Shrimp Tank

Yeah SA has plenty of indigenous shrimp..

Who knows the reason they were blacklisted, most likely the Gov was too lazy to do an actual analysis of their own so they adopted a blanket ban on everything!!

What does scare me is if they un-ban Crayfish!!:wondering: which have a seriously dangerous chance of destroying our natural ecosystems!

 

No Phil i am right here - they wont unban the freshwater crayfish

 

I know we have freshwater shrimp in SA, a friend of mine showed me some research papers about some really big ones about a year ago. I think they grow to about 5cm or more.

I also think the imports won't pose a threat to our local waters because they won't survive in our cold rivers. Either way, there are quite a few species of local freshwater shrimp about the size of the imports like the Red Cherries. Unfortunately we don't have any ornamental ones, they're all brown or transparent.

As for buying shrimp next year, just be aware that you're going to be ripped off really badly, as is the norm in SA. Don't be surprised if you see 2cm long shrimp selling for R20 to R40. But also bear in mind that there are already members on the forum with shrimp that will gladly donate to serious people

I don't know much about any other species, but I can tell you that the Red Cherry shrimp are extremely easy to keep and all they need to breed is a male and a female and some clean water with a bit of Java Moss! Unfortunately they're very difficult to keep with fish, because pretty much anything big enough to fit a shrimp in it's mouth will eat your lovely new invertebrates

Maybe we should get an invertebrate section added to the forum if there's enough interest?

And yes, I totally agree that the freshwater crayfish should be kept controlled/banned. They just cause massive damage and they can survive just about anywhere.

 

Lemme ask a S-T-U-P-I-D question... we all feed our fry baby Brine shrimp... what would that become if we let it grow up? Wouldn't that be a shrimp?

 

Hey zoom, brine shrimp from what i remember are not true shrimp as we know them, they are artemia..im not too clued up though. The baby brine shrimp we feed will later become what are commonly known as sea-monkeys, see experilab etc. They can make pets but far from what cherry reds will!

 

when they grow up, they are about 5mm or so big, and look friggin weird, do yourself a favour and let a few grow, you'll see.

i'm guessing if you grow out the brine shrimp, they may mate, and then you get more egs and more brine shrimp, that could make the food less expensive?

On the real shrimp topic, i read somewhere a guy from the us say they should cost about 10cents each in usa... hopefully they'll be cheap as crud here too, unless they are exotic in some way.

i read there are a few fish you can keep with the cherries, but even if they dont eat the adults, the babys are extremely small copies, and will fit near ANY fish mouth as num-nums

 

10cents? haha that would be awesome! cheapest i've seen them there is about $1 on auction. But from reading they really do proliferate, similar to guppies!

 

Strange I didn't expect them to be blacklisted.

Especially with Takashi Amano recommending a certain shrimp as the best possible algae control you could find.

 

From what I can tell, most shrimp will be great algae eaters, but they prefer normal fish food, so you'd have to not feed them for a while before they eat the algae.

I think the indigenous shrimp are not so much blacklisted as protected. To prevent the populations collapsing in the wild.

 

id love shrimp i cant wait for the lil buggers to be legalised here, the completely red crystal reds are my favourite though from what iv read they are the substanderd ones. the shrimp tanks overseas are wonderful, i love the mosses they use it makes me think of lord of the rings lol. maybe ill turn my fry tank into a shrimp tank aswell, still i also think they going to be pricey. they new and alot of us have been waiting for them the LPS's will capitalise on that.

 

OP - the most important advice I can give you:
Adult shrimp = fish food for 90% of fish, baby shrimp = fish food for almost all. Do not try to keep your starter pack of 5 - 10 shrimp with any kind of fish. No, not even neons, baby guppies, bumble bee gobies or anything that you think is small & harmless. They WILL eat the shrimp, or the shrimp's babies and slowly the shrimp will die off from stress or old age with no growth in population. Now if you keep them with zero fish, lots of plants and snails, you can expect a population boom every month or couple of weeks. Read up about this on overseas forums.

I know right?:bigsmile:

Yes, SA does have indigenous shrimp, Caridina Nilotica
They are clear or have light tints of various colours and are a bit larger than the popular red cherry shrimp (Neocaridina heteropoda).

Why were the foreign freshwater shrimp blacklisted? My only guess is that some official made a huge generalisation, when it was correctly found that foreign freshwater crayfish (cherax, procambarus etc) can be destructive and invasive if they escape. But our small shrimp, of 3cm and smaller are fish food and too sensitive to survive in cold SA rivers.

I spend a lot of time on US, Asian & Oz forums reading about the different types and how people breed and care for them. Hopefully when they are legal here, the people who start keeping them will have researched properly. Some links before this thread gets locked:

Red cherry shrimp:
http://www.petshrimp.com/redcherryshrimp.html
http://www.planetinverts.com/Red Cherry Shrimp.html

Darwin algae shrimp aka Kung Fu shrimp (caridina NT nilotica) from Australia http://www.aquagreen.com.au/plant_data/Caridina_sp_NTnilotica.html (NT = northern territories).


Forums
http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/
http://www.petshrimp.com/discussions/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=99189ae74da4f2fba1d845ca397d1974
http://www.planetinverts.com/forum/

 

I saw a really colourful shrimp in a local stream, just yesterday. A dark reddish colour with a white stripe down it's back... maybe about 2 or 3cm. Very nice.

 

cool. What streams have you guys got in durbs? All i got is a septic little spruit near our house and its got freshwater crabs

 

Ferry dont add fw crabs to ur tank, you will be sorry!(they get very big/destructive/hard to catch/pathogens/leeches)

Salmon, I know the ones you refering to, the white line is a breeding saddle which is also the reason that shrimp was so big, the female gets larger than the male and is often brighter.. Was this stream in durban north suburbs by any chance?
There is another slightly larger species in your area that is a dull gray, really nice!!

 

Very small ones. Not much fish life besides the few introduced species.

Yup, Durban North. I've previously caught and kept a species from a stream up in Westville - the ones from there are see-through, besides a light speckling. They made a great addition to the tank.

 

Hi, I work closely with the the Western Cape Aqua Culture and Research, and I'm finding this thread rather... interesting.

 

wondering what SANBI would say about this...

 

hell no, dont worry phil. . I dont want any crabs. . Note the pun. . I just remember as a kid we used to play by that spruit. I was asking more in an amazed way as i didnt know there were streams with such interesting critters in SA

 

That's just rude to post something as ambiguous as that. How about giving us some information on your organisation's stance on freshwater inverts?

And I can't find a website, are you sure your organisation exists?

And Henk, what would the South African National Bioinformatics Institute say about this?

 

Well Whipme its them that draw up the lists for DEAT and its them that monitor these animals, their collect etc