TLDR; Getting into the shrimp game is one of the most frustratingly fulfilling hobbies you will ever do. However if you're just perusing to mirin my scape that's also cool.
Hello there! I'm going to be taking a break from blogging about fitness and mental health by blogging about one of my passions that isn't fitness. I wanted to write this because the many blogs and articles didn't really reflect my experience with them personally. Also I'm sure even if you aren't remotely interested in ever raising them I know people like looking at pretty things because damnit my shrimp are pretty fucking cool. With that said, let's get started!
I've been fascinated with water since I was a little boy. I especially loved the animals who live in the water. My uncles used to own an aquarium store and I LOVED going there when I was a wee child, looking at all the different types of fish! I didn't actually start having aquariums until I was 12. I'm 27 as I write this now but man oh man did I make a ton of mistakes along the way. I think I've went through at least 8 aquariums so far but I didn't start getting serious about Aquascaping until 2017. When I mean serious, I meant actually doing research and recreating scapes I saw online. I also started to read and understand more about water chemistry and the basics of botany to optimize plant growth. For those of you not familiar with that term, Aquascaping is basically arranging plants, rocks, wood, etc in a way that is extremely pleasing to look at. Saying that you have an aquarium is just that. No fancy rocks or plants. I'll most likely write an entire blog about Aquascaping sometime later because I love the Aquascaping hobby so much; almost as much as my shrimp.
I recall my first ever aquarium was a 1 gallon betta tank which I heavily overstocked with a blue Crowntail betta, a big ass 12 cent goldfish and a mystery snail at Petsmart. No plants, just colorful substrate. A few weeks later, my goldfish ate the mystery snail and nipped all of betta until he eventually died of stress. Not knowing much about what it means to be overstocked and what water changes were, the goldfish ended up dying last. By the way, one of the most common mistakes newbies make is to buy goldfish in a tank less than 30 gallons. Why 30 gallons? Because goldfish produce huge amounts of waste, are messy eaters and can get really big really fast. That 1 gallon eventually turned into something like a community tropical fish tank, which I then bought another small 5 gallon tank. Those tanks were replaced with a 30 gallon cube tank which was given to me by the same uncle who unfortunately had to close down his aquarium store to become an Ebay seller.
These are the only pictures I currently have of that 30 gallon. This was in 2009 so I must have been around 16. This was the beginning of the Aquascaping game.
I recall shooting these shots from a Sony Camera, back when cellphones barely had a camera in them.
But enough about fish, that will a blog post for another day. Today I'll be writing about how I got started into the shrimp hobby.
I began my shrimp addiction with my sister in 2014 when she started raising them and I was absolutely fascinated with these little critters. She eventually gave me her little 3 gallon and I started keeping them there. One of the cool things about shrimp is that they have a small bioload so you can really stock quite a bit in a small space. That rule bends a bit more when you have live plants because the plants will use all that shrimp poop to grow. I've raised fish before BUT SHRIMP!? I too was flabbergasted when I found out that there are freshwater shrimp and on top of that there's all different colors?! At the time, there wasn't that many colors to choose from other than red and red/white aka crystal reds. Now you've got blue, yellow, green, orange, black, brown, wild types, and all the variants in between!
Once I got my RN license, one of my first purchases was a new tank. Come on, I deserved it. You better believe I bought the best of the best. LED lights were the new hot thing and so I bought the best one for my tank. Nowadays they are super affordable and they pretty much are the standard for aquarium lights due to the low heat generation, increased life span, light intensity and lowered electric bill.
2nd scape. First try with shrimp. No ferts, just a sponger filter and bubbler.
I stuck with red cherry shrimp because they stand out so much against dark soil and green plants!
Ultimately, this 10 gallon shrimp tank didn't last long because they kept dying off more than they reproduced. I think due to my lack of basic water chemistry and not understanding the fundamental law of shrimp 101: they love stable water parameters. I'd also spend about $50-100 a month to replace these guys so I just said fuck it I quit! I told myself never again will I try with shrimp because I didn't have the best of luck with them. I'll just stay in my lane and just raise fish. This was 2016.
Now fast forward 3 years when I decided to buy another tank to celebrate paying off all my students loans. Initially I wanted a cube shaped tank as I already have a 21 gallon long tank. Also in no way did I want to try again with shrimp because I was still salty with myself. My girlfriend piqued the idea to me, "hey why don't you try again with shrimp? It's been a while and it seems like you definitely know a lot more than what you did before."
And the rest is history...
For this part I will share with you some general Aquarium advice which is pretty much applicable to whatever freshwater critter you decide to raise:
Plan ahead. This will save you so much time and BS when starting your tank. You want to cover as much ground as possible. For example, decide what kind of animal you want to keep. Do you want fish? Shrimp? Turtles? Who's compatible with who? How do you want your aquarium to look like? Do you want a sick Aquascape or are the animals you put in there the center of the show?
A bigger tank is more forgiving of errors. Nano tanks which typically are tanks smaller than 10 gallons are more prone for quick, sudden shifts in water chemistry which can potentially kill off your critters. These typically need to be monitored more closely than a bigger tank. However with tanks larger than 10 gallons, the likelihood of quick water chemistry shifts diminish considerably, depending on how big you get your tank. The larger volume of water will also mean a more slower, gradual shift of chemistry in a matter of days or months and not hours.
Understand the Nitrogen Cycle. If not, let your tank cycle and do its thing for about 30 days before adding in any critters or else prepare to be sad. I'll probably do a piece on the nitrogen cycle for tanks but for now, give nature a chance to colonize and form bacteria that can break down ammonia, nitrites and nitrates so you don't shock and kill your critters. It takes about 30 days for these bacterial colonies to develop in your tank and that's when you can put live animals in there. It probably speeds up a bit when introducing live plants because there's already bacteria latched on in the tanks they were in. My good friend Chris also uses old substrate from his older tanks and mixes some of it with the new substrate to speed up to process as well. Lastly if you don't want to wait that long you can actually buy those bacterial colonies online and you just add it in your tank!
If Aquascaping, find a picture online as reference. 9/10 times it will not look like the image you chose but it will save you a ton of time, energy and resources.
Use real plants over fake plants. Real plants not only look better but they will really help offload the waste produced by your critters. There are plenty of stupid proof plants out there. All the plants I chose in my Shrimpery are low-tech and slow-moderate growing. By the way, most if not all of those dope scapes you see online use real plants and real wood.
Once you've decided on a scape, buy the non-living things first and scape it. This is what they call the hardscape which is the outline of how your entire tank will look like.
Depending on how you want you scape to look like, I highly advise buying and filling up most of your tank space with live plants. If you're going for a minimalist look like an Iwagumi tank shown below then obviously you can't fill it up. The carpeting plant he uses looks like Monte Carlo which I do recommend buying more than enough to fill in the soil instead of letting it grow into it. This helps immensely with reducing algae growth during the first 3 months and will save you a lot of time and frustration when the algae start to fight you for control over the tank.
http://glassaqua.com/planted-aquarium-aquascaping-iwagumi-guide/
Now that you're done mirin GlassAqua's tank here are some shrimp specific tips which I wish I knew:
The mortality of the first round or two of shrimps you add in your new tank will be high. Like about 50-80%. Therefore don't be too upset or sad.
Unless you're super experienced and super lucky with the batch you get from the fish store, those shrimpies will not last long. The reason being is because they've accumulated so much stress coming to your tank. Typically most if not all of these shrimp come from some giant shrimp warehouse in Taiwan or somewhere in Asia. They've grown accustomed to those water parameters. Then they get put in a bag which is flown from Asia to the US. From the airport, they get transported to the fish store where they then have to reacclimate to new water parameters. Once they get used to the fish store parameters, you see them and decide on buying them. They go to your new tank where they for the last time have to get acclimated to your water parameters! That's really stressful for any animal, to be traveling and reacclimating 3 times! If you're ballsy you could look online on forums for people selling their shrimp who live near you. Those shrimp most likely were raised in one tank and so the only travel they had to do was from their original tank to yours which theoretically reduces stress and improves mortality. I don't think I would ever sell my shrimps....yet. I'm currently in the process of culling ugly, no so colorful genetics out of my colony. It'll probably take me another year or two to finally get the fully colored red shrimp but when it does happen, it means more shrimp cred(lul).
Shrimp prefer stable water parameters over anything else.
This was my biggest mistake the first and second time around trying to raise shrimpies. Too many big water changes, not dialing in the GH/KH/pH, etc. The shrimp I have in my 32 gallon now are just top offs with RO(reverse osmosis) water since it has no GH/KH and the TDS is super low so it doesn't mess with the water chemistry. It wasn't until recently did I start doing 10% water weekly changes so I can take great shots for the Gram which, again aren't enough to swing the chemistry. This applies to keeping even fancier shrimp like Crystal reds, king kongs, or pinto shrimps. The shrimp game can get really expensive really quick. Crystal reds range from $5 - 6 where as Galaxy shrimp goes up to $30 - 50 per shrimpie! I'll link and have pictures down below.
It's been said that you have to choose between a sick scape or your cool bougie shrimp. I say, why not both?
For me I don't have the funds to buy super fancy shrimp on a macro level like my 32 gallon to actually test this out BUT I will say for any of the Neocaridinas(Red cherries and all the other colorful ones) you can still have an awesome looking scape while having cool looking shrimp! I was successful with mines because I chose all low-tech stupid proof plants and fortunately there are plenty to choose from! However for Caridina(crystal reds/blacks/pinto/galaxy/pretty much any bougie expensive shrimp) I'd honestly choose to scape the tank to bring out their colors. Why? So you can show everyone how big your Shrimp(dick) energy is.
If you do decide to prefer a sick scape over shrimps then you won't see them often.
Hence buying 200 red shrimp initially to get the colony going. I chose this route and I don't regret it. In fact, I've come to accept that I love looking at a good scape vs interesting animals. My friend Chris on the other hand loves his weird exotic creatures which are just as cool!
There will always be a chance that you will have ugly ducklings even if the mom and dad are really colorful.
The culling never really ends I suppose. You could use those ugly ducklings by putting them in your other tanks. Shrimp are one of the best algae eaters and tank cleaners in the game. If you really want to be cruel you could just feed them to your fish in the other tank. What? Just saying.
Shrimp are curious bastards and will jump in a smaller tank.
I gave my girlfriend my 3 and 10 gallon tank so I could upgrade into a 21 and 32 gallon. Do I have a problem? Maybe. But it's better than doing drugs. Besides the point, if you raise shrimp in a tank smaller than a 10 gallon then be prepared to find some dried up shrimp on the floor. The easiest way to counter this is to put a lid on your tank but let's face it, it is not aesthetic at all. Another way is to make sure it's heavily planted so they're too busy eating and picking off plants instead of exploring the outside world.
Now let's head back to some progress pics...
December 2019. Thought I bought enough plants the first time around but I was wrong. Second time buying plants.
January 2020. Bought another round of plants. We're at round 3. The tank has been cycled for about a month so I bought 10 shrimp and only 3 survived by week 1. Yikes.
February 2020. This brown algae aka diatoms has overtaken my tank. It's part of natural cycling process though at this point, it is ok to add critters, especially the ones who love eating brown algae ahem shrimp. Knowing this, I added about 100 shrimp in here over the course of the month.
March 2020. Everything is coming along nicely. The balance seems to be coming along. I added some snails for the aesthetics and utility. Snails are excellent detritus eaters just like shrimp except they can eat a ton more. I also added another 100 shrimp throughout this month and that was when I cut myself off from buying more.
April 2020. Pretty much spotless of brown algae. Been seeing more baby shrimpies which is a very good sign that the colony is thriving and I'm doing something right.
May 2020. Plants have really taken off. So have my gravel which were supposed to be confined to the back of the tank but shrimp love to mess around and pick at the substrate. Bastards.
June 2020. My tank is pretty much at its equilibrium. Babies are swimming everywhere and my plants are growing exactly how I want them to grow. The only issues I deal with are topping off the water with RO water and figuring out which unlucky leaf gets pruned.
All in all, I love raising shrimp. If you were to ask me if I'm obsessed with shrimp I wouldn't disagree. I think they are one of the most interesting critters I've ever raised. They're so fun to watch even though all they do is eat and swim. They're very active all the time and you have so many to choose from! I get so much fulfillment when I look at my colony thriving so well.
Hopefully I've convinced some of you to get into this hobby. It's truly very relaxing and fun to watch your work come to fruition. If it didn't I hope you all enjoyed the pictures I took of the Shrimpery throughout the year. Until next time, I'll see you guys!
Sincerely,
Joseph L.
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