There’s one of those in this town that is amazing. Not only do they have a massive selection and a knowledgeable staff, it’s basically a tiny zoo. They used to have a mountain lion and an alligator (they died), but they still have macaws, cockatoos, a colony of degus, all kinds of turtles and lizards, etc. Not for sale, just to look at. And they encourage kids to come in and look around.
Sweet, there’s one sort of like that a town over from me, except the other animals are mostly available for adoption through local rescue groups. Most except the two macaws, owner rescued them 20+ years back and they bonded to him and each other so they stay and have free roam of the shop, and occasionally he’ll have a large reptile around that isn’t available, as a show and tell sort of setup. Importantly, since they are from rescue groups, they make sure adopters know what they are getting themselves into.
The other difference is they do almost exclusively marine, and their freshwater fish typically are sickly. (Still not as bad as big box, last time I got Rosie’s for a new breeding colony from petsmart, only 1 dozen of the 8 dozen survived more than a week, and the problem wasn’t the tank… so I don’t do that anymore). But they do know their shit, and they do have an amazing selection if you do marine.
The one I’m talking about does both. Marine is way too much work for me to ever take on. The only aquatic animal we have right now is my daughter’s betta, but I have had this idea for a while now to have a tank with a marimo moss ball and a bunch of different colored freshwater shrimp. Shrimp have always been my favorite aquatic animal to have as a pet. I used to have a bunch of ghost shrimp in a tank with some fancy guppies and some platys and a few snails and the ghost shrimp were my favorite part.
Marine is too much work for me as well. Too expensive as well, and I’m not a fan of having to figure out which fish were wild caught, since a huge proportion of marine fish available in the trade are wild caught. I’m not into depleting nature for my own amusement.
Shrimp are fantastic and easily my favorite thing to watch, beating out the variety of snails by just a touch. However most of the commonly available colored ones can interbreed so if you get like red and blue neocardinias (cherry/fire shrimp and blue dream/blue velvet shrimp respectively) you’ll end up with babies (maybe after a few generations, maybe after the first breeding cycle) that revert to normal brown/clear coloring.
This chart is a huge help because it really drills down which species of shrimp you can house without that problem. (Edit to change link to a better chart)
Or if you don’t care about the offspring color intensity, you can get cull packs on Aquabid (like eBay, but aquatic stuff only) for decently cheap, and it’s usually a mixed selection of peach, blue, and cherry neos that don’t have the intense coloring the breeder wants. Super easy to care for, ready breeders, fun to watch, and you can have glass shrimp with them! (ghost/grass/glass).
Apologies for the walls of text here, this is one of my special interests 😅
Thanks. I’m bookmarking both, but this second one is so much more complicated. I may have to give up on my dream just on the difficulty of trying to figure out what mix would actually work!
If you want things that are available (some species exist but good luck finding them for sale) and won’t interbreed, you are kinda stuck with like one species each of 3 varieties. Neocardenia, halocardenia, and cardenia. But that’s not really much selection, because some shrimps are filter feeders so need water movement and stuff. If you could set up a tank to account for all species needs you could have, at absolute most, four kinds of shrimp - I totally did the work on that one years ago but I don’t recall which varieties it was off the top of my head - I can take a gander later today if you’d like; my brain is built for such things.
It kinda sucks, and I’m really not trying to discourage you at all, but I guess better to know now than be disappointed later after the money and effort is spent lol (I wanted the same thing you do! I still do! But yeah it’s complicated)
But you’d still have some cool colored shrimp for a while if you did the cull pack thing (I wouldn’t recommend wasting the money for top of the line colors just to mix them, but the stuff on aquabid tends to only be a step down from that, and comes from the same breeders you’ll find with their own websites, like aquaticarts) with 3 of the same species. Just not a long-term stable setup unless you want to cull any that are brown/not bright throughout the life of the setup (if nothing eats them, it’ll probably be fine to keep the vibrant and cull the rest, your breeding population shouldn’t crash from that as long as you leave like 15-20% of each hatch.)
So I mean it kinda depends how much effort you want, and whether or not the tank you are thinking can fit a net. I tend to be a set and forget sort (I set up my tanks to be stable long term with just added water and occasional food, because I’m very lazy) so culling every hatch cycle isn’t in the cards for me. But maybe it is for you, you seem to have more energy than I do, what with posting stuff all the time ;)
If you do cull them as small babies, your betta might eat them, circle of life is totally entertaining, and if not they make good tank mates. If you know anyone with aquatic turtles or bigger predatory fish, that’s a great use for culls as well.
Ok sorry ima shut up now. lol. If you want me to take a look and see what’s available these days and which would be compatible, lmk. :)
It kinda sucks, and I’m really not trying to discourage you at all, but I guess better to know now than be disappointed later after the money and effort is spent lol
Honestly, I appreciate the money saving part of this. The shrimp themselves aren’t all that expensive, but the setup wouldn’t be cheap if I wanted to do it right. Culling them as babies and feeding them to the betta sounds fun though.
There’s one of those in this town that is amazing. Not only do they have a massive selection and a knowledgeable staff, it’s basically a tiny zoo. They used to have a mountain lion and an alligator (they died), but they still have macaws, cockatoos, a colony of degus, all kinds of turtles and lizards, etc. Not for sale, just to look at. And they encourage kids to come in and look around.
Sweet, there’s one sort of like that a town over from me, except the other animals are mostly available for adoption through local rescue groups. Most except the two macaws, owner rescued them 20+ years back and they bonded to him and each other so they stay and have free roam of the shop, and occasionally he’ll have a large reptile around that isn’t available, as a show and tell sort of setup. Importantly, since they are from rescue groups, they make sure adopters know what they are getting themselves into.
The other difference is they do almost exclusively marine, and their freshwater fish typically are sickly. (Still not as bad as big box, last time I got Rosie’s for a new breeding colony from petsmart, only 1 dozen of the 8 dozen survived more than a week, and the problem wasn’t the tank… so I don’t do that anymore). But they do know their shit, and they do have an amazing selection if you do marine.
The one I’m talking about does both. Marine is way too much work for me to ever take on. The only aquatic animal we have right now is my daughter’s betta, but I have had this idea for a while now to have a tank with a marimo moss ball and a bunch of different colored freshwater shrimp. Shrimp have always been my favorite aquatic animal to have as a pet. I used to have a bunch of ghost shrimp in a tank with some fancy guppies and some platys and a few snails and the ghost shrimp were my favorite part.
Marine is too much work for me as well. Too expensive as well, and I’m not a fan of having to figure out which fish were wild caught, since a huge proportion of marine fish available in the trade are wild caught. I’m not into depleting nature for my own amusement.
Shrimp are fantastic and easily my favorite thing to watch, beating out the variety of snails by just a touch. However most of the commonly available colored ones can interbreed so if you get like red and blue neocardinias (cherry/fire shrimp and blue dream/blue velvet shrimp respectively) you’ll end up with babies (maybe after a few generations, maybe after the first breeding cycle) that revert to normal brown/clear coloring.
This chart is a huge help because it really drills down which species of shrimp you can house without that problem. (Edit to change link to a better chart)
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/attachments/shrimp-crossbreeding-chart-jpg-jpg.146825/
Or if you don’t care about the offspring color intensity, you can get cull packs on Aquabid (like eBay, but aquatic stuff only) for decently cheap, and it’s usually a mixed selection of peach, blue, and cherry neos that don’t have the intense coloring the breeder wants. Super easy to care for, ready breeders, fun to watch, and you can have glass shrimp with them! (ghost/grass/glass).
Apologies for the walls of text here, this is one of my special interests 😅
Oh wow! That chart is amazing! Thank you! I didn’t know about the interbreeding.
Sorry I actually changed the one I linked to a better one that’s easier to understand and much more detailed.
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/attachments/shrimp-crossbreeding-chart-jpg-jpg.146825/
Try this instead :) green “y” means they can breed.
Thanks. I’m bookmarking both, but this second one is so much more complicated. I may have to give up on my dream just on the difficulty of trying to figure out what mix would actually work!
If you want things that are available (some species exist but good luck finding them for sale) and won’t interbreed, you are kinda stuck with like one species each of 3 varieties. Neocardenia, halocardenia, and cardenia. But that’s not really much selection, because some shrimps are filter feeders so need water movement and stuff. If you could set up a tank to account for all species needs you could have, at absolute most, four kinds of shrimp - I totally did the work on that one years ago but I don’t recall which varieties it was off the top of my head - I can take a gander later today if you’d like; my brain is built for such things.
It kinda sucks, and I’m really not trying to discourage you at all, but I guess better to know now than be disappointed later after the money and effort is spent lol (I wanted the same thing you do! I still do! But yeah it’s complicated)
But you’d still have some cool colored shrimp for a while if you did the cull pack thing (I wouldn’t recommend wasting the money for top of the line colors just to mix them, but the stuff on aquabid tends to only be a step down from that, and comes from the same breeders you’ll find with their own websites, like aquaticarts) with 3 of the same species. Just not a long-term stable setup unless you want to cull any that are brown/not bright throughout the life of the setup (if nothing eats them, it’ll probably be fine to keep the vibrant and cull the rest, your breeding population shouldn’t crash from that as long as you leave like 15-20% of each hatch.)
So I mean it kinda depends how much effort you want, and whether or not the tank you are thinking can fit a net. I tend to be a set and forget sort (I set up my tanks to be stable long term with just added water and occasional food, because I’m very lazy) so culling every hatch cycle isn’t in the cards for me. But maybe it is for you, you seem to have more energy than I do, what with posting stuff all the time ;)
If you do cull them as small babies, your betta might eat them, circle of life is totally entertaining, and if not they make good tank mates. If you know anyone with aquatic turtles or bigger predatory fish, that’s a great use for culls as well.
Ok sorry ima shut up now. lol. If you want me to take a look and see what’s available these days and which would be compatible, lmk. :)
Honestly, I appreciate the money saving part of this. The shrimp themselves aren’t all that expensive, but the setup wouldn’t be cheap if I wanted to do it right. Culling them as babies and feeding them to the betta sounds fun though.