Very beautiful crystal red shrimps. Either CRS or blue tiger shrimp will be my next shrimp species on the wanted list.
Have you had any other dwarf shrimp species in the past?
How much did it cost you for 15 of them? SS+ doesn't come cheap. Where did you buy them?
You also need to be very careful. Since crystal red shrimps are the result of generations of selective breed, they are one of the most sensitive dwarf shrimps in aquarium hobby. You must keep excellent water quality. Rather feed "not enough" than "too much". Once your tank is established longer, there will be natural occurring algae for them to feed on. They only need very little extra food supplement.
Yup the fishless cycle definitely paid off in the end now I have a beautiful tank. I don't plan to carpet my tank with moss, but it would be a very cool idea and would look pretty awesome imo.
Ram, I don't know if you browse other forums, but The Planted Tank is where I ordered my shrimp from in Power Sellers section of the forum. They have very trust worthy members on there that strictly deal in shrimping I would recommend you getting shrimp there. The shrimp weren't cheap at all, but for $6.00 a pop for SS+ I thought it was a deal and couldn't pass it up I didn't even get express shipping for these delicate species they came priority in about a day perfectly safe from one of the members of TPT. This is my first time raising dwarf species it isn't hard at all as long you maintain perfect water conditions with temperatures around 69-74 degrees fahrenheit and supplement the water when needed during water changes with RO/DI. This is my current water parameters that house 15 CRS, 3 Oto's, and 1 nerite.
pH: 6.4
gH: 6
kH: 0
TDS: 145
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 5ppm - I'm trying to bring this down close to 0 as I can with 10% weekly water changes and more thriving plants obviously i.e. moss, floaters, etc.
P.S. I just found one berried female (pregnant) CRS this morning, oh happy days!
5ppm nitrate is perfectly fine. In typical aquarium people simply keep it at below 40ppm. It is said that for sensitive fish 20ppm is better but no one's fish or shrimp had died to 40ppm nitrate as I know. There is no question though lower is always better, since you will hardly find 5ppm nitrate concentration in a natural environment.
If you want to keep nitrate close to 0ppm, 10% water change once a week might not be enough. I do 30% weekly partial water change to each of my tanks, and all of them have nitrate of 10~20ppm. Although the bio-load in my tanks are a lot heavier.
I got my shrimps from aquabid. Red Cherry shrimps were $14 shipped for 10. Yellow shrimps were $30 shipped for 13.
Yeah, any of these dwarf shrimps will breed fast if the condition is ideal. It took only 3~4 months for 13 of my Yellow shrimps turned to 100~150. I basically relocated 50 of them to another aquarium, and I didn't even notice any less shrimps.
sorry the picture couldn't be better I used my phone.
