# Breeding RCS



## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

I've got a small colony of RCS in my 30 gallon freshwater planted. The tank is practically a jungle (see pictures) with an AC50 HOB filter and RedSea 50 CO2 reactor. They are the only two pieces of machinery in the tank save the heater, and I cover the filter intake of the AC50 with a filter media bag to keep the baby RCS from getting sucked up.

My female RCS are constantly preggers, but I see very few babies and I'm worried most of them are dying. I highly doubt my other tank inhabitants (6 neon tetras, 6 zebra danios, 3 galaxy rasboras) are chowing on them, but if they are I don't mind at all.

A few questions:
Is there a way to cover the intake of the RedSea reactor like I do with my AC50?

Are there any particular water parameters that might make my tank more shrimp-friendly? (Current water specs are 7.0 pH, 0.25 ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrite, 5 ppm nitrate, 0.5 ppm phosphate, 0.8 ppm iron, 7 degrees KH, 8 degrees GH, 76 degrees Fahrenheit).:animated_fish_swimm


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## mfgann (Oct 21, 2010)

Not sure about the redsea reactor. Never used one.. but I don't see why you cant come up with some way to cover its intake. 

First, its very likely that the fish you keep will snack on baby shrimp. The only fish I've seen that are known to be safe are otos. Everything else is suspect.. especially some you wouldn't expect, like neons and guppies. With a lot more plants growing in you might have a chance of a good colony though. I'd add some java moss, subwassertang, or pellia to the mix for some ground cover. They need lots of hiding places.

The females will drop the eggs if the water quality is off for some reason, and if you're seeing lots of them carry, but no babies, this may be why. Your ammonia should be reading 0ppm. Not sure why it wouldn't.. add any fish recently? Also watch out for salt, copper, and I've heard high levels of iron can cause trouble. Many shrimp keepers won't fertilize, or do it very lightly because of the iron concentration.

Good luck.


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

The ammonia I've made the assumption before as 0 ppm and is off because I do the API liquid titration tests, and clean the test tubes with tap water (in which the ammonia concentration is between 1 ppm and 0.5 ppm).

I would get ground cover, but I have very little ground to cover that isn't covered, and also my light source needs to be upgraded (getting my hands on a 130W PC fixture on Monday) or the ground cover will die off.

Gonna have to McGuyver the RedSea reactor it looks like. Thanks for the input!


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## mk4gti (Jun 15, 2010)

The replacement sponges for the fluval edge work awsome, i use them to cover all the filter intakes for my shrimp tanks. The fish i keep with them are usually small corys and otos. I do put ferts in my tank, seachem flourish and excel. I put trace ammounts in with an eye dropper. Right now im in the process of moving my girls 5 gallon colony into a 16 gallon tank. It basically started off about 5 months ago with 2 fancy guppies and 6 rcs. I got 2 male gups becuase they are a little smaller and i didnt want them to breed. I put some drift wood, slate and clay pots in along with a lot of java moss. Now she has a countless number of shrimp, so many that i needed to triple the size of her tank. She feeds them hakari algea wafers and boiled veggies like twice a week. Good luck with your RCS.


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## mfgann (Oct 21, 2010)

^ I agree about the fluval edge sponge prefilters for the aquaclear HOB filters. I have one on my AC50 in another tank with ghost shrimp, and its great. For my RCS tank I have a couple of small kuhli loaches and 2 otos and just use a sponge filter (its a beaslbob build).

For the shrimp tank I fee hikari algae wafers and hikari crab cuisine mostly. They love the crab cuisine. Hikari also makes a sinking shrimp pellet, but it contained copper, so I shied away from it. Someone later posted that a friend feeds his CRS that all the time with no trouble, so it may be in low enough concentrations it is fine.

My best advice is to lower the fertz a bit to see if it helps the shrimp breed.


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## Gizmo (Dec 6, 2010)

Thanks everyone, I'll work on getting some prefilter media to put around my intakes and cut back on my fertz.


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