Hi Everyone, Today in this video I’m going
to show you my neocaridina shrimp tank. I’ve made this tank with DIY breeding box at the top and it
allows me to keep two species of shrimps together in one place without mixing them with each other.
I’m going quickly talk about how I’ve made this setup and give you some basic
information on how to care for neocaridina shrimp and how to breed them successfully.
They actually easy to taking care of and quite easy to breed
and I’m going to show you how to do that so stay tuned!
In the main tank at the bottom I have quite large colony of blue dream shrimp which I
have for about a year. I’ve started with 15 high grade shrimp and now I have few
hundreats of them in the tank and I’ve sold lots of them out of this tank over the last
6 months or so. These guys are very awesome to watch, it’s very peaceful and relaxing.
The females are normally a little bit bigger than the males and they
have slightly brighter colouration of their body and they have slightly curved belly.
The males are smaller and have a thinner body and not as colourful as females. It’s important
to remove less coloured shrimps out of the tank from time to time to increase the shrimp quality.
I wouldn’t recommend keeping your shrimp with any kind of fish because the fish can eat
your baby shrimp and if you want to have great success with them don’t put fish in your tank.
Now let’s talk about water parameters. The ideal temperature for neocaridina is between
20 and 25 degrees Celsius and PH 7 and above. They prefer hard water with GH above 5 and KH above 3.
I have many tanks with caridina shrimps and this is only tank with neocaridina. I don’t bother to
prepare specific water for neocaridina shrimp when I do water change and I use the same water
for all my tanks with 0 KH. That’s why I put coral sand and lots of corals in this tank, they help to
increase ph and carbonate hardness making the water parameters ideal for neocaridina shrimp.
In this tank I change 15% of water weekly, but sometimes if I lazy I do 25-30% water change biweekly. It’s
always better to do small amounts of water change more often rather than large amounts less often.
Ok let’s talk about filtration - I only have one sponge filter in this tank connected to
power head. I always put a piece of sponge to cover outtake of the pump it helps to reduce
the flow and also creates very fine air bubbles they provide your tank with plenty of oxygen.
Ok, let's quickly talk about feeding.
Because I have lots of shrimps I feed them twice a day with small amount of food which they can eat
within an hour. If you don’t have many shrimps in your tank you can only feed them small amount of
food once a day. You need to remember that the main diet of the shrimp is biofilm and algae
which should be plenty in well established tank and the food you feed to them is
only supplementary like a snack. I only clean front glass of this tank and never clean sides
and back glass. This algee on the glass is good source of food for baby shrimps.
It also important to have some plants in your shrimp tanks especially moss.
The plants have a large surface area and they are good place for biofilm to grow
providing your shrimp with food and hiding places. They also help to reduce nitrates in your tank.
I also have some floating plants at the top they are very good for removing nitrates.
Looks like seed shrimps having party in the corner lol
Ok now let’s move to the breeding box above the tank.
In this box I have a small colony of Yellow shrimp
You know my favourite neocaridina shrimps are blue dreams and yellow golden back
and didn’t want to make another tank and instead I decided to try and
keep them inside the breeding box. I’ve made this box out of acrylic glass and it works very
simple – the pump pumps water to one end and it drains out into the tank at another end.
I also placed two sponges on either side and they work like a sponge filter creating
extra filtration and providing the shrimps with extra biofilm.
As you can see I also put some mosses and plants into this tank to keep the shrimps happy.
Neocaridina shrimp are very easy to keep and they are ok to live in smaller spaces. The shrimps are
doing great here. They are breeding a lot, they are very active and they look quite happy to be
here. The only one issue I’ve noticed – the baby survival rate is not very high here, I think it’s
because there is not much surface area in this box and not much biofilm for them to survive
and that’s why when I see new babies I also feed them with some powder food.
This breeding box is also great for crossbreeding projects. You can put your
best looking male with few females and release them back to the tank once they got berried.
Another small thing you need to think about before you set up a new tank for neocaridina
shrimp is the colour of your substrate. As you already noticed I have dark substrate
in the breeding box and white sand in the blue dream tank. It all depends on
the colour of the shrimps. So for yellow or white snowball shrimps it’s better to use
dark substrate for better contrast and dark shrimps like blue dreams or black rose would
look better on light substrate, So definitely think it ahead before setting up your new tank.
Snails are great tankmates for your shrimps and can be very beneficial.
They will eat any uneaten food if you accidentally over feed your shrimp and also their faeces are
a good place for microorganisms to grow and can be a good food source for your baby shrimp.
Ok that’s it for today; I hope you enjoyed watching this video.
Please click that thumb up button if you like this video and subscribe to my channel if you
want to see more videos like this. Please leave me a comment down below or ask me a question.
Thanks for watching and until next time!