My Top Tips for Breeding and Keeping Shrimp

Good day everyone, welcome back to Shrimania. I'm receiving a lot of questions from you guys and most of them are repeating a lot. So today I decided to answer to the most frequently asked questions and give you a whole bunch of tips for breeding shrimps with an awesome result. We will talk about new shrimp tank setup, water changes, lighting, temperature and the most important things you must pay attention to in order to breed your shrimps as maximum as possible. It will be tons of useful information for you guys and we gonna find out why shrimp do this and I promise you guys the answer gonna surprise you. So make sure you stay around to the end and you never miss any of that. First question you ask me a lot if you need to use aqua soil when you set up new tank. Well it depends what type of shrimp you planning to keep and the simple answer is yes if you planning to keep Caridina shrimp and no if you planning to keep Neocaridina shrimp. Active soil helps to keep your pH and KH of the water low and this is what Caridina shrimp needed. They thrive and breed better in lower pH and lower KH. But the Neocaridina on another hand they prefer higher KH and higher pH that's why it's better to keep them with an inert substrate like sand for example. Second question should I use bacterial powder to set up new tank. Well you don't have to use bacterial powder but it's better if you use it. Your goal is to create a well established tank with plenty of natural food for your shrimp and bacterial powder is good food source for beneficial bacteria in your tank. Next question is how long should I cycle my tank. It depends on which soil you gonna use and because some of the soil can leach ammonia in the first few weeks. For example I like to use the Amazonia soil and it's leaching ammonia for the first 8 weeks. So it's important to wait until the soil leaching all the ammonia and this ammonia is good for cycling your tank because you probably know that ammonia is food for nitrifying bacteria and it's needed to be presented in the tank in order to tank to be fully cycled. That's why when you start the tank for Neocaridina shrimp you have to add some ammonia in the beginning by adding some food for example or bacterial powder and after around 4 or 5 weeks you can start checking your ammonia level in your tank and once it's gone that's mean it's nitrifying bacteria start to establish in your tank and it start to digest your ammonia and convert it to the end product nitrate and that's mean your cycle is completed and you can add your shrimps into the tank. So normally cycle is gonna take about 4 to 6 weeks from my experience. Next question is how long does soil last in your shrimp tank. Well it depends on how much soil you put in your tank. So basically the more soil you put in the tank the longer it's gonna last. Also it depends how rich the soil in minerals. So the more soil rich in minerals the longer it's gonna last. Normally the more expensive and well-recommended brands like ADM or Zonia they can tend more minerals. They also can have some different variants like light soil or more rich soil for example. I would prefer to use more rich soil because it can tend more minerals so it lasts longer than the light versions. I know some people like the light version of soil because this soil doesn't leach ammonia for very long time. But I don't mind if my soil leaching ammonia for a couple of weeks longer but at the end of the day this soil gonna last much longer. It also depends which method you're using. For example if you put your soil inside underground filter it's not gonna last as long as this soil which just laying at the bottom of the tank. But the benefit of this method is that you only need little amount of soil to get the same result. So the question is how much and how often should you change water in your shrimp tanks? And I personally change roughly about from 10 to 20% of water weekly. It all depends how many shrimps I have, how often I feed the tanks. If you keep neocaridina shrimps you can even do once in two weeks or once a month even some people do. Because neocaridina shrimps are more hardier, they are not as sensitive to nitrates as caridina shrimps so you don't have to change your water very often for them. I have a little mark on all my tanks and when I drain the water and once the water level hit that mark I know it's 10%. And once you drain the water from your tank it's quite important to drip your new water back into the tank slowly to avoid stressing your shrimp. I also have another question from you guys and you often ask me if you can keep shrimp in the tap water. The answer is probably yes if you want to keep neocaridina shrimps but still make sure your water is within the range just by testing KH GH pH of the water. And the easiest way to check if your tap water is good enough for your neocaridina shrimp is just to test your TDS. It's just to give you an idea how hard is your water. Let me give you a quick example and test TDS of my tap water. As you can see my tap water TDS is 374 it's way too hard for neocaridina shrimp. So the rule of thumb is if your tap water TDS is between 200 and 300 that should be good enough for your neocaridina shrimp. But still make sure you test your water before you're adding the shrimps to make sure it's within a good range for your shrimp. And if you're planning to keep neocaridina shrimps don't even think to use tap water guys. In most cases it's not going to work. It's going to be a good idea to invest in RO system and use RO water for them. Another question you ask me a lot if I siphon my gravel and the answer is no I don't. And simply because I like to use underground filtration in my tanks. And if you look at my tanks for example this tank you can see that most of the soil I keep in my underground filter and at the bottom of the tank I only have just a small amount of soil. It's simply because I don't like a thicker layer of soil because when you have a thick layer of soil there's a lot of waste can get inside the soil like food particles and shrimp poop which can be rotting inside and creating some ammonia spikes. So to avoid this I like to keep my tanks with a very thin layer at the bottom of the tanks. But if you have a thick layer of the soil inside your tanks probably it's a good idea to siphon your soil I guess. Okay the first question in this chapter is how long should I have my lights on in my tanks and my lights are normally on timer for 12 hours a day and sometimes even if I stay longer hours in my shrimp room I still keep my lights on until I just leave the room. So sometimes even I have them for more than 12 hours a day and the people often they ask me why I don't have algae problems if I have lights for more than 12 hours a day. Well it's because I'm using a good aqua soil in my tanks full of minerals and you shouldn't have any algae problems if you have a good aqua soil. And guys what I've noticed is when my soil is start to expire and loses all the minerals this is when I normally have algae problems and this is a sign when I need to reset my tank. Aqua soil in combination with a good light is also good for growing a dust algae in your tanks. And dust algae is probably the only algae your shrimp will be happy to consume and it provides a very easy accessible food for the baby shrimp which increase the baby survival rate. And guys I even advise you to put aqua soil in your neocaridina tanks it helps to grow your plants nicely and avoid algae problems. Next question is what's the ideal temperature for keeping shrimp and I would aim for temperatures between 20 and 22 for caridina and the temperatures between 23 and 27 even for neocaridina shrimp and try to avoid temperature higher than 24 degrees Celsius for caridina shrimps. I lost a lot of caridina shrimp in the summer when we had a nasty heat waves because I couldn't keep my temperature in the room low enough for them. Neocaridina shrimps are more flexible they will be okay in the temperature up to 30 degrees Celsius they become more active in the high temperature they grow and breed much faster. Lower temperatures won't kill your shrimps but they will start to be less active they might stop breeding as well. First question is which shrimp should you start if you're a beginner and I would advise you to start with neocaridina shrimp they are very easy to keep and great for beginners. And if you want to jump to caridina shrimp the easiest caridina shrimp is gonna be a tangerine tiger and it's very easy to keep as well and as long as you have a soft water they're gonna be breed like a crazy. They probably about the same level as neocaridina shrimp and the next level would be crystal red or crystal black shrimp they are caridina species and they will be slightly more difficult than tangerine tiger shrimp. Next question is should you have a lid on top of your shrimp tank to prevent shrimps from jumping out. To be honest with you it's very rare when shrimps jumping out from your tank it happened to me before but it only happened when I started the hobby and I guess maybe this happened because I didn't have a right water parameters for my shrimps and they maybe tried to escape from this environment maybe this is my guess but I don't think this happens very often and I haven't noticed it for years but if you want to be extra safe of course it's better to keep a lid on top of the tank also if you don't have a auto top off it also helps you with water evaporation. Next question is can you give us a tips to avoid planaria worms in the shrimp tanks. We all know that planaria are bad for shrimps they also look very disgusting and no one wants planaria in the shrimp tanks. Planaria likes animal proteins so to avoid it to get into your shrimp tank try not to overfeed your tank with animal based proteins such as flake food, blood worms or just try to remove all the dead shrimps if any shrimps die there in your tank because dead shrimps is basically is animal protein. Try to use food with plant based protein instead it also helps to keep your nitrate level low in your tank. Planaria lives inside the substrate and if you have only thin layer substrate in your tank like I have it also helps to reduce risk of planaria get inside your tank. And if you have planaria in your tank I would suggest you to use some no planaria products which is safe for shrimps as well and I would suggest you to use this product which called aquarium bioprotector and I use it against planaria and hydra as well with a great result. Next question I oftenly ask do the shrimp eat poop? Yeah the answer is yes they very like to eat poop. They like to eat snail poop they like to eat fish poop so it's very beneficial if you have a snail in your tank or even fish would be beneficial for shrimp as long as they don't eat your baby shrimp. And now watch what the shrimp is just about to do wait for it. Yeah the shrimp just ate it's own poop from the butthole straight to the mouth. The shrimp digestive system is very primitive and it just goes in a straight line it's quite difficult for shrimp to digest normal food because it doesn't stay in the shrimp guts long enough to be fully digested so this is why they like to feed on the poop of the snails or fish or even their own poop just to give it another go and digest it one more time. At the end of the video I'd like to tell you the most important things you have to follow if you want to breed thousands of shrimps. Keep it stable shrimp like consistency so it's very important to avoid sudden changes in water parameters changing large amount of water fast or adding any products which can impact your water parameters. Be patient and allow enough time for tank to establish and cycle before you adding your shrimp never rush it and add your shrimp early it never works well. Make sure you have plenty of aeration in your aquarium shrimps will thrive better in well oxygenated water. Good quality aqua soil such as ADA Amazonia is the key to your success. Don't overfeed your shrimp and remember that the main diet of the shrimp is biofilm which should be plenty in well-established tank. Thank you guys so much for watching and I hope you learned something today. Keeping shrimp is very interesting and excited hobby. I learned a lot in the past few years and I'm still learning something new all the time. Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one.