Freshwater River Shrimp that is, not brine or marine shrimp.

No, I haven't personally... I thought this might be about marine ones.

Apparently, if you keep them in a warm tank, with food, then they breed readily I thought? Also, does the LFS not have them in stock often?

I am corrected, they are not easy to breed according to PFK:

Frequently asked questions on freshwater shrimps | Practical Fishkeeping magazine

Then, also, it has this thread on the forum:

successfully breeding fresh'r shrimp - Practical Fishkeeping Forum

One website says this:

"Breeding freshwater shrimp is possible but raising the fry is often very hard because it’s hard to provide the larvae with enough small food. Most freshwater shrimp are more easily breed and raised in ponds where there are a normal presence of plankton sized food. Some freshwater shrimp will breed readily in their holding tanks while other requires salinity in the water to breed and for the larvae to survive"

So, as it is so often with these sorts of things, its providing a small enough food.

When had a couple of goes at breeding marine shrimps, I used neawly hatched brine shrimp. They survived to 16 days old, and were quite big, with full bellies, but I think my water quality let me down.

Anyway, hope that helps.

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I've been reading up on this and it seems it's not as simple as you might think. As you say feeding the fry with small enough food is one obstacle, and the fact that some species will only develop properly in salt water, meaning they have to be hatched in fresh, then transferred to saline, then gradually returned to fresh when they are adult.
Apparently those that complete their whole life cycle in freshwater have even tinier fry which are even harder to feed!
Raising them in ponds isn't an option at this time of year unfortunately, I need to do it indoors in tanks, I think it'll be possible as long as I can find a suitable source of plankton.


Excuse my ignorance, but what is LFS?

Firstly, sorry, LFS is 'local fish shop'... that was me doing stupid abbreviations!

Yeh, I did see that as well in the websites I saw. Sounds challenging, but not too hard, providing you know when/by how much to change the salinity.

Achieving (and measuring) salinity is certainly not too hard, and nore is swapping between fresh/brackish/marine and back again.

So, if you can find out what salinity the babies will need as they grow up, you could do that, by adding slightly saltier water in daily water changes.

Then, there is the food issue. You can buy phytoplankton, and zooplankton, and those sorts of mixes in shops, and after they are beyond those stages, brine shrimp napuli are not hard to hatch out.

So, if you really want to go for it, and the shrimps have eggs, and you can find the salinity values needed, then I would go for it!

If I had my marine tank still, I would be trying my marine shrimps again: on my two ever tries, first lasted 2 days, second lasted 16 days. And the reason for the last was (in retrospect) clearly water quality.

If you do do it, please keep my updated! Have you joined any fish forums, such as PFK's, and monsterfishkeeper? They are useful.

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Ah, so simple when you know! Yes my local shops all have them, but I'm using them as turt food and they don't last very long! I was thinking I could breed my own and save some money.

I don't belong to any fish forums, too many forums already, if I join any more I'll never get anything done!

I think I'm going to get some shrimp and give it a go, I have a few small tanks spare, and I found a good website belonging to some French guy who seems to be having some success Amano Shrimp - Caridina Japonica Online

That is a useful webiste, and the 17ppm helps...

He doesn't even suggest changing it does he? So basically, buy the shrimps, then over weeks and months raise the salinity to 17ppm, which is easy enough.

Then, hopefully they'll mate and you'll have some eggs (which I am guessing is the easy bit: it was with my shrimps, you couldn't stop the bloody things! Plus, they are hermaphroditic!).

Then just raise them with phyto/zoo plankton, and brine shimp napuli... flake, and stuff like that, seems very doable.

If you do get some eggs and things, add some pics to this forum will you! I would be very interested in seeing it!

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Hi Graham, thought I would say hello.

Ooh, and your first post too! Dont know who you are, but hello and to RFUK!

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Cherry shrimp are very easy to breed, stick 10 in a 10gal tank with quite a bit of java moss, and within a few months you will have a couple of hundred. Feed wilth algae wafers and flake food. Bumblebee shrimp, tiger shrimp and ghost shrimp will breed like this too, just not as readily or as fast.

Amano shrimp are more challenging as the babies need brackish water to survive.

And that, is about that, with the easy shrimp to breed.

Edit: Didn't read the whole thread I hve bred amano shrimp, i kept them in fresh water untill i saw females were carrying eggs, and then put the females in a 5gal brackish tank, wait for babies, romove mum, fill half the tank with java moss, and viola. Feed once a day with flake and crushed algae wafers. BABY SHRIMPIES

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Hi Sandra, you used your first post to say hello to me, I'm flattered!

OK the shrimp thing is starting to sound less daunting the more I talk about it. I'm interested in the Cherry Shrimp and others, although from what I read I thought they were harder than that, the fry being so tiny and all?

Where would I get Cherry Shrimp from?