All about shrimp keeping

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Shrimp molt : How to manage this

Molting

Why of Molting


Molting as you already know is a process where the shrimp grows out of their old shell and then grow bigger. It is how it is like with snakes and spider as a means to grow.

Without molting, shrimps are unable to grow bigger and it is during this very fragile week or so which the shrimp become more vulnerable. During this time it is important that measures are taken to ensure water parameters, male to female ratio and hiding space are well established.

Molting is also a sign of new life where females molt so they can berry and have their next generation all in this entire lifecycle.




What Happens During the Molting Cycle


The long and short of the molting cycle begins when the shrimp reduce feeding to eventually stop feeding a day to hours before molting begin. During the process a new shell is being developed under the old shell which takes time to fully develop.

During the molt, the outer shell breaks usually along the top area where the head and back meets.

After molting, the shell are left in the tank for the shrimp to consume as a source of food. Now that the shrimp has fully molted out of the shell, the new shell is very soft and it requires 24-48 hours before it gets hard again. The faster the shrimp is able to harden the shell the better chances of it surviving.

During this period they are also very vulnerable.



Molting issues explained


Molt fail: 

During the entire cycle, the shrimp wasn’t able to molt cleanly as sometimes when we see a break between the head and back but the molt fail to come out despite several attempts to get it out.

The new shell hardens before the old shell is able to come out fully, and this is generally caused by a few factors.

  1. Water Parameters
  2. Source

Water Parameters:

When we discuss about water parameters against fail molt, it is important to discern between an occasional molt fail vs a consistent molt fail. When you have been keeping the shrimps for 3-4 months and there are generally no issue and out of the blue 1 shrimp had a molt fail, this can be classified as part and parcel of the normal lifecycle. If your shrimps are constantly weekly having molting issues it is generally due to water parameters.

There has been a lot of debate between what kind of water parameters will help reduce molt fail, but there isn’t one way of resolving it. Adding calcium will not encourage success molt because it is not the lack of calcium that prevent the old shell from coming out.

but is calcium important? Yes. Actually Calcium and Magnesium is required for a good successful molt but where do we get calcium and magnesium from? A good reminerizer have sufficient proportion of this and a constant daily feed with natural food like biofilm will ensure that the shrimp get all the necessary foundation for a good clean molt.

GH:

Over the last few months i have been talking to European breeders on how their levels of GH is which hovers around 5-6 GH whereas in Asia we normally do 3-4 GH. Is there any risk of concerns with the differing GH because Calcium and Magnesium are present in reminerizer? i believe that shrimps are hardy and being at the range of 3-6 GH is absolutely fine.

Types of Salt:

There are many brands of reminerizer and also the concentration of them are fairly different. For example while we tried different brands of salt some takes up to 120 TDS to arrive at GH of 3 whereas the ones we use from Hwa is GH 3 at TDS 90. This means the concentration level differs. If you have experience molting issues you might want to test you GH against your TDS level to test the salt.

Does Fixing GH fix everything?

It doesn’t, still you will experience fail molt because shrimp keeping isn’t 1+1. It does not have an absolute cause and effect. So there are other factors that need to be address fundamentally.

Fundamental: Water parameters

Over here it is important to discuss this as it is not a natural occurrence molt fail happen frequently. Usually it starts with the very beginning when the tank is setup and it is far more difficult to adjust the water parameters after it has been setup and running. I have discussed this in depth on water parameters here. Setting it up right the first time is much a better approach than to use band aid and further adjust later on because adding/removing later on is going to be a tricky affair.

I’m currently guiding a few local breeders and i can be very strict when coming to cycling of the tank to ensure strong healthy shrimp later on. i always believe in doing it first time right. anyway it’s easy to reset a tank so might as well do it right.

When they see my tanks they know the shrimps are really happy in there because the females breeds right after they release their clutch. The level of comfort for the shrimp is ideal and i’m referring to more difficult to breed shrimps.

Source:

Shrimp source is also critical in this as having a good shrimp source will also determine if the livestock are healthy, poor looking shrimp and unhealthy husbandry is a sure fire way of experiencing more of these issues. Choose your source wisely and ensure they have a good process and able to explain everything in much detail why they do what they do.



Other factors causing shrimp to die after/before molting


Male to Female Ratio:

There are simply too many males in the tank causing a higher probability of females being harass and eventually succumbing to death. This is because too many males will try to mount onto the female shrimp which during the process might injure it as the shell is very soft after molting. It does not really happen to males because when male shrimp molt they do not emit the pheromones like female do. So chances are the male will be left alone for the shell to harden after molting.

Hiding Space:

A dense coverage of natural vegetation will be the best cover for females and shrimplet to molt in peace because the natural cover act like a barrier against other shrimp. While we add coverage please note that females release pheromones so it doesn’t matter where, the males will keep flying around until they find the female. However, what it means is the female has the ability to play ‘tag’ so she can go round in some maze and lose the male. Do not provide coverage that has one entrance. Keeping things simple, using moss and plants are the best natural coverage you can offer.

As you can see a nice boa right after molting was hiding away from the rest, a good natural coverage.

Food:

I generally stick to the food with strong draw factor like Hwa v1 food. From this i know the shrimps are consuming the food which have high nutrients for them to grow and breeding profusely.

In addition, it is also important to provide biofilm which not only is the natural food for shrimps to get their nutrients, it helps water parameters as well. Kallax ball/lubao encourage the multiplication of microorgansim which indirectly helps a tank water reach a better level.



Closing


I hope this post shed some light on what it meant to get to a point where molting shouldn’t be an issue. The entire eco-system is fairly fragile and hence important to ensure at every check point it is well setup.

If you like this post, remember to share and subscribe so you get updates every time there is a new release.

Cheers!

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Do you want to succeed in breeding? – Inbreeding and Line breeding

Inbreeding and Line breeding



What works?


A shoutout to the breeder who have asked for this article to be covered, thanks for your support!

According to definition inbreeding is breeding very closely related shrimps with each other such as father-daughter (F0-F1), mother-son (F0-F1) brother-sister (F1-F1). Outcrossing is breeding totally unrelated shrimps or very distance relative, While line breeding is breeding lies somewhere in the middle.

Line breeding as you can see lies somewhere in-between inbreeding and outcrossing and can be understood as a planned inbreeding or a strategized inbreeding.

The purpose of inbreeding is to keep or enhance a certain trait or bloodline such as to continue for example the redness or size of a PRL.

The purpose of linebreeding is to keep the trait of a particular shrimp. For example red legs on a PRL.

So using both breeding method has it’s pros and con because too much inbreeding while can continue or enhance the desirable trait but run the risk of degrading shrimps of deform nature.




Where should i start?


When we first purchase our shrimp from a breeder, high chance the shrimps are closely related, however buying from a bigger breeder the chance of the shrimp being related are further apart.

When the shrimps are closely related, we can assume that they’re most likely brother sisters or cousin or close cousin. That way, we will start with mass breeding them before starting to select.

For example, i have selective took out from a brood 2 males and 3 females to selective breed, they are closely related cousins as i control the males that i use from 2-4 depending also on the number of females.

When close cousin breed, they will firstly continue the desirable trait but will not really enhance the trait and with mass breeding, the idea is to get as many shrimplets as possible in the shortest possible time. From there lock in after a few generations the desirable trait you would like and then start inbreeding.



When should it end?


We can safely assume when we purchase shrimps from a breeder chances are the shrimps are very closely related unless the breeders keeps multiple tanks of the same parentage and keeps a strict breeding methodology.

As you can see in the example if we start off with a pair and slowly breed them to masses and then when we have our shrimplets (also helps to prevent too much inbreeding as male as small as 0.8cm can fly), it is important to remove them. The whole idea is to create 2 lines and relative or half/brother/sister (cousins). This way it will help pass on desirable trait and minimize undesirable trait when half brother/sister mate and at the end of the continuum if one would like to inject yet another desirable trait, an outcross can be made when you purchase the same line from the same breeder as we can safely again assume they are distant relative.

This PRL has been inbred (crossback) to maintain the desirable trait of size and redness. Now i’ll start breeding to a good number and split into two tanks so that i’ll have cousins. It takes almost 2 years to get to this stage.


selective breeding “Be All End All”



Selective breeding takes time, years and years of consistency but many give up before results are seen. Selective breeding is the Be All End All in raising the quality of the shrimps.

This can be modified depending and minimally you’ll need 3 tanks to get to the desirable trait, i have expanded the number of tanks to split out the improvement tank and championship tank.

Main Breeding tank: when we start breeding 2M 8F of decent quality, this tank will continue to breed for shrimplets.

Shrimplet tank: this is where we will house all the shrimplets and once you have decent female, put it back into the main breeding tank. Over time you will find that there could be 2-3 good males and 10 good females, you can then take them out and put into the improvement tank.

Improvement tank: Strict inbreeding happens, and then the shrimplet can be scoop out into another shrimplet tanks and then the process above continues and then get to the championship tank which would probably be your goal to get there.

However, when you get there, the shrimps are fairly inbred, so now it will be good to split the tank into two and then get cousins so that the genetics pool do not get too similar.

Hope it helps! If not drop me a PM in messenger facebook and i can clarify any questions 🙂



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Soft value continue : Lighting edition (does it affect shrimp breeding)

Lighting and it’s importance




Using Light to your advantage


A shout out to a breeder down under and this post is dedicated to you. Your question regarding if lighting helps with shrimp breeding. I think the long and short of this is it will really depends. What kind of answer is this?

Sunlight is the food source of everything and it is important to the entire ecology of Mother Nature. So is lighting important to breeding, yes it does to a certain extend but does not have an immediate impact however critical.

The reason for this is because light helps plants such as moss and floating plants grow and make food which in turn provide shelter and food for microorganism. In the same line the plants also help cultivate biofilm providing food to shrimps. With this it may appear that lighting is important.

Does shining light for long hours make shrimps nicer? No it doesn’t. Light does not make a shrimp nicer by shining long hours on it. They too do not get sun tan like humans do. The only thing that is achieve certainly is a higher electricity bill.




Type of lights


There are plenty of light choices in the market now and are fairly affordable. When i first started this aquarium hobby it was only florescent light tubes and then then Pressured Lamp and moved on to T5/T8 and eventually now with LED with multiple colors for different purposes.

I have used quite a number of light sets before and for shrimps it is rather straight forward, since we are not growing high light plants, then there isn’t really a need to splurge on high end light sets. However, it is important that the lights promote growth of your plants at least and not so dim that even mosses don’t survive.

For shrimp keeping both T5 and LED are recommended, however i will now lean towards LED because it is light, doesn’t give off too much heat and have a very long lifespan.

T5 light sets are fairly heavy and i have retired my T5 light as there is a need to change the tubes annually and it is expensive to keep it running. LED on the other hand can be cable tie to the rack and or place on the tank and easily moved around since they are lightweight.

The prices for LED nowadays are as affordable as T5 if not more affordable as the massive shift towards LED. With more advance LED light set there is also dimmable feature, sunset feature, timer, wifi all inbuilt.

Currently because it is fairly affordable to get LED lights hence i’m using Chihiros normal white light LED which does the job well.




how much light is sufficient


Generally if you see plants such as mosses and floating plants growing then you have sufficient light for your tank. I’m using a 6000k Chihiros light there are 5 levels of light intensity i’m setting it to level 3 and they are doing great. When the entire ecosystem is well establish and mature, while light doesn’t appear to have immediate impact but overall it does help.

Just like lubao/kallax ball which create biofilm, while they don’t have immediate impact but overall it helps with the ecological system in your tank. This is yet another soft value that is often overlooked.

So does the amount of light helps or impact breeding, indirectly it does because a decent amount of light certainly still help with the whole eco-system hence all these small sum adds up to a successful breeding experience.

Hope you have a good read!



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Water Parameters the Hard and Soft values

Water Parameters Hard Value
I split water parameters into two different large category namely the Hard and Soft parameters.

This post is a follow up of the previous one where i touch on water parameters. This will help to provide a clearly picture of what it meant to have both hard and soft water parameters and the importance of it.

Hard water parameters are those that most of us use test kit to measure, this is where the hard values are tested and indicate a value corresponding to either acidic, dissolved solids etc.

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Staying the course even when you don’t see results


Movement and Progress


In the realms of breeding shrimp would require persistence and consistency as one would be hit by many obstacles along the way but should never give up. To progress in breeding requires persistence and keep believing when you don’t see results in a year or two.

On the other hand, i have heard some share with me that they’ve invested so much time and effort and also money on shrimps but after 6 months they don’t see results. Movement shouldn’t be confuse with progress. Movement is really about doing the things like water change, resetting tanks, feeding, and the day to day things all these are what i call the hygiene factor. The very fundamental or building block of shrimp breeding and does not equate to progress. We can change water whole day every day but at the end, if we do not progress in selective breeding than it’s just going with the flow.

Progress on the other hand is about taking risk and doing something different than what you are doing currently. It also involves failing but people are afraid of failure and fear of looking like a failure. I think failure should be an option. Without failing you are not even trying, to get something you never had, you have to do something you never did. Trying to see results with 1 tank is going to be difficult because if we would to discuss about selective breeding we should need about 2-3 tanks per type. So by taking risk to expand your setup, investing in good sourced shrimp are some examples of sowing the seeds to progress forward.





Believing when there are no results


This is a really difficult one because people need to see a cause and effect to believe. Hence the term Seeing is Believing. However, in shrimp breeding if you’re unable to see the results in the first cross back are you going to give up? How about selective breeding project not taking root? It’s easy to get discourage in shrimp breeding and not continue on the process of selective breeding. Going back to the drawing board to see where can be improve in the selective breeding process.

Keep working on it and failing and trying again. Getting more tanks, trying and keep trying. So while everyone knows selective breeding is the “Be All End All”, but it takes generation to get there and if you see the goal in front of you and keep trying and improve, i believe you’ll get there one day.

The successful breeders are not the ones that didn’t fail, they are the ones that fail the most, but they believe and keep believing and they are the ones that stood up every time they fall. That separates those that achieve their goals and those who don’t. It’s common to hear this “I don’t have this, i don’t have that, i can’t have this, it’s too difficult, it’s too much for me, it’s impossible, i don’t have the resources, i’m afraid,” Put all these away if you would like to progress because we are what we speak.

We can learn to believe like Shrimp does, they can’t see their egg develop unlike human where we can see our babies grow bigger in the mother’s tummy. However, shrimps believe that if she keeps fanning her egg, shrimplets will come and although she can’t physically see her clutch, nature made it in such a way that she knows even without seeing she will hatch the babies.





It’s hard


Well, there is a saying “if you do the difficult thing in life, life will be easy”. One example would be the honey bee story where they were part of a space experiment being sent up to space to see how 0 gravity affect their flight. When they reach outer space, the bees started to float. They must be thinking, life should be like this, easy floating around effortlessly. I don’t even need to flap my wings, i can float around in life, how wonderful that is. I just drift around and i’ll get to where i want to. Flapping my wings all these while has been tiring!

Eventually, the honey bee die. The bees were not born to float around, they get confuse, orientation got distorted. In other words, doing the difficult thing in life may be difficult but also rewarding.

So we can choose to take the easy route and float around (nothing against that) but do not complain that you don’t see progress on your shrimps. Taking the difficult route and persist on will get you there.

Hope this post would cheer you on to get to where you want to be and as such, it is those things you don’t see that brings you forward. Keep believing.



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Tips on when to reset your tank


Why do you need to reset your tank


There are a few reasons that resetting of tank is important and that can be first understood that what i’m referring here is on active soil. Active soil such as ADA/Tropica/platinum/aka/etc are soil that releases ammonia to the water column and also have the ability to lower the pH to an acidic level.

Buffering conditions wear off over time and the ideal state is no longer ideal over a certain period of time. This is one of the major factor influencing why a reset is necessary. The ability to buffer the water parameters like how it should has slow down drastically and visually it can be seen that the shrimps are no longer breeding as much/fast as they should.

A newly laid level of soil also have the strongest buffering condition which helps the eco-system in your tank to be in a much better state where microorganism and biofilm grows quicker than when the soil is near exhausting. Hence, it is important to know the reasons why it is necessary to reset your tanks over time.





When to reset


When buffering conditions become slow, water parameter changes and shrimp do not breed as frequently, shrimplets too don’t grow as quickly as they once would as everything in the tank is related to one another. This lead to the need to change the soil. These are visual appearance that you can probably see and observe.

I have used UGF with a lot of soil and also with tanks with just 1cm of soil, the buffering duration doesn’t appear to be exponentially different. Hence, while there are many methods of shrimp breeding, the one i use and follow is thin layer of soil but to reset more frequently.

Hence there is no hard and fast rule when to change your soil out however what i do is that i use two criteria and if one of them is met, i’ll reset. The first criteria is if the shrimps are no longer breeding as quickly as they should and the tank condition doesn’t appear to be favourable to shrimp breeding, i’ll reset.

Another criteria is when the tank is about 8-10 months old i’ll reset, considering that with a cycling time of 40 days hence it would mean i’ll reset once a year including a 40 days cycling time.



How i reset


A hard reset:

This means all soil plants etc are totally remove including changing out the filter medias everything to be brand new like setting a new tank.

A soft reset:

This is what i do most of the time.

  • Remove the shrimps to another tank.
  • Remove soil and water
  • fill up with new soil and add water
  • wash all filter media and change 10% of filter media.
  • cycle

A very simple process to reset the tank, without the UGF i could now reset much quicker and not be put off with the time needed to reset the tank.

i have much more success usually after resetting the tank when the water becomes rich again.



Factors delaying resetting of tanks


One of the biggest concern of resetting is where do i house my shrimps when i reset?

There are a few ways to do so, one is to house them in a big breeder box in another tank for some time and if a soft reset is used, the filter media which still have beneficial bacteria will certainly help speed up the cycling process.

Breeder box are not meant to house and breed shrimps long term but are like temporary housing until the shrimps are able to go back to their home.

I have heard and tried it before is to remove the soil partially during water change and adding new soil until 100% of the soil is being totally change out. For example 50% of the soil is vacuum out on the first month, then on the second month another 50% of the soil is removed. However, there are risk to this is because while active soil releases ammonia, it is important to note small shrimplets within 7 days may not be able to take the sudden ammonia spike when it’s release. However, because there are beneficial bacteria in the tank constantly, the spike doesn’t appear to affect the adults.

For me i’ll prefer to use a safer method whenever possible is to transfer the shrimp to another tank and so the shrimps location will shift over time as i kinda play musical chairs with all the tanks however usually only resetting one tank at a time depending on availability of tanks.




Summary


There are numerous benefit of tank reset and shouldn’t be put off to a “Later Time”. Instead of procrastinating about tank reset, i think it’s better to consider stream-lining the process of tank setup so that tank reset doesn’t become a burden to you. In the past i tried many ways including UGF and box UGF thinking that reset would be much easier, however, at the moment nothing appears to beat the thin layer of soil in terms of speed and ease of resetting because long term it all adds up.

Hope this post have been beneficial to you.

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How to keep the fire burning

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The All New: Kallax Ball

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Simplicity in Shrimp Keeping result in better shrimps

While i have been talking to a few local and overseas breeder, it appears that for those breeders that have been in the hobby for some time understood the meaning of simplicity.

Simplicity in Shrimp keeping is really tough and difficult because there are a myriad of products out there to disable your potential to greater things. I too walked that path, having this and that with more and more things, i got more and more confuse. Questions start coming up like if i use this can i use that? If i feed this should i then feed that, if i add this can i add that?

This is tough because unless we have ready available information if not the only way is to try. By trying means time, money and resources are invested in it.

In Taiwan it is often said “There isn’t a best way, only better way”, and this rings true for us as well when we keep things simple and only adjust ever so slightly on one element at a time vs changing every other week. Hence, it take time to find a better way that is suitable for you

For me my ‘better way’ is really now about keeping it simple:

  • Thin soil (1cm) laid in the tank as i have move away from UGF. Reason for doing that is because the time needed to reset a UGF setup takes a much longer time. Resetting a tank with thin soil setup only takes 30 mins per tank.

  • Feed a good staple food and supplement with a reliable grazing material

  • weekly water change using RO water

  • Every few months i’ll give the Totto filter a wash and change 10% of the filter media to allow new colonization of beneficial bacteria.

With that, even with the busiest schedule i’m able to at least still keep the hobby going. So for those out there who are feeling that you don’t have time to continue on this hobby, i would urge you to try another process that will suit you rather than being slave to the hobby.

Hope you guys enjoy this post!

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Should information be shared??

Today i had a couple of newly acquired friends where i had the chance to share shrimp keeping information first hand to them. Till today, i still believe in this. Information should be shared openly and as accurately as possible regardless if you are a hobbyist or breeder. First is to learn, unlearn and than relearn so to have all the information to be put into practice.

I always like putting myself in the person shoes and without holistic information, it is going to be difficult to setup a tank and breed shrimps. It takes a lot to grasp all the concept of shrimp breeding in one sitting. Hence, i always believe in a 1:1 sharing or learning session and i invite you if you are keen to learn on shrimp breeding!

For our Overseas friends, you are invited as well and keep those email coming.

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