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Over the past few years I've bred thousands of cherry shrimp and in this video I'm going to share
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with you everything I know about setting up a breeding colony of red cherry shrimp. Hello friends
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welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Richard and I'm a fish and shrimp breeder
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based in the UK. So to kick us off let's start with our shrimp breeding colony and you want to
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acquire at least 10 to 15 good quality shrimp to start off your breeding colony. 10 I would say is
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an absolute minimum 15 is better but essentially the more you have the greater the diversity of
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shrimp you'll have and the greater the chance of a good number of males and females now if you buy
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yourself less than 10 there is a very real possibility you will end up with the situation
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i have with my orange really shrimp i bought 10 shrimp home from the store truth be told it was
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the last 10 shrimp they had i had no choice i took what was there unfortunately one passed away within
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a day or two that happens that left me with nine shrimp and after a week or two i realized all nine
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were female i now have a fabulous little colony of nine female orange really shrimp but unless
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i add some males to it nine is never going to become 90 or 900 simply can't happen the more
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shrimp you start off with the greater the chances you will end up with a good number of males and
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a good number of females in an ideal world you will at least one male for every four females
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That's a great ratio. You want to start off with good quality stock. If I were going out today to
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buy some shrimp, the first place I would go is a local breeder. Somebody who lives in my area
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but hopefully has the same water as me, and with a bit of luck has a good reputation for breeding
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quality shrimp. I want to be able to go to their house, look at their shrimp, and see how they do
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it. See what their setup is, and try and replicate that at home. If I don't have a good local breeder
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then my next step would be my local store. I would head down to my local fish store. Again
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hopefully they would have a good selection of shrimp, but the chances are if they're local to
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me, they're working with very similar water to the water I have at home. Typically good quality
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local fish stores won't just have one tank of shrimp. They might have two or three, five
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Hopefully they have a good selection of colors. Take your time and try and source the best quality
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shrimp you have. Now here's an important tip. If you're choosing red cherry shrimp, typically
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the females have all the colour. The deep, dark, bright coloured ones will be female. The less
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colourful, even translucent ones are typically male. What you don't want to do is make the mistake
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of going to the store and buying 10 or 15 dark, deep, red, bright shrimp because you think they're
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the best ones because the chances are they'll all be female. You have to have at least one male
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and 1 to 10, 1 to 15 is, in my experience, too big a ratio. You need to have at least one male
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for every three or four females. And that might mean you buy four deep, dark, bright red females
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and one smaller, less colourful, less interesting male. Don't fall into the trap of just being sold big, bright, red, colourful females and no males
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Now, of course, if you don't have a local breeder and you don't have a local store, then luckily we live in the world where we can just go on the internet
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And there are countless places you can buy shrimp from these days
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Personally, I favour eBay. I love buying and selling shrimp on eBay
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But there's also AquaBeard and other online retailers who may be in the same country as you
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who ship across your country and you can buy shrimp from them. But try and start off with at least 10 to 15 good quality shrimp
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with a good mix of males and females. Now once you have your shrimp the next thing you need is a tank to put them in So what the ideal breeding setup Well typically I would say a 5 or a 10 gallon tank is a great way to start
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The larger the aquarium you pick, the easier it is to maintain a stable environment for your shrimp
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But you don't want to go too large. If you put 10 shrimp in a 300 gallon tank, they're going to struggle to find one another
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The females are going to be ready to mate, the males won't be able to track her down. Stick with something 5, 10, 12 gallons, whatever it might be, set your colony up in there
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Of course you're going to want a substrate. You don't need to overcomplicate it at this stage
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Simple gravel is absolutely fine. You could use sand, you could use fluval stratum
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you could use crushed coral. What you use generally doesn't matter to the shrimp
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but don't get bogged down with expensive active substrates that typically leach a lot of ammonia
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into the water and are going to give you headaches further down the line. Go for something basic
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something that looks good but fits your budget. Your shrimp won't care. One thing your shrimp will
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care about is the parameters of the water we keep them in. And what do we mean when we say parameters
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Well parameters can refer to dozens of different things but typically as shrimp keepers we're
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referring to the water temperature, the pH, the GH or general hardness and the KH which is the
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carbonate hardness. Now in this video I don't want to get too bogged down in a deep dive on
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parameters but I put a card up the top to another video I did which really goes in depth if you want
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to find out more. So what are the ideal parameters for breeding a red cherry shrimp? Well the first
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one is temperature. Now red cherry shrimp can survive in water that ranges anywhere from about
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59 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit which is 15 to 30 degrees Celsius but the ideal breeding temperature
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is somewhere between about 70 and 80, which is 21 and 26 degrees Celsius. If we keep our shrimp
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at this temperature, they will typically be in breeding mode. They will grow, they will eat
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they will want to produce more babies. It's a great temperature zone to keep them in
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When it comes to the pH of our water, we ideally want our pH to be somewhere between about 6.5
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and eight. When it comes to the the GH of your water, the general hardness, ideally the cherry
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shrimp want it to be somewhere between four and ten degrees of general hardness which is about 70
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to 180 parts per million and they want a carbonate hardness of about one to eight degrees of carbon
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hardness which again is about 20 to 140 ppm. As I say if you want to really deep dive into the water
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parameters for your cherry shrimp check out the video listed above. So what else can you add to
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your tank. You've got your 10 gallon tank, you've got your gravel, you know what your water parameters
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are. Well next you want to think about decoration. What can you add to that tank? There are two things
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I recommend for everybody to add to a shrimp breeding tank and they are a good pile of rocks
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and live aquarium plants. Why would you need a good pile of rocks? Well recently I've been
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following some advice I was given which is that female cherry shrimp when they're ready to drop
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their babies because they carry their eggs under their body, when they're ready to drop those babies
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whilst they don't take any parental care of the babies they do look for somewhere safe to deposit
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them and apparently a good pile of rocks is absolutely ideal for cherished shrimp babies
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the female will release the babies they will head down into that pile of rocks where they might
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spend the first one two three weeks typically there'll be malmen detritus gathered there that
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they can feed on typically they're safe from predators and they can spend their time there
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getting over those crucial first week or two when they most vulnerable Now we also always add live aquarium plants If it was just a breeding tank I would always go for java moss Java moss is a wonder plant when it comes to breeding shrimp Baby shrimp again
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much like the pile of rocks, will head into the java moss where they will be safe from predators
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if you keep any fish in the tank. But also java moss, I think in my experience, is the most amazing
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place for biofilm to develop. And biofilm is a naturally occurring layer that builds up on
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everything in your aquarium. It's essentially made of microscopic bacteria and crustaceans
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and start to valgi. And it's that slightly slimy feel that when you take anything out of your aquarium
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it just feels not wet, but slimy. Shrimp, love that. Biofilm is the perfect food for shrimp
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especially baby shrimp. They will spend their entire day picking at the biofilm
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Java moss is a fantastic place for biofilm to develop. Now, of course
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there are plenty of other live aquarium plants and there are no plants you could put in your tank that are going to be detrimental to your baby shrimp
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You might want something bushy like water sprite or water wisteria. You might want to go for something easy to grow like Amazon
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sword or java fern. Whatever it might be, in my experience, you are far better off to have some
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live plants than none at all. Now what's the final element of this breeding tank we're setting up for
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our cherry shrimp? And that is filtration. In my experience, the best filter for a shrimp breeding
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tank is a sponge filter. Sponge filters, if you're not familiar, they sit typically at the
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back of your tank, a sponge, air comes down an airline, bubbles up through the uplift tube
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and as it bubbles up, it draws with it water, and water is then drawn into the sponge up the pipe
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and that's how the sponge removes the detritus from your tank. But what a sponge filter also does
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is it provides the perfect feeding ground for shrimp. If you've ever kept shrimp with a sponge
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filter you will know that at any time of the day that sponge filter will have shrimp on it picking
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at any bits of uneaten food any leaves that are breaking down any any mold or detritus that's
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stuck on that sponge becomes a food source for the shrimp of course you don't have to use a sponge
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filter you could also use a hang-on-back filter or a canister filter although if you are using
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these more powerful filters because they work in a slightly different way the way a hang-on-back
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filter works is it has a tube in the aquarium which has a strainer over the end and water goes
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up the tube into the filter and back down the trouble is those filters are really dangerous
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for shrimp because shrimp come along water's going up the pipe and the shrimp goes up it's
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into the impeller into the into the filter media and typically that's the end of the shrimp and
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this is really a problem for baby shrimp who are tiny and don't have much swimming power
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if they're traveling along past the hang on back filter or past the intake to a canister filter
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they're up their pipe they're gone if you are using a hang on back filter or a canister filter
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make sure you place an intake sponge over that intake strainer. That way, A, the shrimp won't
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get sucked up, and B, much like the sponge filter, you provide that perfect feeding ground for the
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shrimp. Now, if you want to take your near caradina shrimp keeping and breeding to the next level
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then be the first to check out my new book by following the link in the description below
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or clicking on the QR code here. Okay, so we have our colony of shrimp. We've set our tank up
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We've sorted out temperature and water parameters and we have some plants and some rocks and we've discussed filtration
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Next we need to talk about what are we going to feed our shrimp. One of the secrets to breeding a large colony of shrimp is feeding good quality food
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So what do we mean by good quality foods? Well one of the best foods we can feed our shrimp is frozen bloodworm or frozen brine shrimp or frozen daphnia
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any previously live food which has been frozen is typically high in protein and the essential minerals our shrimp especially our female shrimp need to be in top breeding condition
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Producing eggs takes a real toll on the female shrimp's body and she needs lots of protein
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to be able to build those eggs. Bloodworms especially have a really high protein level
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When I was breeding red-shared shrimp commercially, we fed our shrimp bloodworms four, five
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six times a week. Bloodworms was a staple food. If you have a small colony, maybe you've only got 10 or 15 shrimp
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you take a cube of frozen bloodworm in the water, get some to be released
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and then you either pop that back in the freezer for the next day or you feed it to the other fish in your collection, whatever it might be
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I honestly believe feeding bloodworms is one of the secrets to building a large colony of shrimp
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Of course, you don't have to just feed bloodworms. You can also feed good quality sinking foods
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Personally, I favour tetracolor crisps. I also feed a lot of algae wafers
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I feed tetraprima. I feed fluval bug bites. I feed algae wafers
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I feed variety. The greater the number of foods you feed to your shrimp
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over the course of a week or a month, the greater the variety of vitamins and minerals
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they will receive in their diet. In the wild, shrimp are detrivores
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They eat anything that comes their way. That includes dead fish, dead bugs that are falling in the water
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That includes plant leaves that are breaking down, the starts of algae. That includes fish poop
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That includes pretty much anything that comes into their waterway that is edible, they will take advantage of
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But it also means in the world, they get an incredibly diverse diet
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They have a wonderful range of vitamins and minerals and nutrients in their diet
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And if we just give our shrimp an algae wafer a couple of times a week
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we come nowhere near to recreating that diet. The greater the number of foods we give them
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the more variety we give our shrimp, the bigger, healthier and more colourful the colony will be
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Now, the other thing you can add to your red cherry shrimp breeding tank, and I've put this under foods
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but it could go under decoration as well, a catapa or Indian almond leaves. In fact, there are many
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many different types of leaves available, but they all do more or less the same job, which is you take the dried leaf, you put it into your aquarium. It typically floats for the first
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day or two, but it will eventually sink. And then once it has sunk, it becomes covered in bacteria
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and the bacteria slowly breaks down that leaf and your red treasure will cover that leaf. And
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the first impression is that they're eating the leaf, but in fact, they're not. They're dining on
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the bacteria which is eating the leaf. So by having the leaf, you introduce different strains
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of bacteria that your shrimp will absolutely love to dine on. It seems that baby shrimp are
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particularly fond of the bacteria that break down katapa leaves. If you have katapa leaves or oak
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leaves or beech leaves or whatever it leaves it is you're using, they will typically be a magnet
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for baby shrimp and they'll provide the perfect food source for those new shrimp. Now the final
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piece in the puzzle when it comes to breeding shrimp is leaving them alone. Retro shrimp are
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incredibly hardy but they love stability. They want their tank essentially to be left alone
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What do we do typically as new hobbyists but what do we do? We constantly muck about. We change the
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temperature on the heater. We move the filter. We add some plants. We take some plants away. We change
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the rocks how we had them. We add a piece of wood. We add a leaf. We take that leaf out. We're
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constantly mucking about with a tank. Shrimp really want to be left alone. With the exception
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of adding some food, you really don't be mucking about with your shrimp tank at all
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for weeks or even months. In fact, I've taken this to the next level, and I've pretty much
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stopped doing water changes. And if you want to find out why I stopped doing water changes
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you should watch this video next. Thanks for watching
