A shout out to a breeder down under and this post is dedicated to you. Your question regarding if lighting helps with shrimp breeding. I think the long and short of this is it will really depends. What kind of answer is this?

Sunlight is the food source of everything and it is important to the entire ecology of Mother Nature. So is lighting important to breeding, yes it does to a certain extend but does not have an immediate impact however critical.

The reason for this is because light helps plants such as moss and floating plants grow and make food which in turn provide shelter and food for microorganism. In the same line the plants also help cultivate biofilm providing food to shrimps. With this it may appear that lighting is important.

Does shining light for long hours make shrimps nicer? No it doesn’t. Light does not make a shrimp nicer by shining long hours on it. They too do not get sun tan like humans do. The only thing that is achieve certainly is a higher electricity bill.

There are plenty of light choices in the market now and are fairly affordable. When i first started this aquarium hobby it was only florescent light tubes and then then Pressured Lamp and moved on to T5/T8 and eventually now with LED with multiple colors for different purposes.

I have used quite a number of light sets before and for shrimps it is rather straight forward, since we are not growing high light plants, then there isn’t really a need to splurge on high end light sets. However, it is important that the lights promote growth of your plants at least and not so dim that even mosses don’t survive.

For shrimp keeping both T5 and LED are recommended, however i will now lean towards LED because it is light, doesn’t give off too much heat and have a very long lifespan.

T5 light sets are fairly heavy and i have retired my T5 light as there is a need to change the tubes annually and it is expensive to keep it running. LED on the other hand can be cable tie to the rack and or place on the tank and easily moved around since they are lightweight.

The prices for LED nowadays are as affordable as T5 if not more affordable as the massive shift towards LED. With more advance LED light set there is also dimmable feature, sunset feature, timer, wifi all inbuilt.

Currently because it is fairly affordable to get LED lights hence i’m using Chihiros normal white light LED which does the job well.

Generally if you see plants such as mosses and floating plants growing then you have sufficient light for your tank. I’m using a 6000k Chihiros light there are 5 levels of light intensity i’m setting it to level 3 and they are doing great. When the entire ecosystem is well establish and mature, while light doesn’t appear to have immediate impact but overall it does help.

Just like lubao/kallax ball which create biofilm, while they don’t have immediate impact but overall it helps with the ecological system in your tank. This is yet another soft value that is often overlooked.

So does the amount of light helps or impact breeding, indirectly it does because a decent amount of light certainly still help with the whole eco-system hence all these small sum adds up to a successful breeding experience.

Hope you have a good read!

In the realms of breeding shrimp would require persistence and consistency as one would be hit by many obstacles along the way but should never give up. To progress in breeding requires persistence and keep believing when you don’t see results in a year or two.

On the other hand, i have heard some share with me that they’ve invested so much time and effort and also money on shrimps but after 6 months they don’t see results. Movement shouldn’t be confuse with progress. Movement is really about doing the things like water change, resetting tanks, feeding, and the day to day things all these are what i call the hygiene factor. The very fundamental or building block of shrimp breeding and does not equate to progress. We can change water whole day every day but at the end, if we do not progress in selective breeding than it’s just going with the flow.

Progress on the other hand is about taking risk and doing something different than what you are doing currently. It also involves failing but people are afraid of failure and fear of looking like a failure. I think failure should be an option. Without failing you are not even trying, to get something you never had, you have to do something you never did. Trying to see results with 1 tank is going to be difficult because if we would to discuss about selective breeding we should need about 2-3 tanks per type. So by taking risk to expand your setup, investing in good sourced shrimp are some examples of sowing the seeds to progress forward.

This is a really difficult one because people need to see a cause and effect to believe. Hence the term Seeing is Believing. However, in shrimp breeding if you’re unable to see the results in the first cross back are you going to give up? How about selective breeding project not taking root? It’s easy to get discourage in shrimp breeding and not continue on the process of selective breeding. Going back to the drawing board to see where can be improve in the selective breeding process.

Keep working on it and failing and trying again. Getting more tanks, trying and keep trying. So while everyone knows selective breeding is the “Be All End All”, but it takes generation to get there and if you see the goal in front of you and keep trying and improve, i believe you’ll get there one day.

The successful breeders are not the ones that didn’t fail, they are the ones that fail the most, but they believe and keep believing and they are the ones that stood up every time they fall. That separates those that achieve their goals and those who don’t. It’s common to hear this “I don’t have this, i don’t have that, i can’t have this, it’s too difficult, it’s too much for me, it’s impossible, i don’t have the resources, i’m afraid,” Put all these away if you would like to progress because we are what we speak.

We can learn to believe like Shrimp does, they can’t see their egg develop unlike human where we can see our babies grow bigger in the mother’s tummy. However, shrimps believe that if she keeps fanning her egg, shrimplets will come and although she can’t physically see her clutch, nature made it in such a way that she knows even without seeing she will hatch the babies.

Well, there is a saying “if you do the difficult thing in life, life will be easy”. One example would be the honey bee story where they were part of a space experiment being sent up to space to see how 0 gravity affect their flight. When they reach outer space, the bees started to float. They must be thinking, life should be like this, easy floating around effortlessly. I don’t even need to flap my wings, i can float around in life, how wonderful that is. I just drift around and i’ll get to where i want to. Flapping my wings all these while has been tiring!

Eventually, the honey bee die. The bees were not born to float around, they get confuse, orientation got distorted. In other words, doing the difficult thing in life may be difficult but also rewarding.

So we can choose to take the easy route and float around (nothing against that) but do not complain that you don’t see progress on your shrimps. Taking the difficult route and persist on will get you there.

Hope this post would cheer you on to get to where you want to be and as such, it is those things you don’t see that brings you forward. Keep believing.