I’ve been looking forward to this for years, and it’s finally happened: I have red cherry shrimp!
I’ve got them in my Fluval Chi, which I rescaped a couple days before the shrimp arrived. They seem happy with the setup; they’re shrimping around quite shrimpily, doing their shrimpy thing. I’m hoping they breed like crazy and fill the tank…
Acclimation
I hung a “Dip ‘n’ Pour” container on the edge of the tank and placed the baggie of shrimp in it. The bag is a breather bag, which you’re not supposed to float, so before I did anything else, I cut the bag open. At this point, I also added a few drops of diluted Prime to mediate the effects of ammonia that might have built up during shipping.
I ran a short piece of airline from the tank into the Dip ‘n’ Pour, tied a knot in it, and stuck an airline connector into the end. The connector made it easier to get a good grip on the airline with a turkey baster, which I used to suck water through the airline and get a siphon going.
To control the water flow through the airline, I tightened or loosened the knot until I was happy with the drip rate. This allowed the shrimp to gently, gradually, become accustomed to the water chemistry and temperature from their new home. I removed water out of the Dip ‘n’ Pour several times (using the turkey baster) until I knew that the shrimp were swimming mostly in my own water, rather than the water they were shipped in.
In the photos, you might notice a couple of shrimp that were already dead when they arrived. This was due to some complications with USPS, and was not the seller’s fault (the shrimp arrived later than they were supposed to).
Habitat
I’ve got the 5-gallon Fluval Chi running a sponge filter. There’s also a heater, of course, since RCS need warm water. The substrate is Black Diamond Blasting Media (20-40 grit, since I won’t be adding loaches, cories, etc. to the tank). In the back, I’ve got some well-rinsed red lava rock piled up, with layers of java moss and the erect moss that came with the shrimp sandwiched in between the rocks. I also trimmed three poorly-looking stems of anacharis from the 55-gallon community tank and added those. They’ll fill out soon enough.
The seller also sent a packet of duckweed as a freebie; I went ahead and dropped it in the tank as a low-maintenance nitrate remover. Can’t hurt, right?
