Reducing - Rearranging and Disease...

During the last 30 years the number of "tanks in my life" has gone from 1 to 2 - 3 - 6 - 9 - 40 - 125 (WAY too many!) and down again to 80 - 64 - 36 and now 20...

I haven't done much blog-wise for a while except keeping the availability list up to date. I have been busy looking for a new job, trying to paint some windows when it has not been raining and also re-arranging the fish/shrimproom and cutting back a bit. Family takes more time with a new baby and an older one with some challenges.

Some tough choices when deciding what to let go and what to keep, but I am getting there. A lot of fish has gone. A lot of shrimp are still there (to stay) and a few species of Corydoras, Oryzias, Pseudomugil etc. but more of those will go eventually.

Some of the species went to new places included my Caridina logemanni "White bee" and Paracaridina meridionalis/zijinica "Sandhummel". Both really nice but I figured that if I should regret it, I could relatively easy get them again.

Nice group of white bees with some biiig mammas!

...same went for the "Sandhummel".

So, how does it look now? What remains is 16 x 30 litre and 4 x 50 litre in one of my old racks with space for upping the number of tanks if I should want that again in the future. I like the outcome and I think it will work well for me. It is still a bit un-organized but every day small bits fall into place.

The "operation" itself went smooth with no losses and I got all the HMF filtermats cleaned out and the tanks set up relatively clean. Now, a couple of weeks later, my Paracaridina haivanensis "Princess bees" suddenly started dying from one day to another. This is only the second time in my 10 year "career" as shrimp keeper/breeder I experience this and I am not shure of the cause other than I assume it is a bacterial problem. I tried to do a large waterchange and add some aldercones and cattappa-leaves but the deaths continued so yesterday a tablet of JBL Furanol 2 was added and seemingly stopped the deaths. Time will tell if the problem is gone. Most people advice Baytril, but I was not able to get any of that.

Dead shrimp...sad sight!

Crossing shrimp is not something I have done a lot. I have a background in wildtype fish. Livebearers, Corydoras etc., and in those areas of the hobby, hybrids are mostly a total no-go. A few years ago I accidentally made some TiBees but apart from that I haven't explored hybridization a lot.

I have bought some Pintos and also some Galaxy Backline and think they're nice animals so I decided to try some myself. So far I have started these projects:

Yellow KingKong x White bee

Red tiger x White bee

Red tiger x Aura blue

It will be interesting to see the outcome after some generations.

A few new shrimp also made their way into the house...the new China Princess, Rusty tigers and others. More on that later.

A new thing on the blog is the section Interesting shrimp I used to keep and the other sections have been updated with what is left.

Garden shrimp - Rerun!

This is more or less a re-write of a short article on my other blog, but I thought it could be interesting for those who haven't read it before!

The last few years I have put some of my shrimp outside in tubs in the garden. Not this year though - too much else to look after.

It's a really easy and different way to keep your shrimp. No care needed for months! Basically pick a spot that does not get too warm but stille gets enough sun for some algae growth. Actually it is way past the time I normally put the shrimp outside. As soon as it does not freeze at night I have usually put some shrimp in a bucket with tank water and put them outside around mid day and left them until next morning. I still alive, they are put in the tub.

The tubs are set up really simple. Garden soil (without fertilizers, snail poison etc. of course!) and some sticks and branches. I picked some up on the way back from my sons daycare. Top up with some oak or beech leaves and some plants and you're all set. The plants I also collected myself. They can be rinsed from leeches etc. with Potassium Permanganate.

Typical 90 litre tub.

Good plants to collect can be Egeria spp., Fontinalis spp. and Lemna trisulca. I have good experiences with these. Basically any aquatic or semiaquatic plants for ponds or aquaria is OK as long as it can stand the temperature swings.

Fontinalis sp. collected in a nearby pond.

Lemna trisulca - a nice underwater duckweed.

Regarding which shrimp that is suitable for keeping outdoors, the answers is "most of what is readily available in the hobby"! I have mostly kept Neocaridina davidi outside but temperature wise Neocaridina palmata and all the Caridinas from South China are fine for this too.

Neocaridina davidi in different colours that have enjoyed summer outside.

A couple of Topas Blues searching the soil for food.

As mentioned, no shrimp outside this year, but I hope to do more of this in the future. The shrimp that goes inside when the temperature drops in the autumn are really big, strong and colourful and they always breed like maniacs when they get in the warmer water in the tanks.

New blog!

I have been keeping shrimp since 2005 with varying intensity. Mostly as company for my Corydoras, which I have been breeding for even longer. During the last few years the number of shrimp types and species in my tanks have increased after some time with focus on Poecilia wingei and other livebearers. Although nice, they seem not to thrive too well here in the long run, so now I am back to mainly keeping Corydoras and shrimp. The fishy stuff will remain at KimsFishyWorld.

At the moment the shimp outnumber the fish and I thought they needed their own space, so here it is. 

I will write about how I keep my shrimp, which is a bit different from what most people do. I will also have a list of available offspring from my shrimp which goes from natural forms to very linebred and crossed ones. When looking around it is obvious that a lot of pictures still need to be uploaded, but at some point I will get there.

Over the last week I have gotten a lot of new shrimp from Michael Nadal, Jürgen Ideker, Zündorfer Aquaristic, Frank Malycki and a few others. Some new to me, others just to get "new blood" for existing groups. I was very excited to get the new "Raccoon tiger" from Vietnam. Fortunately the other species with spots was also among the ones I recieved. Others included Red Shadow Mosura, Aura Blue, Yellow KingKong, babaulti "stripes" and more.