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.
Tank Cycling
Background for cycling and super charging it
The background of cycling the tank is to ensure that the beneficial bacteria has now in good number and ability to convert ammonia from nitrite and then eventually to Nitrate.
The long and short of this is that there are sufficient beneficial bacteria to convert ammonia to a less poisonous state. The tank will continuously produce ammonia as there are shrimp waste, food, rotting plants and that is the food source of beneficial bacteria, by ‘eating’ the ammonia and converting them to Nitrite and Nitrate.
As you can see there is a time line against the nitrogen in the tank, so when the ammonia and nitrite levels hit 0 it takes about 40 days.
Now we are aware of the reasons behind why we need to cultivate beneficial bacteria, is there ways to speed it up by 50%?
Certainly there are ways to speed up the cycling process however if you are a new breeder, you might want to find someone who is reputable to help you out.
Tank seeding, this means to seed the filter in another established tank for a week or two so that the beneficial bacteria can colonize the filter and then bring it back to your tank. This is much easier if you have already an established setup. If not then you can still continue with the 40 day cycle. Alternatively if you have other established tank and are 100% healthy no pest etc, you can consider exchanging one of the old sponge into the tank. This will help kick start the process as well. How fast does it help to cycle? It will certainly help to reduce the cycling time.
Bacteria products: There are many nitrifying bacteria products on the market, it helps introduce the beneficial bacteria in hope to colonize filters quickly and establish the colony. However, there are no dates as to when the batches are made and some do not see any results by using it.
Elements affecting speed of cycling:
low pH doesn’t do bacteria growth any good, so it slows down the bacteria colonization process hence it is a good idea to ensure there are oxygen in the tank, and a good filter media such as sponge filter/hang on back/cannister.
That is also the reason why cycling may take longer than usual for low pH tanks. There is no rush in cycling the tank because once you get it right the shrimps will keep breeding.
Add more tanks: If you can’t wait for the next tank to be fully cycled, than keep adding tanks until you are able to. That is what i normally say jokingly.
Weight loss fads a staggering $71 billion!
The weight loss industry in 2021 is worth $71 billion. What am i trying to relate here? There is a lot of financial incentive to introduce fads and connotation about speeding up cycling. The faster someone is able to cycle the tank, the faster they can purchase livestock and i think while we can super charge our tanks to cycle faster, we can’t magically turn a blind eye on science.
The stronger less delicate fishes and shrimp may be able to handle a 7 days cycle or a shorter cycle time without much effects.
I was also made known on many occasion that to get around it is to use old buffering soil which have lesser capacity to buffer which would in a short period of time send your ammonia test kit reading 0. Technically this can easily fool many new breeders but to an experience breeder we all know all too well because the tank will continue to remain sterile, microorganism can’t thrive and reproduce which on my other post on how to see if the tank has mature.
Water parameters the hard and soft value are equally important so if you are serious about shrimp breeding in the long haul, it is critical that cycling and maturing the tank before the shrimps are being place into it. Like i’ve mentioned the hardier ones would probably get through, but along the way people will look you up as a mentor to guide them. It is never wrong to do the right thing.
Impact of a poorly cycled tank
I have got many pictures from hobbyist where their tank look almost sterile with no life to it. Despite it being ‘fully cycled’, the tank just couldn’t get to a point where shrimps are happily breeding constantly.
Here are some impacts to a poorly cycled tank:
- Shrimp doesn’t breed
- shrimp look lethargic
- female shrimp do not want to saddle
- shrimps do not consume daily feed eagerly
- hiding most of the time
- constantly 1-2 dead shrimp on a daily to weekly basis
- no microorganism visible
- sterile looking tank, no algae, too clean
These observation can deduce a few things
- insufficient beneficial bacteria
- insufficient biofilm
- insufficient microorgasim
- insufficient balance to the tank
There is really no shortcut to maturing a tank, like wine, the wait is where the goodness is. Can’t rush it, because how you do anything is how you do everything.
Sharing and Supporting
Sharing and Supporting
This is a less in-depth shrimp post and taking this time to share some of the background of the Why’s of Shrimp Sanctuary and why it exist.
As the title says sharing and supporting has created Shrimp Sanctuary with the sole purpose of educating the hobby. This to me is one of the cornerstone of why it exists. In my home page, i did share the high level reasons for the existence of Shrimp Sanctuary and would take this opportunity to share more.
I get the opportunity to communicate to a lot of shrimp breeders all over the world and have forge strong friendship from it. From Russia to Malta to Poland to most of Europe countries and to Africa, Brazil, USA and not forgetting Asia. This has given me a very broad perspective of what is happening in each of these countries.
While we all have different languages, the common language we talk about is shrimp. However, what i also observed is that the politics we have in common in this hobby is fairly similar across the countries and the many sub groups within groups.
In Singapore there is no difference, however i believe that this can be change a person at a time with the notion of Sharing and Supporting. Sharing information that allow breeders or even beginners to kick start their hobby. In this day and age, information is widely available however we need to discern between accurate data and not so accurate data.
Why Share?
Like all new hobby, there is a learning curve and many prefer talking to someone to get up to speed as quickly as possible. So usually platform like YouTube and Facebook are great ways to obtain information if they couldn’t find someone to guide them. However, one must also be weary on what information is beneficial. A litmus test is to see if they are truly a shrimp breeder who have high quality shrimps. This will differentiate between noise and voice because great ideas cut through all the noise.
Why do i take hours and hours every week just to share something which i feel passionate about.
One of it is to debunk the fallacies in the hobby is we are drowning in information but starved for knowledge. A lack of knowledge creates fear, seeking knowledge creates courage. So when one is able to gain knowledge and put it to use, it dispel fear.
The secret to having good shrimp breeding is actually knowledge. The knowledge of breeding, knowledge of food, knowledge of setting it up. when we have all these have success, share them because knowledge gain is wisdom, sharing knowledge is humanity.
Why Shrimp Sanctuary
As the name denotes, a sanctuary for breeders and new hobbyist to come and learn more about the shrimp hobby. Information is free and can be use for learning but putting these information together and then trying it will give you knowledge over time. Experience does it.
At Shrimp Sanctuary we value free sharing of information which would otherwise have been kept a secret as i understand that good information is really lacking and hence learn from Taiwan and share it here. This journey continues as i continue to provide more information about shrimp breeding and sharing what works for us here in Singapore.
Wouldn’t we offend sellers by revealing all these information? I have been asked about this why invest time in things without benefit? At the end of the day we need to stand up for something we believe. Yes there will certainly be people for and against us.
Everyone have a finite time on this earth, time can either be invested or wasted, so i choose to stick to investing my time and energy to the top two quadrant, which accounts for 50% of the breeders. A special shout out to those who continue to read my blog following closely every week and encouraging me to continue writing. Thanks for that and for those who have sent me a token for “Virtual Coffee” greatly appreciate it.
For those in the last square, i simply do not invest any time to even try, and i’m sure many of you have them in your life. They will tell you what you can, what you cannot. Just Ignore the naysayers, because they may temporarily bring you down, but they will not be able to write your story. It is your story and it is your life, they don’t run it.
Hence, i continue to forge on creating blog entries to share as much as i can, which i learn from Taiwan. Do let me know what would you like to see in the next blog entry and i can write them for you while sharing with the rest.
Sticking with it
Making it work
As the pandemic continues on, i would like to reach out to everyone and say please stay safe!
This post is really about sticking with it and staying the course. I have received good feedback about breeders who truly stuck with it and make it work. Those who really stuck with it got to make it work.
Shrimp breeding is fairly straight forward and there isn’t much you need to do once everything is in place. Letting the shrimp do their thing and breed with the environment you have setup for them matters.
There isn’t one best way to breed shrimps nor a best water parameters, there are many ways to breed shrimp just finding a suitable and optimal way. In most of my post, i often share what works for me and stuck with it because it has given me results.
i would encourage you find yours and make as much mistakes in the beginning to learn. Once a method is really doing well for you, can stick with it until you learn something that you never had known about. Then adjust and gain better and better. Improve them over the years and do what you can for creating the environment for them.
biofilm and selective breeding
Selective breeding in my other post have provided an in-depth information on what it takes to breed good shrimps. However, to build the shrimps up for breeding, the often overlooked part is biofilm because the rest of the process are quite similar.
In many of my articles i have shared the importance of biofilm and the consistent use of it will encourage breeding and overall enhancement of water quality. Continual usage will ensure that beneficial bacteria have food source to feed on and the biofilm is the key to better saddling and breeding.
When we use the kallax ball or lubao, it helps encourage growth of beneficial bacteria but if we remove the food source for them, the beneficial bacteria will lower in tandem with the amount of available food. We all know that beneficial bacteria helps maintain high quality water condition and it is important to maintain it stably.
using and introducing biofilm is a long and slow process, quitting won’t make it faster and to get there we need to stick to the process and continue on while we may not see results in 10 days or even 20 days. As ecosystem require a longer time frame before the shrimps start growing into it, we will need to be patient and stick to it.
For those who stuck with it at least for 3-6 months started seeing results because the entire ecosystem start to work well for the shrimps. Breeding will increase and shrimplets will breed through.
As long as you are using the lubao and kallax ball that were carefully blended and individually hand pack by myself will be fine. The process of preparing it for use followed to the T will certainly bring many more breeding females in the long term. Many renowned breeders have use the ball crafted by me and have real positive effects and does not float after 5 days. I’ll not put my name on something that doesn’t have the best in me, as i too wouldn’t want to have a ball floating up after a week. When the ball is half submerge between the water surface and ambient air, the fermentation process is disrupted and it create a rancid smell when expose to air. That is the reason why the Shrimp sanctuary ball will continue to remain under water where the shrimps are.
if we take a look at this example, we start with 2M 10F and after awhile, we got 4 female to berry and ideally we get about 40 shrimplet for a newly minted female since they’re not large yet to carry bigger brood size.
What i have observed is that if our conditions are right and biofilm is introduce from like plants/moss/lubao, it encourage more female to saddle which overall helps to get more female to breed. With the additional 20 shrimplet will certainly provide more shrimp numbers so you can start selecting process easier. While not all females look the same and to get that particular nice female you have to breed is like playing Russian Roulette, so we have to induce and encourage females to saddle as much as we can.
The more difficult the shrimp for example BFT, Boa, the more we would like the females to berry constantly and carry out their next generation because time isn’t on our side. There is only so much time we have to ensure the shrimp breed to good numbers before they retire.
Another example would be to get that particular nice female to saddle and breed may take in general 3-4 months but by introducing biofilm, it helps to further encourage to get saddle as soon as possible since biofilm is usually the last missing puzzle.
Continue to push forward
While there are setbacks in shrimp keeping, it is important to know that the setbacks are actually meant as a setup for you for better things to come. Reason being is that if we don’t fail, we are not even trying. I’m not asking you to fail but it is important that failing is an option and that you pick it up each time you fall. As you grow through it, you gain more and more experience and breed better and better shrimps. There are many successful breeders breeding excellent shrimp and you can follow their methodology and get there as well.
Remember, don’t be discourage, give it your best!
Thanks for reading!
Inbreeding and Line breeding
What works?
A shoutout to the breeder who have asked for this article to be covered, thanks for your support!
According to definition inbreeding is breeding very closely related shrimps with each other such as father-daughter (F0-F1), mother-son (F0-F1) brother-sister (F1-F1). Outcrossing is breeding totally unrelated shrimps or very distance relative, While line breeding is breeding lies somewhere in the middle.
Line breeding as you can see lies somewhere in-between inbreeding and outcrossing and can be understood as a planned inbreeding or a strategized inbreeding.
The purpose of inbreeding is to keep or enhance a certain trait or bloodline such as to continue for example the redness or size of a PRL.
The purpose of linebreeding is to keep the trait of a particular shrimp. For example red legs on a PRL.
So using both breeding method has it’s pros and con because too much inbreeding while can continue or enhance the desirable trait but run the risk of degrading shrimps of deform nature.
Where should i start?
When we first purchase our shrimp from a breeder, high chance the shrimps are closely related, however buying from a bigger breeder the chance of the shrimp being related are further apart.
When the shrimps are closely related, we can assume that they’re most likely brother sisters or cousin or close cousin. That way, we will start with mass breeding them before starting to select.
For example, i have selective took out from a brood 2 males and 3 females to selective breed, they are closely related cousins as i control the males that i use from 2-4 depending also on the number of females. 
When close cousin breed, they will firstly continue the desirable trait but will not really enhance the trait and with mass breeding, the idea is to get as many shrimplets as possible in the shortest possible time. From there lock in after a few generations the desirable trait you would like and then start inbreeding.
When should it end?
We can safely assume when we purchase shrimps from a breeder chances are the shrimps are very closely related unless the breeders keeps multiple tanks of the same parentage and keeps a strict breeding methodology.
As you can see in the example if we start off with a pair and slowly breed them to masses and then when we have our shrimplets (also helps to prevent too much inbreeding as male as small as 0.8cm can fly), it is important to remove them. The whole idea is to create 2 lines and relative or half/brother/sister (cousins). This way it will help pass on desirable trait and minimize undesirable trait when half brother/sister mate and at the end of the continuum if one would like to inject yet another desirable trait, an outcross can be made when you purchase the same line from the same breeder as we can safely again assume they are distant relative.
This PRL has been inbred (crossback) to maintain the desirable trait of size and redness. Now i’ll start breeding to a good number and split into two tanks so that i’ll have cousins. It takes almost 2 years to get to this stage.
selective breeding “Be All End All”
Selective breeding takes time, years and years of consistency but many give up before results are seen. Selective breeding is the Be All End All in raising the quality of the shrimps.
This can be modified depending and minimally you’ll need 3 tanks to get to the desirable trait, i have expanded the number of tanks to split out the improvement tank and championship tank.
Main Breeding tank: when we start breeding 2M 8F of decent quality, this tank will continue to breed for shrimplets.
Shrimplet tank: this is where we will house all the shrimplets and once you have decent female, put it back into the main breeding tank. Over time you will find that there could be 2-3 good males and 10 good females, you can then take them out and put into the improvement tank.
Improvement tank: Strict inbreeding happens, and then the shrimplet can be scoop out into another shrimplet tanks and then the process above continues and then get to the championship tank which would probably be your goal to get there.
However, when you get there, the shrimps are fairly inbred, so now it will be good to split the tank into two and then get cousins so that the genetics pool do not get too similar.
Hope it helps! If not drop me a PM in messenger facebook and i can clarify any questions 🙂