Red Cherry Shrimp and Scarlet Badis

[Nils]

Hey You Guys,

I have a 2.5 gallon Aqueon MiniBow, and I want to start a shrimp colony. I think that Red Cherry Shrimp would be my best bet, and I will be keeping them to clean algae and to provide a food source for t he Scarlet Badis. How many shrimp could I keep at first? And does anyone have any additional information on the Scarlet Badis? By the way, it will be a heavily planted tank.

Thanks,

Nils

 

[Nils]

Oh, and I will be adding a DIY Sponge filter, it's a lot better than the crappy one you get with the tank.

 

[Fishfur]

Scarlet Badis prefer live food, but they are very small fish. They will prey mainly on baby shrimp, so you'd need to feed other things too. Microworms are very easy to culture, you can also feed frozen things, like BBS, blood worms. If you can get them, black worms or daphnia are other good live foods.

Since cherry shrimp take about 4 weeks to hatch a brood, the most you could expect, assuming they bred faithfully every month, would be 12 broods a year from a pair of shrimp. You won't get nearly that many broods, so I think you'd need a good dozen of females and two or three males. Females can breed after they show a saddle, which is the mature ovary, and they must moult before they can mate as well.

Make sure the water conditions required by the Badis are similar to what the shrimp need, as soft or acidic water won't suit the shrimp at all. I'd have to go look at what the Badis prefer, I forget now, but if they like soft or acidic water, shrimp will have problems moulting in such water, and may not breed much, or not at all.

 

[Autumnsky]

What are your tank parameters?
also KH/GH if you know?

The female Scarlet Badis are very pale for the most part, not really colored much. My large female died about a month ago. I think I have just one little female left, no males. Since they are the colorful ones, they get purchased first and I never see them available near me.

They do like fresh foods. To me it is hard to feed them such a small amount of food each day. Frozen is what I am working on getting him. It just gets the tank dirty from trying, that is my personal struggle. If you have a snail in there it should help the problem to keep things cleaned up. A few shrimp aren't enough to clean that up well.

Cherry shrimp don't like the water too hot, not too cold.

If you have water around 7.5 pH or less, I would make sure to add in some Cuttlebone.

 

[Nils]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

Autumnsky, its awesome that I meet you here! I read some of your posts out on the Internet, I believe it was about Blue Tiger Shrimp! I really don't know my water parameters, but I had a Dwarf Puffer in there before, he died of parasites. I cleaned out the tank now, but I meant to keep the shrimp as a food source. I also have a 10 gallon tank with 5 cory catfish, should I just keep the Scarlet Badis in there and make the 2.5 a shrimp colony?

Thanks,

Nils

BTW, do Scarlet Baids eat pond snails? I seem to have an unwanted colony in my 10 gallon

 

[Autumnsky]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

Autumnsky, its awesome that I meet you here! I read some of your posts out on the Internet, I believe it was about Blue Tiger Shrimp! I really don't know my water parameters, but I had a Dwarf Puffer in there before, he died of parasites. I cleaned out the tank now, but I meant to keep the shrimp as a food source. I also have a 10 gallon tank with 5 cory catfish, should I just keep the Scarlet Badis in there and make the 2.5 a shrimp colony?

Thanks,

Nils

BTW, do Scarlet Baids eat pond snails? I seem to have an unwanted colony in my 10 gallon

The Scarlet Badis (SB)seems to keep to its tiny little corner 90% of the time, very rarely do I see it roaming around the tank. When I had an adult and two babies. Here is a pic of the tank (embarrassingly over grown, but the fish and shrimp liked it... )

I doubt they would eat any but the most newly hatched snails. Maybe someone knows if they eat snail eggs. I didn't see many new baby snails when the 3 were in there. I also didn't have any baby shrimp in the tank either! Over the year appx. time with the SB in the tank, there became fewer and fewer shrimp.

In the beginning of that time I still had the Sundanio Axlerodi Blue Neon micro fish and they were good little hunters. They ate the most of the babies prior to that time. They lived around 2 years in my tank before eventually passing on with their life cycle. I had a lovely colony of Fire Red Shrimp at the beginning of that. By the time there were just the Chili Rasboras left, and I had originally had them and don't think they were a problem for the shrimp at all. I at one time had counted around 125 Cherry Shrimp in the tank when I cleaned it out and they were the only fish, 4-5 of them in there. So no issues ever with them. I was gonna focus more on a microfish nano tank, since mixing them isn't the best situation for raising shrimp. But now I am back to wanting more shrimp!

So back to the topic of the Scarlet Badis. I would buy the best value (color quality not important) of the Cherry shrimp you can find and just let them feed the SB with the babies.

The SB is recommended for the larger size tank, the 10G I guess, but I think you could do one in a 5G, not thinking a 2.5G would be best, just in case as

The Cories would also possibly eat the tiny baby shrimp too.

Then you could use the 2.5G for shrimp only. For that I would get a nice quality of Cherry Shrimp. You could try a variety of Neocaridina which breeds prolifically for the seller, like a yellow, possibly Pumpkins, maybe even some quality Blue Velvets. Something you could sell to people if you wanted too.

I started with a kind of shrimp I called Rainbow because I had every color pop out of those guys. There were lots of blues which I liked (they were more blue grey though). They bred very fast and were really healthy, never had any problems with them and they were fun and easy.

 

[Nils]

Thanks Autumn!
I have decided that I should probably put the SB in my 10 gallon, and make a nice little shrimp colony in my 2.5 gallon. Would that be a good idea?
Also, do you have any spare velvet shrimp that I could buy from you? That would be great, as I can hardly find any out there and they are all expensive! I really love micro tanks, and I hope that I can have a wonderful shrimp colony in the 2.5! Thanks!

Nils

 

[Nils]

BTW, do you know how big amano shimp get? Those are pretty cool too

 

[Autumnsky]

I will check on my shrimp quantity levels. I have someone else who has been waiting a couple months to see how the levels are. There is another seller here, which have some nice BV too. I can PM you for the info.

The Amano Shrimp are awesome "pets". Hilariously funny, I think they are like Shrimp water ballerinas! They do not reproduce in FW though.

 

[Nils]

Alright thx for the information! I want some pretty shrimp. My idea is to have a drift wood centerpiece, and white sand in the middle, with brown sand or small, fine gravel lining the outside of the white sand. I will have lots of moss around the base os the drift wood, and hopefully I can get some Java Moss from UpScale Aquatics. Thanks for the help!

Nils

 

[Fishfur]

If you can get them, microworms are very, very easy to culture and are ideal food for Badis.. and shrimp eat them too. All they need is some oatmeal to live on and bakers' yeast to eat. They will survive for at least 4-5 days after they hit the water.. they'll sit on the bottom & wriggle, but are so small that unless you have a bare bottom, you likely won't see them once they hit the bottom. They just hang in for days, and fish can find them when they like. They won't spoil the water by dying in a hurry.

The worms are rather fatty, so they don't make a good daily diet except for fry, but fed 2-3 times a week would be good. Another thing you might consider, if you want to, would be scuds. Aka gammarus. These are tiny crustaceans that live on the substrate.. they sort of hop' n glide from one place to another, and eat algae and bits of anything they find. They are an ideal live food and because they are freshwater, they don't die.

Any scuds that are not eaten will survive until they are consumed. You might end up with some living in the tank all the time, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think they're kind of cute, but not everyone agrees with me on that point. But they are quite small and don't do damage to anything, so they're safe to feed. They provide good hunting for fish who will feed from the bottom, and Badis shouldn't have a problem finding them on the bottom. Keeping a scud culture is easy enough, a small tank with some plants, a sponge filter and a bit of fish food a few times a week is all you need to keep them going. Actually, they truly love algae and if you have a plant with algae on it, they'l happily clean it all off if you place it in their tank. Handy service if needed.

 

[Nils]

Thanks FishFur!
I can't wait until I get the shrimp, and I think I will get RCS because they are somewhat cheap, and are hardy and easy to care for. 2.5 gallons is not fair for a SB, so I will be placing those in my 10 gallon. I was thinking maybe a male and 2 females, if I can even get females. Would you happen to know if the SB will nip at my cores? I have had a male CPO in there with them, and I think that's just about all I need to say (The story didn't end too well)

Nils

 

[Nils]

I finally set up the actual tank, and my hermit crabs have a new substrate, Yipee! But anyway, I went to UpScale Aquatics today, and it was great! They have tons of nifty little animals and plants, and the RCS were b-e-a-u-tiful. I can't wait until the driftwood is soaked and has all of the chemicals gone, then I can take water from the established 10 gallon and get the shrimp!

Nils

 

[Autumnsky]

I finally set up the actual tank, and my hermit crabs have a new substrate, Yipee! But anyway, I went to UpScale Aquatics today, and it was great! They have tons of nifty little animals and plants, and the RCS were b-e-a-u-tiful. I can't wait until the driftwood is soaked and has all of the chemicals gone, then I can take water from the established 10 gallon and get the shrimp!

Nils

Sounds like a nice place to shop and window shop.

What kind of driftwood?

 

[jennandjuicetm]

Scarlet Badis prefer live food, but they are very small fish. They will prey mainly on baby shrimp, so you'd need to feed other things too. Microworms are very easy to culture, you can also feed frozen things, like BBS, blood worms. If you can get them, black worms or daphnia are other good live foods.

Since cherry shrimp take about 4 weeks to hatch a brood, the most you could expect, assuming they bred faithfully every month, would be 12 broods a year from a pair of shrimp. You won't get nearly that many broods, so I think you'd need a good dozen of females and two or three males. Females can breed after they show a saddle, which is the mature ovary, and they must moult before they can mate as well.

Make sure the water conditions required by the Badis are similar to what the shrimp need, as soft or acidic water won't suit the shrimp at all. I'd have to go look at what the Badis prefer, I forget now, but if they like soft or acidic water, shrimp will have problems moulting in such water, and may not breed much, or not at all.

FYI Nils, Pet Supplies Plus has Blackworms but you have to get them before they run out, they come in every Wednesday! ($1/oz last I checked) I'm currently attempting to culture them. I also have cultures of microworms and banana worms growing out of my ears here in North Charlotte if you wanted a starter culture to just try it out and could meet me close I could easily give you a dollop of either or both.

 

[Nils]

I got myself a cup full of java moss and the drift wood is Mopan wood, which went for $10 at PetCo. I have black sand in the middle, and medium sized gravel on the outsides. The java moss will be spread over the driftwood, and I will possibly get some Anubias in the corner, with other plants that I'm going to get from the store. And jenn, thanks for the offer, but I'm only 12, and I doubt my parents would be willing to drive out somewhere for some black worms . But thanks anyway. I can't wait till I get the shrimp, and then possibly the SB in with them

Thanks,

Nils

 

[Nils]

So I finally actually siphoned some of the water out of my 10 gallon into the 2.5, and now I added doe moss over the driftwood. I have a marimo ball in the right corner, and it all looked very nice. The filter is running nicely. Everything ready for the shrimp

Nils

 

[Coursair]

So I finally actually siphoned some of the water out of my 10 gallon into the 2.5, and now I added doe moss over the driftwood. I have a marimo ball in the right corner, and it all looked very nice. The filter is running nicely. Everything ready for the shrimp

Nils

Unless the tank is cycled and stable and has plenty of plants, I'd say it's not quite ready yet ?




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[Nils]

Well, since I have used water that is already from a cycled tank, I am guessing that I won't have to cycle, will I? And I am adding hornwort/anubias in the back of the tank

Nils

 

[Fishfur]

BB do not live in water. They live on solid surfaces. So water alone won't cycle a tank. Used media from an established filter will cycle a new filter in a day or two, for a light load of livestock. Gravel will have some BB on it, but it will take a bit of time for them to colonize a filter. You can also clean a used filter and pour the dirty water left over into a new filter. It will have quite a lot of BB in it, which will take hold within a few days.

Plants speed up a cycle, they also bring bacteria of their own and possibly some of the BB as well, it may depend on where they were grown and for how long, how much BB they might have on them.