The number of Cheery Shrimps in the tank have dropped to critically low levels after we put in the tadpoles earlier this year.
The tadpoles got big and they produce lots of ammonia waste which is toxic to the shrimps. We started losing at least 1 shrimp a day at least when it was bad. It was also pretty hard to catch the tadpoles when they were big and fast. The thick growth of Java moss also did not help. I had just hoped that the tadpoles would all turn to frogs and then the shrimps would get to repopulate.
This week, I decided to clear up the tank. We caught out the few remaining tadpoles and put it in the main tank. I was a little concerned that we were down to less than 5 shrimps left and there possibly be no females left in the population. I bought 2 new Red Sakura Cherry Shrimps to add to the population before cleaning up the tank.
You can see the cleaned up tank and one of the new Sakura females can be clearly seen foraging on the right side.
I removed all the Java Moss and re-mounted them on the rocks and metal plates. So the tank looks pretty bare right now.
During the clean up we found 2 dragonfly and 1 damselfly nymphs. They are probably the reason why the population went down so fast. They must have eaten all the newborns. The smaller shimps tend to be able to withstand ammonia poisoning better than the older larger shrimps.
It also appears that we have about 10 shrimps in the tank excluding the two new ones. Out of the 10 2 or 3 are females.
I lowered the temperature in the tank this week by daily application of ice blocks. The female shrimps are all about to lay eggs. Hopefully in two weeks time we will see some female carrying eggs around.
This is a picture of the tank in an earlier post when we first caught the tadpoles
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