All about shrimp keeping
Why the difference
This post shares a bit more information from this blog post where i have shared the difference between Main and Secondary line shrimps. After you have read this, you can continue to read the additional post here. One of the reasons for having this post is because i did a post in Facebook asking breeders to distinguish the difference between secondary and main line. The one on the left is secondary line and the one on the right is main line. There are a few characteristic differences visually however if i would make it more difficult by selecting only the good ones for the secondary line, the differences can be very small and almost impossible to tell visually. It was intended to leave the secondary line without selection if not it will be far too difficult to discern the difference. However, what i’m driving at is when we have a side by side comparison, we can then tell there are some difference. What happens if most of the time the shrimps are being selected to be sold without reference or guidance and most time without even telling you if they’re main or secondary line? This is a secondary line RSD Taking a step back and looking at a broader picture, if most of the shrimp sold are secondary line, wouldn’t that create ‘secondary’ line as a the benchmark for many since there isn’t widely available main line shrimps being sold or the prices are very high? Then wouldn’t that also means most of the shrimps sent for competition are secondary line? Is there anything wrong with secondary line? I think no but i believe we need to clearly set the standard where breeders are aware of secondary line vs main line and when everyone says a particular shrimp is the “Benchmark” doesn’t make it a “main line” The catch here is because far too many shrimps are being sold with unknown crosses diluting the genetic pool of what once was a stable line. For example the Red Stardust secondary line, the whole idea here is to massively produce to cater to the market at an acceptable price point. For Main line, they do not breed as readily as secondary line due to selective breeding.
What does it mean
To an untrained eye it is almost impossible to discern the difference, only when you experience it, breed them and see them would provide a rough idea of the minute difference.
When sending shrimps for competition, are they then mostly secondary line? Honestly it doesn’t matter because competition and contest is for show casing the work of the breeder. What should be taken into consideration is to use the outcome of a competition to then highlight that the shrimp is a main line, which then go against the grain of selective breeding. In other words, if a breeder is able to share if their line is main or secondary will be added value to other breeders.
Then the question is, how would one know if they have got secondary or main line shrimps? The long and short of it is it depends on the breeder they got from and traceability.
How do we go about this?
A prelude to what is coming in 2024, instead of looking at the shrimp to tell the difference, we would certify breeders who have the ability to share such knowledge and show case their work on main and secondary line as one of the many criterias of getting certified.
What this means?
Instead of certifying shrimps the way grading works, we will start having certification for breeders. This idea stems from the fish scene where there are many breeders who have attain Master Breeder status. However, for the shrimp side, there are no Governing body to actually certify this. In 2024, this will change and as we get nearer to the release of the certification process which we have already robustly define the scope and what it entails, Shrimp Sanctuary will start certifying breeders globally who meet the criteria. To make the criteria a pathway for breeders to attain and learn as they grow, it will take up to 10 years for any breeder to look forward. It provides a step by step approach to gain knowledge and experience. The criteria is not for the faint of heart and for breeders who want a guided path to walkthrough and experience it in a holistic manner.
Why do it?
This will help connect new breeders to gain knowledge from certified breeders, and as it stands the whole notion of building breeders up is then completed. The certified breeders will guide new breeders attain their next level and share information like how we share information widely here. The catch is it’s not an easy path to attain certification, it requires grit and determination not forgetting consistency and discipline. This will then setup a platform for breeders globally to have someone to turn to should there be a need. Today there are no differentiation or pathways to help breeders build credibility, and with the certification process helps to build credibility within the shrimp industry. It also helps breeders know where they stand in terms of shrimp breeding and helps position themselves in the industry. It increases integrity of the breeders globally to ensure more committed shrimp breeders stays within the hobby.
What in it for me?
There are multiple levels in the certification process, and each level attain will provide you with the needed skills and experience to go to the next level. Ultimately you drive the pace of certification, but a minimum 10 years to attain the highest level.
There will also be a certificate provided by us as it will be Globally recognised within the Shrimp industry.
Till then, we will keep refining it and release it in 2024.
What is the optimum number of tanks
10 50 100
In this blog post i would like to share my journey from a learning perspective over the years. I always have this question in my head, how can one learn and experience quicker. As shrimp breeding cycle from breeding to shrimplets to selective breeding takes years, can we accelerate the process with more tanks and can anybody from a hobbyist perspective upkeep this?
So i think we all started somewhere and i too started with 12 tanks and then as time goes on expanded to more than 100 tanks, does it mean that having more tanks equate to better shrimps?
The long and short of this is Not Necessary.
Time
One of the more influential factor is time, having more tanks means more time needed or a more complex process/infrastructure to ensure time isn’t been taken away too much for it is still a hobby; albeit very passionately.
Taking water change and reset for example, if we have 12 tanks weekly water change and reset once every 8-12 months all the time adds up.
This calculation is a very rough estimate of what could have happen, and if we first started off with 12 tanks the time taken in a year is 5 days. 5 Full Days doing nothing but water change for 12 tanks.
If we would to expand to 100 tanks with the same method and process it will then become1 month. This seems a bit unsustainable as out of the 12 months we have in a year, 1 month is doing nothing but water change.
Hence, when businesses or hobbyist decided to scale up, we try to save time by doing what takes the most time. Water change and reset, which lead to automation.
Automation, semi automation
This is where we can see hobbyist start with automation and yes even for us we started semi automation when i increase my tank count from 12 to 17 to 24 where i use gravity as discharge without having to drill holes in the tank. Yes slower but certainly a start.
In addition, we moved away from RODI to just DI. DI speeds up the process by filling the tanks up at the speed of 20 seconds per Litre. The draining process is 10.7 seconds per Litre.
In my YouTube and Blog post i have shared some of the methods we have used for water discharge and top up.
Tracking
When it comes to 12 tanks, we can still recall when was the last time a reset is done, a water change is done, a feeding is done.
When we multiply the number of tanks, the increase in complexity increases drastically.
At least for us tracking data is highly critical to ensure we know what is going on with one glance with some automation this excel sheet updates whenever we input in the raw data when the water change was done and a dashboard shows when we will need to do the next water change. The formula can be adjusted based on your water change intervals.
This gives a good overview of what needs to be done, when.
Let’s talk about money
Finances
It is important for us to discuss in depth what it means to progress to more tanks as the whole process from 12 to 100 to 200 tanks require a direction and a viable plan.
From a finance perspective on expansion, we are looking at almost 7x the initial cost setup for 10 tanks to 100. This exclude all livestock/shrimps which will exponentially increase the cost.
More tanks even a conservative calculation, shrimps cost increases exponentially.
So does it mean there are no benefits to expansion?
Learning
If you have read this far, it means that inside of you there is something that you’re looking for in terms of rationalizing. If we put this across a few years of progress it will certainly help to put this into perspective.
Learning by doing and experience is by far a great journey for many hobbyist including myself. Different shrimps different lines and even learning the difference between main line and secondary line takes time.
Learning
- With more shrimps, you’re able to learn their behavior water parameters and breeding cycle better
- With more tanks, it forces you to think through the infrastructure piece ensuring that you do not lose time because of an expansion plan
- Helps convince yourself and make more mistakes as the more mistakes you make the better for own learning
- Be able to discern between a claim vs observation experience
- Able to create new shrimps
- Able to improve current lines
There are many benefits to learning and to really put your knowledge to the test.
Selective breeding
With more tanks does not necessarily means better selective breeding. That is also the reason at the onset of this post i mentioned it is not necessary that expanding is beneficial. The direction and intent is important when expanding, and personally if we’re worst off than when we started, it will be detrimental to other parts of our life.
Selective breeding is a strict, discipline and consistent process where shrimps are move around with an intention in mind. The removal of shrimplets from one tank to another to grow up is part of the process and having more tanks allows you to do selective breeding more accurately. After talking to many global breeders, i do find there are certain characteristic and personality traits that breeders have in common if they’re willing to go the extra mile to selectively breed their shrimp and undergo the hard work to do so.
Selectively breeding are often loosely use and mentioned, but it entails a very strict process and a laser focus approach and not for everyone.
Personally, even with the many tanks that we run, we openly share that we do not do selective breeding for all shrimps types as we will easily run out of tanks if we do for every tank. However, what we do is to remove the shrimps with undesirable traits.
Outcome
The quality of the shrimp will be a good indicator if the process should be tweaked to further optimize or major changes need to be made. The question here still remain if your lifestyle is able to keep up with the number of tanks?
At the end of the day, this is still a shrimp hobby, and you can decide where you would like to take this to. Doesn’t mean that you cannot have fun during all these and you probably should find fun doing this.
In this journey we believe if automation to water change is considered then it is certainly viable to expand. How many tanks? I would recommend anything below 100 as the diminishing returns starts at 100 and move where projects can easily be neglected. However, who am i to tell you this ? So go ahead and expand because only when you’re there, would you be able to look back and say ah….. yes…. this make sense. One thing we can be certain of is the learning curve through more tanks and shrimps does gives you a more holistic understanding of shrimp breeding.
Hope you all enjoy this post!
What do you expect if you are new to this
What to look out for
It is becoming difficult to ignore the fact that with rising prices of commodities and inflation, things get more and more expensive and what do we expect can happen in the shrimp industry.
Eventually the shrimp industry will also be hit by the rising cost of raw material and logistics, however as we know these are not beyond our control, it is important to note what is truly important. Additionally, it is also a good time to reflect on what is necessity.
This is the same as what we will try to look out for in a tank that may crash. I have been discussing with a few breeders local and overseas regarding their journey and one of the common reasons for them having dead shrimp is because the tank crash.
What led to a tank crash
Many factors can contribute to a tank crash, one of the more evident issue resulting in tank crash is by adding too many things into the tank. I have been discussing with one of the US breeder who had his tank crash overnight. To his horror when he woke up, most of his shrimp had die of ammonia poisoning.
What did he do differently?
Nothing.
Yes he did nothing differently before 2 of his tank crash, but why would something like this happen. This is the fallacy of the shrimp industry and i chalk this up to knowledge and experience. As more and more breeders continue on their breeding journey they’ll realized that what they’ve learn in the beginning may not apply to what they are experiencing or doing now.
So how can someone do everything the same he has always been doing and the tank just ‘miraculously’ crash over night? He did the same water change and added powder bacteria.
The prognosis:
From this, we understood that over time the bacteria powder have caused the accumulation of ammonia that resulted in a spike. Some of the shrimps couldn’t take the spike forces them to force molt, some got stuck, and die. This dead shrimp over a few hours released higher ammonia, together with all these created an Armageddon. This is not even coincidental, as 2 tanks with the same method done had the same cause and effect.
These are two pictures of his tank.
What it really meant is the water parameters have already been peaking to a point where the tipping point came when the water change was done and powder added. Is there a way to tell if the tank is breaking?
Like one of my topics on ammonia vs porosity, where we cannot measure the amount of beneficial bacteria we can however measure the porosity of filter media. In other words, if the filtration is unable to handle the added powder the tank has reached it’s tipping point.
Knowledge
When hobbyist encounter such incidences majority may quit the hobby and totally give up. Some persist on after finding out new found knowledge. Those who continue will then get afraid of doing what they normally do. I think while powder bacteria is not an issue, using in large dosage and frequently after water change have caused the tank to crash when the filtration/media no longer able to convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrate, robbing away oxygen during the bacteria bloom process.
So while we may be in this hobby being taught different things, there is no one best way and i guess there can only be one way that suit you better.
Recommendation:
- While setting tank up, it is optional to add bacteria powder (it is the dormant state of nitrifying bacteria). If you don’t use it, it is perfectly fine.
- There is no requirement to add bacteria powder after every water change, colonization of beneficial bacteria will not be entirely loss because of water change.
- Clean your sponge filter to unclog it before they start jamming up
For me i treasure the simplicity of the hobby and to keep them as fuss free as possible, streamlining things, eliminating optional stuff whenever possible. This would then help to enjoy the hobby a lot more.
Hence, when there are issues such as tank crash, it is important to have a standby tank or emergency tank where you can immediately transfer the shrimp into the tank or hang breeder box to house the shrimps and hopefully you rescue them in time.
There isn’t much you can do at this point but to reset the tank and continue on the hobby with the new found knowledge.
I’m still in contact with him and i’m sure now he will now be able to breed back the number of shrimps he use to have.
Behavioral of Shrimplets
Shrimplet survival
If you are wondering if shrimplet are getting sufficient food after they are born, you are right to have that question because like all living things, survival is instinct.
All shrimplet are born with the instinct to survival and to be as close to food and shelter as the fundamental elements of survival. It is by no coincidence that shrimplets especially those that are relatively young within 14 days of being born.
This observation can be seen here where the shrimplet are all congregating at one particular spot in the tank. While there are some in other areas of the tank but it is very evident that most of them are near the vicinity of the kallax ball within the ceramic/terracotta dish.
In the video below, it becomes very clear that majority of shrimplet have congregate in that area. There are some found at the moss area but the most are on the feeding dish where it’s close to the food source. As shrimplets are small they thrive readily on available biofilm and kallax ball helps with that production of biofilm which the shrimplet can directly benefit.
While using the kallax ball it is important to note that it has to be soak 3 days prior to using and the effect will last up to a month, sometimes longer.
Biofilm
Are all biofilm create equal? The long and short of it is no they’re not create equal. The content to create the biofilm makes a difference in the quality of biofilm. If you have tried putting driftwood into a new tank you’ll realize there are some slimy white cotton thing appearing. Those are biofilm, however created out of the wood, which we believe have no direct benefit.
For our Kallax ball/ Kallax plus and lubao are carefully formulated and individually hand packed myself to ensure the goodness reaches your shrimp in good order.
The quality of this can be seen by various breeders around the world who have learn how to use it to their benefit.
While we understand there are quite a bit of competition in the market but we trust that the Original will provide the best biofilm for your prized shrimp.
Trust you have learn something from this article and appreciate the support once again. It has been a great journey sharing information with all of you and those who are keen in learning how to breed quality shrimps.
Signs, Internal, External
Looking out for signs
Basically there are 4 signs you should look out for to give you a sense if the shrimps are still actively feeding or hiding from stress and shock.
If the shrimps are hiding constantly it means the shrimp is in stress. Usually cause either by internal or external factors.
When they’re not actively feeding due to hiding, then it is a telltale sign something is amiss and need to be rectified.
In addition, if they are not breeding it could mean somewhere there are deterrence to that. Lastly if there were cases of fail molt, it is best to keep observing.
Internal
This is as simple as it get, why are my shrimp dying? What are the main causes of shrimp death?
- Water Parameters
- This is the first reason that your shrimps are dying by the numbers – 1-2 per day or weekly. Why is water parameters the number 1 reason for shrimp death? The old adage goes like this, if you want to keep good quality shrimp, first learn how to keep good water parameters. If your tanks have good water parameters, everything else will fall in place.
- I have in my other post talk about water parameters and my water parameters recommendation.
- Too little or too much water change
-
- i usually recommend at least 10% water change and if the tank volume is large (100L) and a few shrimp, a 5% water change will do.
- On a very stable tank and shrimp, even changing 50% at once hasn’t proven to be an issue (Remember point 1 and point 2)
- Stirring too much soil up during water change, creating a sudden spike and then returning back to normal
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- Itchy hand syndrome
- There is no need to add bone meal, Cutterbone, decorative item, tons of plants, feeding excessively, adding wood, adding rock, adding any other thing other than reminerizer during WC
- Mixing source A,B,C,D shrimp in 1 tank – stick to your trusted source
- Putting your hand in there every few hours to move decorative item around.
- Feeding more than twice a day – if you have a lot of shrimp
- Your feed should be altered to the number of shrimps and should consume all of the feed within 2-3 hours. If not, cut the feed to a smaller portion and feed. if not, consider adding more shrimp.
- Adding new soil in large quantity inside an established tank, tried that – adult shrimps does ok, shrimplets die.
- Insufficient biofilm and too high male:female ratio
- When there are insufficient biofilm and with a high male to female ratio increases cannibalisms very significantly which causes female to die.
External Factors
External factors such as :
Transportation and packing:
This is important as when the shrimps are transported it is a stressful event with the water swirling around. A good packing method is required to reduce the stress of shrimp. Inverted double bag will be good.
Temperatures:
Large swing in temperature upwards during heat wave of sudden day high above 28 degrees Celsius is dangerous. The heat stress can impact the shrimps and cause issue a few days later.
Shrimp like all living things die
All living things die – we like it or not. There is no way we can keep all 100% of our shrimp alive and this is esp. true if they’re genetically weak. For example i haven’t experience a PRL die for a long time but occasionally i still get a selectively line bred shrimp dead (it’s part and parcel of shrimp keeping)
Shrimplet Care
Overview
It is becoming difficult to ignore the fact that shrimplet survival is often less discussed because more often than not the shrimplets do survive in a tank. However, i also believe that in the course of their growing up stage, the fragile little one will be expose to elements that could put them at risk. Hence, i would like to share some of the tips in this post.
Hiding space
Sufficient hiding space is a critical piece of the puzzle and this is to alleviate cannibalism during molting. Shrimplets are small and when they molt multiple time to grow big, every molt has risk associated to it. Hence it is becoming difficult to ignore the fact that hiding space helps increase shrimplet survival.
Personally i like using natural plants to act as a natural hiding space and mosses are great in that. There are a lot of nooks and crevices for the shrimp to hide. There are certainly other kinds of decorative hiding space and as long as there are water circulating passing through them, i think they are fine to use.
Many a times a natural hiding space is also a food source which means it could double up like a grazing material and hide out. However, i prefer to keep this separated for the purpose that every placement have a primary purpose. For example Soil primary purpose is to buffer the water, filtration to maintain high quality water and beneficial bacterial, etc.
Hiding space offer a safe haven for shrimplet to grow up to a certain size before the risk of cannibalism is greatly reduced.
Grazing material
Grazing material is a necessity and i learn that the hard way because shrimplets are not able to compete with adult shrimp on daily feed. Even if the shrimplet goes all out and compete they may get injure during the process causing adult shrimp to immediately turn their attention to the shrimplet.
Having sufficient biofilm in the tank will encourage shrimplets to graze 24/7 so they can reduce the dependency of competition of food. Grazing material comes in all form like leaves, cholla wood and of cause The Original Lubao.
Daily Feed
It is also important to have a daily feed that is able to break down over time to provide shrimplet a chance to consume the daily feed long after the adults had their fill. There are plenty of food out there and i have tried a lot of them and some are really good and if it works for you stick with it. For my personal success i stick with using Hwa version 1 feed as it has a good draw factor plus the side of the pad breaks down into smaller pieces but the core of it remains hard for adults to pick on.
Other important aspect
I have experience that when there are shrimplets in the tank, adding new active soil is a big no no for me, the sudden ammonia spike when the soil releases is detrimental to very small shrimplet that are within 7-14 days after they are born. This is relative as sometimes we are unsure of how old the shrimplets are but in general i would advise that we do not add new soil to a tank that is establish and have small shrimplets all around.
Lastly, i would encourage to remove all shrimplet to another tank which is a grow up tank. This will ensure the highest survival rate of shrimplet however the points listed above like hiding space, adding the lubao and having good filtration still applies.
Grow up Tank
Why do we need grow up tank? There are quite a lot of benefits of a grow up tank and if you are like me is passionate about selective breeding, than a grow up tank is encouraged.
I was struggling in the beginning when i had to give up tank space for a grow up tank. However, once i started the selective process and using the grow up tank it became clear to me that there are a lot of benefits to it.
Benefits of Grow Up tank
I think firstly the most importance aspect of having a grow up tank is the shrimplets certainly have a higher survival rate.
Having a higher survival rate is understood from the following:
- Reduce cannibalisms by adults during molting
- Lesser competition of daily feed and grazing material
It is also important to note that shrimplet as small as 0.8-1cm will start mating and if you are selective breeding, this is not ideal. If an un-desirable male mates with the stock females in the main tank, this will means that the selection process is halted.
That is also one key element that having a grow up tank is critical.
Grow up faster
I learnt and actually also see from my observation that shrimplet that have their own tank grow up much faster than those who are together with their parents. This could be contributed by many factors such as availability of space and food.
In addition, i learn that to trigger quicker molting, perform a much higher frequency of water change such as every 3-4 days instead of the weekly routine. This helps trigger the shrimplets to molt faster and grow.
The faster the shrimplet grows up the quicker you can start selecting and kickstart the next generation of shrimp breeding by crossing back.
Taken together
With these in mind, it is important that having a grow up tank is important. They will have their own space, food and grazing material. Hence, for my own breeding tanks and grow up tank, i do see a significant increase in shrimplet survivability and also faster growth rate.
If you do not have the space to have a grow up tank, my recommendation is that we can re-think the number of types you would like to keep and breed. This will then allow you more time and space to focus on the ones you really like to breed.
Hope you learn something from this post!
Why do we need to differentiate
Selective breeding
One of the most critical aspect in learning how to differentiate male and female shrimp is one of the key to successful selective breeding. This post is really for the avid breeders who want to ensure and breed a line of beautiful shrimps.
When we are able to select male and female at a very young age, we will be able to control the selective breeding process which is important. Reason for that is because if a sneaker male who isn’t very nice breeds with all the female, the next generation of shrimplet will not be your ideal direction. Test your breeder the next time you get shrimps from them.
I get this question quite a bit and i would like to take this opportunity to share with you what i was taught in Taiwan on how to differentiate male and female shrimps.
The Taiwan way
There are basically a few ways to tell between a male and female shrimp when they are of certain size, however at 0.8cm onwards we know some of the male start to fly and mate. Hence it is important to either remove the shrimplet to their grow up tank or get the males out. However, to avoid any possibilities of shrimplet mating with the parents unintentionally, we will remove the shrimplet to another tank.
There when the shrimplet grows up, it will then be again split between male and female.
Differentiating Male and Female:
- Antennae
- Saddle
- Rounded bottom (female)
Antennae
This is the most accurate at 0.8cm onwards to identify between a male and female. I rank this as the top most reliable source to differentiate between male and female. However, this requires a steep learning curve as it is not as straight forward. I learn that in Taiwan apprenticeship to learning shrimp is to get the gender right. They do this day in and out to learn and differentiate and over years of learning they become master of it. I am very impress so far by how the Taiwanese have identify the male and female shrimp even at 0.8cm.
It is very difficult for this to be shown on a picture but the long and short of this “With the same body length, the male have longer antenna while female shorter”
This is by far the most use in Taiwan breeders to differentiate shrimplet between male and female. There are however still risk of Miss ID.
- Males go into fight and the antennae breaks off making them look like female
- Stunted growth making the shrimp look smaller than actual
Saddle and Curve Belly
This usually happens when the female shrimp is already of a certain breeding size where the saddle can be seen and Curve belly.
Trying to see saddle in Caridina can be quite challenging however given time you will be able to peek into the gap between the body and head.
The curve belly as one can see is a tell tale sign that it is a female, however if we reach this size to ID male and female, it is way too late from a selection process perspective, it has to be done way before that. This small yet crucial step can make or break the next generation of shrimplet.
This is also one of the reasons why all the shrimplets are house in a grow up tank to avoid unintentional breeding happening.
Other factors:
Such as curve 2nd carapace cannot be use as an ID of male and female because some males of high quality do have similar size carapace as female.
size is also not use when ID-ing the gender.
Pictures are not good at determining size of shrimp and hence do not send pictures of shrimplets and asking if they are male or female. Keep in mind that the antennae is in relation to body size. Hence, it is important that instead of providing the fish to you, teaching you how to fish is important.
So now what after sexing them?
Identification of male and female is the fundamental basis for shrimp breeding and it can be daunting at first, however over time and lots of shrimp practice you will soon graduate from the school of shrimp academy.
With the ability to differentiate male and female you will now be able to start splitting the males out from the grow out tank as we would usually only use a few males of good quality during selective breeding.
While sexing male and female is important, it is part of the entire process of breeding good shrimps including cycling of tanks and setting them up for success.
I’m sure you have benefitted from this post and a special shoutout to those who have requested for this article.
Cheers! and Peace out.
