# what conditions do cherry red shrimp breed best in?



## Mferko

i have a 10G tank under my 37g that is currently just holding a few spare shellies i have for sale/trade, i want to change it into a shrimp breeding tank and im going to start with red cherry shrimps.

the light is crappy, 2x 15W incandescent bulbs... it grows java moss ok tho and theres 3 little clumps in there at the moment.
current substrate is sugar sized white aragonite from caribsea, do i need to change that out? its said to buffer the ph to 8.4
if i need to change it, whats the best substrate?

anything else i should know? i have african cichlid lake salts that i can use to raise the GH, http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/L_CichlidLakeSalt.html specs here. what KH and PH is optimal for breeding these?
i want to breed them as fast as humanly possible 

thanks

also if any of you are selling red cherry shrimp for cheap please PM me, redder the better


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## target

From what I have seen, you need a female, a male, some water and food. They do the rest. Not really anything special required, at least IME.


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## Mferko

is 8.4 ph ok?


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## target

I can't tell you there, hopefully someone else will chime in.


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## Mferko

il check back after a game of starcraft 2 
also wonder how much calcium i need to dose if any


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## fraggalrock

My cherrys ph is about 6.5 to 6.8
Room temp or 75, I use Ada soil but florabase or ecco is also fine also.


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## fishclubgirl

I have bred cherries in our "hard as rock"Calgary(8.0) water and you need a male and female and that's it!!


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## InfraredDream

Everytime I read a thread like that I feel bad as I have my cherries since July and I still don't have babies  They are around 20, some are small, but I should have males and females. I even have saddled females but never a berried one. They are currently in a 3 g Eclipse with ednler babies.


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## katienaha

i heard lots of floating plants and lots of ground cover for the shrimplets to hide once they hatch. otherwise, i have the same problem as you - no baby shrimp for months now...


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## effox

Mid to high 6.5-6.9 range will have them producing prolifically as long as they have places to hide. Java moss is a great start.


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## user_error

I recommend using seachem equilibrium for any shrimps like RCS, keep the water around 4 GH and 2KH. That's what was recommended to me by a fellow member and its working out great for my RCS tank

Oh and I really like using subwassertang for my shrimp tanks, its great for the babies to hide in and doesn't seem too hard to grow... Looks very nice as well


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## trevorhoang

has anyone tried adding a little aquarium salt? i use a bit of aquarium salt in my 40G tank that houses my patriot crab. the pet shop guy that sold me the crab told me a little salt will strengthen their shells. im curious to if salt would work the same way for RCS?


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## Mferko

once again, i need to know if the ph of 8.4 is ok since it has crushed aragonite in that tank as substrate. it would be a great source of calcium... if the high PH is ok.


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## gimlid

the guy from Calgary says 8.0 and very hard water works good for his cherries.


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## Morainy

Mferko, I haven't tried a high pH like that, so I'm sorry, I can't help you with the pH part of your question because none of my tanks have tested higher than 8. But I have found that my cherries breed prolifically under a range of conditions, I have even had them in a very high gH (15) and have also had them with a small amount of aquarium salt. 

I use Seachem Equilibrium in my planted tanks and the shrimp seem happy with that.

What they mainly like is to have a lot of plants to climb on (low light is fine, all of mine are low light). Tall stems of water sprite or hygrophilia or whatever you have, trailing roots of water lettuce (which is also prolific) and so on. I have gravel in one tank and Eco-Complete in the other. They seem to be fine with either, but they are most easily visible on the Eco-Complete (as compared to the natural gravel with its multiple hues).

Cherry shrimp babies seem to be very small and I found out that you can have a lot of them without knowing it until suddenly you have a bunch of larger juveniles. Because of their size, it seems important to put a prefilter on the filter intake. Otherwise, the babies might be sucked up before you can even see them. One of my tanks didn't produce any new shrimp until I put on a prefilter. Cherry shrimp also love to sit on prefilters. 

If you are not sure about your substrate and you can switch it out, then I'd recommend switching to a substrate that will be plant friendly and that is known to be shrimp friendly. It might be that the African cichlid substrate would work for shrimp, but it is very sad to experience losses and so if you can provide something that you know will be better for them, then it's safer to start with that. Otherwise, I'd recommend starting with 5 cherry shrimp, some plants and a prefilter. If they're going to reproduce happily, you'll know in about 6 weeks!


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## Mferko

awesome thanks, maybe i should switch to eco-complete to make sure the plants are happy then they probably wont like aragonite so much


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