Enjoy my most recent posts
The articles are being categorize into various sections and you can find them in the individual sections such as Shrimp, breeding, tips and others. On mobile devices all articles will be shown. If you want to find older articles please refer to Archive Should you not be able find an article you wish to read about or learn more on, please feel free to contact me using the Contact page.
Just pointing you to this shrimp good guide will be an easy way out for this post.
When I look through all the Brand that were tested there isn’t any from Taiwan. Didn’t most of our shrimp you keep today originated from Taiwan?
Why isn’t there any food secret being share?
Apparently there are a lot of safe guarded secrets within Taiwan but due to language barrier not many are being marketed outside and those who do are those who have a stronger command in language.
That being said what food do I use?
This is Hwa food version 1 which I have asked him to specially make it for me as it has phased out sometime ago. The reason for his newer version is the improvement in a lesser pungent smelling food.
Why did I even ask to have this specially made again ? Reason is fairly simple, his original ingredient is really good and the shrimps really devour all the good ingredients for a stronger brood in future.
A happy breeder in US! Using Hwa food.
1. Myth: shining strong light on your shrimp will make it look nicer
✓ Fact :no matter how much light you shine will not make your shrimp look better. You might as well cook it.
2. Myth: buying culls and slowly trying to breed and get good quality shrimp is achievable
✓ Fact: Good line breeding(selective breeding) is how nice shrimp traits are being pass on. The next time someone tells you that buying culls and slowly breed is trying to earn a fast one. Read up on selective breeding and you know none of the pedigrees are bred with culls.
3. Myth: A small amount of ADA Soil would be sufficient for shrimp and to be compensated by adding more bacteria
✓ Fact: a rule of thumb is that for every 16 litre of water you will need 1 litre of soil
4. Myth: Continuous culling of a Galaxy Tiger will eventually become Fancy Tiger
✓ Fact: Both are from different parentage, where a galaxy tiger has pinto gene in it whereas fancy tiger has prl/pbl in it. No matter how much culling is done, under a well trained eye, a GT will always be a GT. Walk away if they can’t openly tell you the difference. Look at their breeding tank and if there are any signs of pinto shrimplet in it or pinto gene if you are looking for FT. Alternatively, you can visit the blog link.
5. Myth: I only need 1 tank to achieve extraordinary results in shrimp breeding
✓ Fact: for selective breeding the general rule is that at least 3 tanks is required. main breeding tank, shrimplet grow up tank, grade 1 breeding tank. In general people will start with one main breeding tank with a male to female ratio of 4:20. This will generate higher success rate as the probability of all males molting at the same time is greatly reduced. This main breeding tank will keep generating shrimplet to be remove to the shrimplet grow up tank when they are 0.8cm. Once there is a good selection of male and female (1M 5F) that exceed expectation,they should be placed in the grade 1 breeding tank to continue the line. The grade 1 breeding tank and main breeding tank will continue to have more and more shrimplet to be placed in the shrimplet tank. The main breeding tank adults will not mix with the grade 1 breeding tank as the grade 1 breeding tank is to refine the excellent line, even better. If you have an additional tank (tank 4) this will greatly help to split the shrimplet male from female at a younger age to prevent unnecessary dilution of gene amongst the shrimplet.
Some of you have asked me to share about my breeding tank setup. It really is pretty straight forward.
Picture worth a thousand words.
I learn from Taiwanese breeder on the setup and modified a little but in general works the same. Here is a picture showing one of the most reputable Taiwanese breeder.
Pretty simple? Yes it really is pretty simple.
- Tank dimension :60 x 45 x 38
- Litres: 102
- Thickness of glass 6mm
- Ugf Glass partition height : 9cm
- Sponge above ugf before soil is being laid on top
- Soil : 6litres of ADA (1litre soil : 16litre water)
- Soil 1cm in front
- Ugf powered by hang on canister (totto and ehiem with powerhouse filter media)
- sponge filter (optional)
- Taiwan moss weighted down by large filter media
- Temp 24-25
- Chiller : Artica 1/4hp (up to 900+litres)
- Water change: weekly 10%
- Tds 80-90
- pH:5.8
- KH 0-2
- GH 4
Food:
- Spinach
- Hwa shrimp food version 1. (There is version 3 but I prefer the version one which is limited edition)
- Bloodworm (still holding back)
New post right after Chinese New Year. For those who have been requesting me to write on some topics. These are for you.
Sharing some of the black fancy tiger picture with you.
Is the shrimp price bubble that will burst eventually. This blog post will be about the dark secrecy that underline prices peak period.
Have you wonder why are some prices of shrimp so high whereas some are Low? Actually this is all relative. When a new selective bred shrimp is new it often command a high price and after about 2 years the price will fall.
Take in the case of black King Kong, when it was firstly available in the market they are priced very high but because it is fairly easy to stablize the prices plummeted crazily over a short period of 1 year. Different shrimp have a different price cycle where it goes from high to Low.
There are some shrimp until today still command high prices because of the difficulty to get good graded quality due to instability of the breed.
The dark secret of some hobbyist who sell shrimp to fellow hobbyist is to prey on your new venture into shrimp hobby. They know that you have little knowledge and they will brainwash you and inflate the prices. Such behaviour is highly disregarded and totally lacking of integrity. They will tell you anything and everything despite their little knowledge. Shrimp keeping hobby started in Japan but in my opinion perfected in Taiwan. Some hobbyist continue to con newbies by creating groups to sell them their shrimp and wares without having sufficient knowledge learn from the source. This result in degradation of the shrimp keeping hobby. The degrading of knowledge twisting facts to sell their shrimp.
One example is that you can get graded shrimp from culls. Another example is that PRL will breed out Snow White. These are the very notion that created confusion and degradation of knowledge. Pure red line is term pure for a reason, whoever claim that Snow White is the end result of PRL has totally no idea of what they are talking about. If culls can get graded shrimp, it will be heavily guarded by breeders themselves.
Another example is the following.
This was sold to me by a Local hobbyist who at that time had 3 years of experience. He sold it to me as a black fancy tiger at an extravagant price due to my lack of knowledge and my weakness to trust. However, through this ordeal the “friendship” is only worth as much as the shrimp. It was after a year I realise he continue to prey on newbies and taught them poor shrimp keeping methods. How did I find out? It was through connection from FB that they shared their frustration with me.
This was sent to me from an irate hobbyist frustrated over his nonsense. Names are edited out to protect their identity but would leave the person who continue to prey on newbies. Caveat emptor. Buyer beware. Should a journey of fun and learning become derailed by someone unscrupulous is worth sharing with the community as we continue to stand tall to sellers who lack integrity.
Circling back to the topic, price is a tricky topic to discuss and only through examples highlighted above will hobbyist know that there are many dark secret behind it. Black fancy tiger pricing has been quite high for graded ones and the prices for BFT in Taiwan dollars:
- Grade 1: 100,000 twd per pair
- Grade 2: 70,000 twd per pair
- Grade 3: 50,000 twd per pair
Some of the reasons for the high pricing is due to the difficult in breeding quality graded ones even after such a Long time.
This is a grade 1 male.
Happy Chinese New Year!
Should there be other questions on pricing etc feel free to leave a comment or look me up in FB.
Keep those request coming and I’ll blog it for you.