opinions - regular cherry shrimp or fire red?

[KrystaWB]

Hi all,

I need some opinions... I am getting ready to add some cherry shrimp to one of my tanks - it has been up and running for a while and all is good. I am fairly new to shrimp but I have managed to keep a couple of Amanos alive for 3+ weeks now

I just want to add some shrimp because I think they are cool... I am not going to be breeding to sell but might end up having to sell off any extras if I get too many in the long run.

I am getting my shrimp from a local home breeder (who is well regarded in the local aquarium community here from what I can see). I am looking at both regular RCS and fire red and as far as I can tell the only difference is the quality of the colour - there is no difference in the hardiness between the varieties. is that correct?

the main thing that is concerning me is price - I am a bit worried about spending $4 per fire red vs $1.30 for regular RCS when I haven't had them before. So my question is do I go with regular old cherry shrimp or do I upgrade and get fire red? or a mix of both? I know mixing grades will probably lead to a colour quality somewhere in the middle eventually.

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

[Autumnsky]

Hahaha, I always have thoughts and opinions.

A brief of them would be try the less expensive ones first.

It is always rewarding breeding and having a thriving shrimp colony. If at the point you have been successful and learned the routine and care of the little guys, decide which ones you would like to try next.

During the year you might have the Cherry Shrimp, your ideas may change anyway to a new variant and you might be faced with changing colonies anyway, for the new group.

But. If you are planning to use the same exact tank, you may find you can't quite get all the babies from the original Cherries removed from the tank. Then there could be neos mixing and diluting / changing the colors of your shrimp. Though you could always remove any shrimp which grows up / is eventually big enough to see, and is obviously not the new color.

If you have a matured and stable tank more than a few months old you may be more successful at starting with a higher quality color and price point. And if you have kept tanks in the past and have a good previous success rate with maintaining a stable and healthy environment, and can devote the necessary time with a busy schedule / anticipated life plan in the future.

You can always find someone looking to buy any type of Cherry shrimp in your local area. Pricing may vary but the average common price had been about $1.00 each for young pre adult to adult shrimp. Hobby business have more invested and need more money to get out usually. And future prices like everything probably will be going up. Getting more locally bred shrimp is usually a really great option! Less stressful for the shrimp and generally make the transition more easily.

So you would easily be able to make back some money if your shrimp keeping works out well.

When I started shrimp, I wanted 2 specific kinds and I have had both. It went okay and it made me very happy. But over the past 10 years I have a good variety and it hasn't always went perfectly. Many times whole groups of shrimp didn't make the acclimation transition. And I wouldn't even want to try and count how much money I have spent on the hobby.

Overall it makes me very happy! (there are struggles but experience, of your own and that of others sure helps)

And back to deciding future shrimp upgrades, creating a new tank isn't always smooth sailing, sometimes it takes a good deal of time and preparation to get it stabilized.

The more fancy stuff you use like special substrates with high nutrients, high lighting and CO2 and specialized ferts, high need plants, and more delicate line bred shrimps, the more areas for headaches there are.

So low tech and simple set ups, can really be your shrimps friend starting out.

 

[KrystaWB]

thanks for the thoughts...

my initial instinct was to start with the cheaper cherries and then see how things go but if I do decide to upgrade to the fire reds (or another colour of neo) they would most likely be going in that same tank... so getting out all of the less desirable ones could be a challenge as you stated... I do have 2 other tanks that I could put the culls in although not sure how long they would last (betta tank but he's a wuss and then our large community tank with a dwarf gourami, bristlenose, cories, amanos, etc). I would also be willing to sell the culls off cheap locally so that's not an issue - I am not trying to make money on this.

I am pretty anal about the upkeep on my tanks and have supercharged the filtration on all of them already with tons of biomedia. I kept community tanks years ago but got out of the hobby for a while due to living arrangements (couldn't have tanks in my 4th floor apartment )

I am sticking to low tech tanks so anything other than neos is most likely out... and if we add another tank it would probably not be for a while as we went from 0 to 3 in the space of a month and if I try and add another one my partner is going to kill me

one final question... how many shrimp would you recommend starting with? my local seller sells them as singles or you can get a package deal - right now the cherries are 15 for $20 and then fire red are 10 for $40... so the amount needed might also influence my decision. I would hate to buy a bunch of fire reds and then have them all die off (I don't think they will but you never know)...

 

[jake37]

There is a trustful person selling some blood mary shrimps for $1.5 each (darn good price) on planted tank for sale forums. Basically he said he was moving and has 1000 to get rid of.... just a suggestion if you don't care on exact colour.

 

[Autumnsky]

If you feel that your designated shrimp tank is and has been running stable for a month without parameter issues and you are willing to keep check on the water parameters after adding them, then maybe try the Fire Reds to start.

The other consideration for shrimp other than common Cherries would be your water tap water parameters.

If you can take the readings for the tap water pH, let water sit for 24-48 hours and see what the pH settles down to.

KH /calcium alkalinity

GH general hardness

TDS

If you made the commitment to use remineralized RO (reverse osmosis) then you would have control over the water all the time and make it whatever parameters you need.

What size is your designated shrimp tank?

The larger amount would be better (especially if you go for the Fire reds) since it gives you a kickstart of breeding shrimp asap. The colors of a group of shrimp like the Fire Reds /FR will stay more stable breeding one group together. Reason is due to adding a different group of "FR" may have slightly different genetics and damage the color bred from the original group, dilute the genes from the line developed from the line breeding of your first group.

Have heard a number of stories from people saying there were color issues after adding shrimp from different breeders /sources. I also had a problem experience adding shrimp to an existing colony, even though they came from the same supplier.

Down the road you can always add shrimp together and test out what you get. Mainly important for a special color line.

Common Cherry shrimp is not usually an issue there.

When I was getting my last main shrimp tank ready, I added a Betta (before shrimp) to it for ammonia and to give time for the biofilm to grow and create a great environment for the incoming shrimp. When it was time for shrimp Betta went to a new location. Then put in the shrimp.

Glasgarten Bacter AE is a food of sorts for biofilm. I use it but at a much less amount and less often than recommended on the directions. Since I seem to see shrimp die off when using it at the amount recommended for dosing. You could use it while you had another fish in the tank, and it was still stabilizing and maturing.

The biofilm is what the shrimp and especially babies feed on constantly.

A tank with new substrate new rock new tank, and new plants have nothing beneficial for the shrimp. No biofilm.

So also consider using plants and stones you have had for a long time to transfer into your newer shrimp tank, and put the newest plants and stones to the older matured tank.

 

[ADsnail]

And then sometimes it's just nice to go with whatever looks cool to you. I bought mixed colors without a plan to breeding or color control, just wanted to see different colorful guys darting around. Three things happened:

-I discovered I like the stripey ones the most, so bought more of those
-They must be happy, because they're producing children like crazy
-I'm watching the nerite snail in there feasting on fry...uh oh, didn't know that would happen so I guess there's some natural selection going on

I bought them some lotus pods for apartment dwelling and bio-food-wellness and that's when they went crazy with joy and the population exploded. What started as an "I'll try it" has now become my current favorite thing in the tanks to watch.