Help me breed "feeder" shrimp to feed my small/dwarf predators. Hobby intro

I've housed a few shrimp (not exotics), like Whisker shrimp. My dwarf predators love shrimp and I would like to breed them.
I read profiles on ghost shrimp. Profiles say these are aggressive and can't house a bunch together which would defeat the purpose. Also their profile reads "easy to breed but hard to raise the babies".

So, I guess my questions would be.

1 a good species to breed and raise in masses (it doesn't have to be ridiculous)?
2 in what conditions do shrimp thrive and breed successfully?

I do like shrimp a lot and could consider this an introduction to the hobby. I absolutely dig the exotics but afraid to purchase expensive shrimp only to kill them with lack of knowledge and experience.

Any information appreciated. thanks,
Chad

Red Cherry Shrimp are possibly the cheapest shrimp you can find, aside from Ghost Shrimp. If you're lucky, you might be able to find them at 50 cents per shrimp..but they usually sell at about 1-2 dollars each.

They breed like crazy though, it's like putting their breeding habits on auto-pilot!

Malawa shrimp are inexpensive and extremely prolific. They grow to a little under an inch in size and breed substantially faster than other dwarf shrimp (rcs included in my experience).

I keep malawa in 2 planted tanks (down from 4 with lots of hard work!) with PH of 7.6 - 7.8. They breed like crazy without doing anything fancy - very hardy and robust.

yup just pmed him about the malawa ^_^

Ah good He's up near you.

How are your malawa doing?

pbmax wrote:Ah good He's up near you.

How are your malawa doing?

great!!...our 40 gallon is swarming..the fish cant eat them fast enough

Fantastic! That's great to hear

I need more luck with the Malawa. LOL

It's interesting that my Cherries have out competed them!

This is good stuff everyone thank you!! Looks like im leaning towards Malawa shrimp. Doing some research on them now. Im growing out a male Apistogramma in my 30. In a day or two Ill move him in the larger tank and clear the 30 for a colony of shrimp.

I'm adding in on this a bit late but we have Red Cherry Shrimp in a 55 gallon and it's just swarming with them. They have afine gravel, sponge filter, plants and catappa leaves, and modest light. I feed them pellets and do every other week water changes. They multiply rapidly and with little to no care so RCS gets my vote as well.

Jay wrote:I'm adding in on this a bit late but we have Red Cherry Shrimp in a 55 gallon and it's just swarming with them. They have afine gravel, sponge filter, plants and catappa leaves, and modest light. I feed them pellets and do every other week water changes. They multiply rapidly and with little to no care so RCS gets my vote as well.

This is good stuff Jay! I appreciate the input. I need to set up another tank or wait until a couple more fish grow out of my 30 gallon so I can start keeping and breeding shrimp. I would like to set up like a 30 gallon long and do a whole aquascape like some are doing in the "shrimp" threads.

RCS don't breed as quickly as Malawa do, in my experience, but they're still quite prolific.

Malawa are about 1/4" shorter than RCS when comparing female maximum size. Unfortunately they won't even come close to winning any beauty contests against RCS.

I'm sure your Apisto will love some fresh shrimpy treats. I had a small angelfish in an aquarium, who I was trying to grow out, and I saw him rip three cherry shrimp in half in a matter of minutes. I bet Apistos will do similar things. I had 15 shrimp in the tank, so was worried he'd eat them all, and I moved the angel out. I've only seen about 4 cherry shrimp in the tank since. Are they really good at hiding or did I lose more than the 3 I saw eaten?

We've never done the Malawa so this is all good to know. My wife likes the RCS color though and so they're enjoyable as well as prolific!

i would just toss a bunch of em in a nice little planted setup and introduce periodically as treats. growing em up and breeding in the tank w/ fish is gonna be hard. heck even my old guppies would eat my baby shrimp

Anthraxx wrote:i would just toss a bunch of em in a nice little planted setup and introduce periodically as treats. growing em up and breeding in the tank w/ fish is gonna be hard. heck even my old guppies would eat my baby shrimp

we have a ton of malawa shrimp in a 40g tank , It is med planted with 5 furcata rainbows, 5 gertrude rainbowfish, two fresh water bumble bee gobies, and 3 badis badis....all the fish hunt the baby shrimp almost constantly and they still out breed all the hunger mouths!

we focus on feeding the shrimp..the fish get some flakes a few times a week and every one is fat and happy.

crazy breeding with the malawas

Kaosu wrote:

Anthraxx wrote:i would just toss a bunch of em in a nice little planted setup and introduce periodically as treats. growing em up and breeding in the tank w/ fish is gonna be hard. heck even my old guppies would eat my baby shrimp

we have a ton of malawa shrimp in a 40g tank , It is med planted with 5 furcata rainbows, 5 gertrude rainbowfish, two fresh water bumble bee gobies, and 3 badis badis....all the fish hunt the baby shrimp almost constantly and they still out breed all the hunger mouths!

we focus on feeding the shrimp..the fish get some flakes a few times a week and every one is fat and happy.

crazy breeding with the malawas

The only fish im worried about in my 30 is 2 small female Apistogramma. I dont think the 2 Siamese algae eaters will eat larger shrimp, nor the Cory cats. Do you think if I stick 5-10 of those Malawa in with these fish they might do okay?

5-10 might end up just snacks..might want to start out with more.

I agree; if your goal is a feeder colony, definitely start with a good number - at least 30 I'd say. It takes a while for a dwarf shrimp colony to take off - the more you start off with the better.