Critters in the RCS Tank

[jcali10]

I noticed these little, light, pinkish hair like things on the bottom of my nano. Then I could have sworn I saw one moving, and I'm thinking there's not enough current in there to make that little 1/2 inch long thing swim like that.

So now I suspect they are worms, maybe Hydra. I did a little googling and found out that Hydras are pretty harmless, except maybe to shrimp fry, and that you can get rid of them by just not feeding them. I know I was overfeeding my Cherries on algae wafers. So I have to modify that behavior.

So I was thinking about doing a pwc and trying to vaccuum out as many Hydras or worms as possible and not feeding the shrimp for maybe 2 days. Has anyone else ever had these things? If so, please share your thoughts on dealing with them.

[PadreJP]

All sorts of little critters can be common in a shrimp tank. Hydra, planaria, ostracods, limpets...you name it. The only ones to really worry about are hydra, as they will indeed attack and kill baby shrimplets. (I have heard claims of planaria harming shrimp but I am not entirely convinced...I think the jury is still out on that.)

Hydra are very odd looking things. They are attached to some surface with one "foot," and then the other end of them will look almost like a mini-octopus or something, there will be 4+ little tentacles that will wave around. You can reduce their numbers just by doing a good water change and eliminating the (over)feeding. However to completely wipe them out is a challenge; several shrimp keepers have reported success using fembendazole, a medication commonly available at pet stores sold as a dog de-wormer. If you do a good search for "hydra shrimp tank" or something of that sort you will find plenty of resources on how to dose this in a way that kills your planaria & hydra without any ill effects on your shrimp.

In general, if you are feeding a shrimp tank--you are overfeeding. In a well-aged tank that isn't overloaded, shrimp like RCS will find plenty to eat just by foraging around and eating the natural biofilm & algae that grows on all of the surfaces in your tank. I had a 10 gallon tank a few years back that had between 120 and 150 RCS and I would go weeks at a time without feeding the tank. At all. And the shrimp did fine. I've never in my life heard of shrimp starving to death in a tank...but I have heard countless stories of people wiping out their entire shrimp colony by overfeeding.

If you absolutely feel you *must* feed them, then give them only the slightest, tiniest pinch of food every 2-3 days. If you can get your hands on some 100% spirulina powder (or flake) that is a great food and doesn't foul the water in the same way commercial fish foods do. Or if you go the commercial route, an explicit invert food is a good idea; Hikari Crab Cuisine has been a favorite of dwarf shrimp keepers for years and recently Hikari actually started making something called Shrimp Cuisine, a food designed especially for freshwater shrimp.

Good luck with it. Let us know how it turns out!

[ingg]

Have to say, not feeding goes against the grain of every single Crystal Red breeder I know of. Ask Ghazanfar what happened when he stopped feeding his RCS in the 215, heh - they ate his plants!

BTW - I've had Hydra in brand new setups with no livestock ever in the tank, and had them live for over 2 months before picking them off glass. Never food, never fertilizer, never anything other than water changes was put into that tank.

[PadreJP]

Dave,

I suppose different folks do different things, and often there is more than one way to skin a cat. However, I've been involved in dwarf shrimp for years and the sort of folks I talk with on a regular basis are among the best of the best dwarf shrimp keepers/breeders in the country. The kinds of people who have fish rooms of 20-40 tanks only...they don't own a single fish. Each of those tanks is a shrimp-only tank housing a different species, or in some cases differing strains of a single species, etc. People whose *entire* interest in the aquarium hobby is not fish, not plants, not aquascaping...nothing but keeping & breeding dwarf shrimp. And like anyone who has focused on one thing and done it for a long time, some of them are really experts at it. It doesn't mean they know everything, or are always right...but when it comes to questions like this I tend to trust what they say.

Since the original post was about Red Cherry Shrimp (RCS), not Crystal Red Shrimp (CRS), I didn't get into some of the specifics of how ideal conditions for CRS are quite different from RCS. Though when it comes to feeding, the difference is minimal.

Oh, I also think Ghazanfar needs to look for a different culprit for his plant damage! The only shrimp I've ever heard of eating plant matter are the Macros (species within the genus Macrobrachium). At the point of starvation dwarf shrimp might eat decaying or highly damaged plant matter, but they don't have the physical strength to rip apart healthy, living plants.

[ingg]

Okay, sorry, but here goes!

http://www.theshrimpfarm.com/faq.shtml#10

Most dwarf shrimp are omnivores. They will eat just about anything in an aquarium that is edible. Many of the shrimp will eat the algae that naturally occurs in aquariums and sinking pellets and blanched (boiled until soft) vegetables make good foods for dwarf shrimp.


http://www.ukshrimp.co.uk/index.php?opt ... &Itemid=81

often see the question asked "What is the correct way to feed my dwarf shrimp?", often followed by a debate over whether foods mainly containing plant matter or food containing more content from a 'meat' source are better. The simple answer is BOTH are important!

http://www.petshrimp.com/articles/faq.html

Shrimp are omnivorous creatures. They will eat anything that's edible. Both macros and dwarf shrimp can be fed on a diet of fish food and old, brown tree leaf litter that has been conditioned by bacteria and fungi in the tank.


http://www.planetinverts.com/Red%20Cherry%20Shrimp.html

Feeding the Red Cherry Shrimp is also easy as they accept virtually any kind of shrimp/fish food. They eat anything from blanched spinach, zucchini, algae wafers, shrimp pellets, fish flakes, bloodworms, and more. Red Cherry Shrimp are not picky eaters whatsoever. Feeding time is a good indicator of health and also if your Red Cherry Shrimp are breeding well.

Feeding is best done once a day. Only feed an amount of food that the shrimp can finish within 2-3 hours maximum.

http://www.franksaquarium.com/shrimp_care.htm

The type of food your freshwater shrimp will need depends upon the species. While it's safe to say that these animals are omnivvorous, there are some special requirements. Shrimp of the Caridina/Neocaridina group should have a diet high in greens (algae, frozen kale or collard greens, Spirulina tablets, etc), as should Halocaridina rubra. The pearl shrimp (Macrobrachium luzifugum), being a substrate dweller, should be fed more of a meat-based diet (tablet foods are good for this), although flake food is also readily taken.

http://www.shrimpfanatics.com/search/la ... y%20Shrimp

The Cherry Red is omnivore, although it will do just fine with a primarily flake diet. To help it grow larger, pellet foods provide essential iron and iodine beneficial for molting whereas plant matter such as spinach, zucchini or other algae type food enhance its color and vigor.

http://arizonainverts.com/speciesinfo/r ... hrimp.html

Like other Dwarf Shrimp the Cherry Shrimp's main natural food source is bio-film and a well matured tank with leaf litter and moss or other slow growing plants will naturally produce enough on it's own to support a small population. This bio-film is also very important to the young shrimp especially for the first few days after birth. RCS will also eat all sorts of prepared shrimp, crab, and fish foods, but care must be taken not to over feed as uneaten food may foul the water and even cause death. Cooked spinach and broccoli are also used to feed shrimp and they love it.



Specific to CRS:

http://brianstropicals.com/crystal_red_shrimp.html

The keys to breeding them are very clean water and tons of food. They eat way more than a fish their size would eat.


I'll stop there, but can find a TON more, especially if I start looking at Tiger and CRS breeder blogs....Then we have the simple logic of entire brands of food being dedicated to dwarf shrimp and nothing else... granted, primarily marketed to Crystals.




As for eating plants - put some Downoi in one of your tanks with starving shrimp, watch what happens. I know what happens in my tanks, but we'll watch in your tank. Also note how many times blanched vegetables are being noted as foods - many of the delicate submersed foliage is no tugher than blanched zuccini.




Yes, they will survive on algae to an extent. Note for example the Breeder at Arizona inverts - you can let them go with no food (sort of, he is still providing leaf litter, which is a decayed plant and consumed) for a small colony, but for breeding, he feeds. Each to their own, but I find it ironic that the little Hawiian shrimp in the orb are considered cruelty by so many, but this notion of starving shrimp in a bigger tank is A-okay.

Fish can go a LONG time without eating, too, when it comes down to it - but in the end you are either limiting breeding, or starving the animals, or both.

[jcali10]

Very interesting discussion, really, I have a lot to learn about keeping inverts. I've been keeping fish for about 3 yrs, plants for 2 yrs and shrimp for a little over a month. RCS are some of the easiest shrimp to keep, (beginner shrimp, they say) but of course not for me. I started out with a generous dozen and a month and a half later I have about 7 left, in a shrimp only tank.

I quit dosing ferts and excel regularly when several of my shrimp started dying. Then I guess I got carried away feeding them. I've always had a tendency to over feed my fish and now shrimp. But I am changing that habit, especially after seeing those buggy things in my nano. I've read that aquarium fish can survive a week or more without being fed, so it seems logical that shrimp should be able to do the same.

[PadreJP]

Dave,

Gaaahhhhhh! I typed up a whole huge long response to your last post but apparently I forgot to hit the "submit" button after previewing it so the whole thing got lost. And I'm too tired to re-type it all, so all I can do is give the Cliff Notes version.

1. Not all of the sites you quoted are legit (e.g. Brian's Tropicals is a disaster when it comes to inverts--gobs of food and pH 7.6 for CRS?!? Please...)

2. Among the sites you do quote, most of the experts behind those sites are people I know and in many cases, they would be shocked and horrified to hear that their sites were being used as an argument for overfeeding shrimp. Indeed Mustafa (petshrimp.com) and Bill Southern (arizonainverts.com) are two of the strongest voices in the shrimp world encouraging people to feed only a BARE MINIMUM, if anything at all! Indeed on both of their sites if you look in their forums regarding people complaining their shrimp are dying, both are often quick to point out that the #1 cause of shrimp death is overfeeding.

3. There's nothing wrong with occasionally supplementing the natural biofilm with other foods...IF you know what you're doing. Most of those who are new to shrimpkeeping don't know what they are doing, and would be far better served by not providing any additional feeding at all than they would be by attempting to add other foods and screw up their tank.

4. Another well-known fact among shrimpkeepers is that one of the first indications of overfeeding of a shrimp tank is noticing planaria, hydra, and other such creatures. It's just about the only telltale sign of overfeeding you might see before the shrimp start turning milky (i.e. dying). When jcali mentioned little critters in the tank, the first thing that went through my mind was "overfeeding." It's a pattern that is seen over and over and over again.

5. It is almost impossible to "starve" RCS. The surface area of driftwood, plants, rocks, etc. in a 10g tank can produce enough biofilm to support a colony of 150+ shrimp with minimal supplemental feedings. My RCS colony went from 10 shrimp to over 150 in about 6 months living just on the biofilm in the tank and maybe once a week a tiny pinch of flake food.

6. If you are really concerned about shrimp "starving," all you need to do is look inside at their digestive tract. You obviously can't do this on shrimp with an opaque outer shell but most dwarf shrimp have shells that are translucent and you can see inside the shrimp. The digestive tract runs the length of the body just underneath the top of the shell. To illustrate this, I attach two pics of shrimps from my own tanks to this thread: one is of one of my Blue Pearl shrimps with a full digestive tract (normal), the other is one of my wild-type Neocaridina zhangjiajiensis shrimp after he was in a plastic cup for around ~8 hours (so 8 hours without eating) while taking him to a friend's house to show his kids. I had just plopped him back in my tank after the trip when I took the pic. Notice the absence of food in his digestive tract. The point being, if you look at your shrimp and see full digestive tracts, then they are getting plenty of food from just the biofilm and other natural stuff in your tank. There is only a real need to feed them if suddenly you notice that they are not full of food.

7. I never intended to start a big debate in this thread over shrimp feeding habits! I was just trying to help out since jcali's initial post immediately threw up a red flag for me. That's all. Peace!

[eleontie]

My own experience : Crystal Reds eat A LOT. In a heavy planted tank, low light there is not enough food even for a small colony of adults.
In a tank with Cherries and Crystal Reds ( a 20 gallon) the CRS slowly (over months) bullied the Cherries into oblivion. The Cherries slowly stopped breeding and they were growing really slow, until there are hardly any left.
If you tend to overfeed , keep snails in the same tank, they will compete with the shrimp on the food, but the benefit is that they will not leave leftovers.

Eugen

[ingg]

There is a big difference between feeding and overfeeding. Nowhere did I mention that you should overfeed....

You also need to realize that these folks here are used to feeding their tanks ferts, nitrates - you don't get nitrate pollution in heavily planted tanks, it doesn't typically happen. THAT (nitrate poisoning) is the primary concern about overfeeding, not the food itself.

Very few of us keep moss and anubias tanks. Joe is dosing his tank, it is a fast grower compared to what a breeder might do. 26 watts over a 2.5g nano is not a typical shrimp breeding farm, nor is it the typical low light setup.

BTW, my crystal reds/blacks are in 7.4 - and I've had three of them berry up in the past week.


Please don't take my posts as not being peaceful - I'm trying to show that virtually every resource you can find says the opposite of what you are saying; including some of the sources I knew you were citing as knowing before and whom are due all respect for their experience (with the exception of Mustafa, whom I personally wouldn't take advice from on how to keep a pet rock, let alone shrimp ).

[jcali10]

I did a pwc, and cut way back on the amount of food given daily, now all the freaky bugs are gone, no more pinkish things all over the substrate. No more white swimming wormlike things. And as a bonus, I have a berried female now.