Shrimp breeding?

I have this horribly wonderful idea (or maybe just horrible), which is to start a shrimp tank! However, not satisfied with a puny 10 gallon shrimp tank, I have this 40 gallon long laying around, which was donated because it wasn't holding water. I think I may cut it up into a few 15g (or so) rimless cubes and take up shrimp breeding for the heck of it. . . thinking red cherries at first because of their ease of breeding, and a LFS said they would buy them from me for in store credit. I know I know, inverts need PERFECT water quality (which is why I'll fill it with distilled water, b/c for 18 cents a gallon, its cheaper than R/O). But I have conflicting reports of the size of tank required to get these little guys to make babies like mad, and I even heard some tannins in the tank helps. . . .anyways, plan was, some flame moss, some java fern, couple pieces of driftwood, anubias nana maybe, some pieces of pvc pipe burried in the substrate for hiding/molting. . . .should be busy enough and provide plenty of hiding place for the itty bitty baby shrimps. I might even just re-assemble the 40g long and use it, should house about 120 of them comfortably I would think. Anyone have any advice/experience? Oh, dedicated shrimp tank, no other fish, don't want them eating the little ones.

Only problem I see is filtering without having all the babies get filtered out. The reason I say this is because my Peppermint shrimp have babies about every two weeks and when the female releases them she lets them go in the current and if I don't turn my pumps off they will all go over the overflow. These babies are attracted to light and with the pumps off will gather at the surface under the night lights because they always release at night. My babies always just serve as free fish food but I don't see how you are going to filter the water real well and not loose babies in the process, its something to keep in mind because all baby shrimp will go to the surface. Pepermints are easy to breed. Below is a video of my tank after release.


Here's a video

From what I've read, baby cherry shrimp go straight to scavenging, they are born without a yolk, so they should stay near the bottom. However, I was thinking just some DIY sponge filters because its gonna be shrimp only, and they produce very little waste. Sponge filters pose no threat to baby shrimps, and outside of an air pump to power them, I could make them for about. . .2 dollars a piece, and they actually DO serve as great biological filtration, just not mechanical. The plants will help as well.

Or at minimum, a good sponge prefilter that should prevent most filtration fatalities.

Like the sponge filter idea but I'd use the largest possible. You can make a divider out of the plastic sheets sold in hobby /craft stores . They have holes just big enough for small fry to pass through. Put a light on the opposite end from the adults and the young ones should migrate to that side of the tank.

Donnie, I remember reading an article about using a small overflow - type box with a moon light over it to capture shrimp fry after dark. Might want to do a search if you plan on raising any. Think it was on The Reef Tank.

Another idea is a Mattenfilter, swisstropicals.com sells the poret material, and I would think this may give you both the water flow required due to the large surface area, for very clean water. Plus at the same time minimise fatalities due to filter loss of the young.

http://www.tfhmagazine.com/blogs/2010/12/08/mattenfilters/

hmm, mattenfilter is a pretty good idea. I might give that a shot. I appreciate that, and the lights on one side of the tank is something I didn't think of either, appreciate that as well.

Yeti wrote:Another idea is a Mattenfilter, swisstropicals.com sells the poret material, and I would think this may give you both the water flow required due to the large surface area, for very clean water. Plus at the same time minimise fatalities due to filter loss of the young.

http://www.tfhmagazine.com/blogs/2010/12/08/mattenfilters/

A little live rock / chaeto and you could probably raise a ton of pods in there . Wonder if anyone's done research on mandarin / dwarf seahorse applications .