dragging in some unwanted toxins. What's your TDS out of the RO? (and in the shrimp tank).
A second thought could be the food source, what did you feed the shrimps?
Given your level of proficiency and expertise in the hobby its got to be something subtle that made this fail.
Again, the temperature 29-31 C is not exactly ideal.
Brilliant advice, if you got something leaching... Activated carbon is known to be able to remove several heavy metals such as lead, nickel etc. and other toxins.
Cheers,
Michael
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I found the problem. You need to raise KH. I did raise mine to around 3KH after water change last week and it turns out I have 3 amano alive left and they came out and are eating. There seems to be one male and two females, so I shall rebuild my amano army
Wookii
Member
I found the problem. You need to raise KH. I did raise mine to around 3KH after water change last week and it turns out I have 3 amano alive left and they came out and are eating. There seems to be one male and two females, so I shall rebuild my amano army
View attachment 208733
You sure that's an Amano? They don't breed in fresh water - or rather the young require salt water to hatch and develop.
Correct, they always breed in fresh water - even in the wild. Once they are done breeding, babies need to go to the salt water.
Pretty sure it's amano - It's the one I bred...
Imgur
Wookii
Member
Nice one - I’ve never seen them with that orange colouration. You’ve done really well to breed that many, any chance you can fully outline your system for breeding them when you get a spare moment?
Could be just camera saturation, everything else looks saturated as well! They look like Amanos!
