Owens L'ill Slice of the Web

Dario dario

Two Scarlet Badis (Dario dario) in my 10L nano-aquarium with some Red Crystal shrimp. This picture does not do them justice really, they are a real living jewel; truly beautiful and tiny (1 to 1.5cm adult size). They are related to the Perch family, and lots of interesting behaviours. I was having a small issue with minute water bugs; sub millimetre dots swimming and crawling over the rocks and plants in the Nano tank. I have always wanted to keep some fish in that tank, so this seemed like a good opportunity to go for it on the basis that the shrimp were ignoring them, but a predatory fish would not. They will eat very young shrimp too, but leave juveniles and adults alone, having some shrimp population control in that tank is no bad thing.

10L 'Jewel' of a tank

I’m already keeping Celestial Perl Danios, and Microrasboras in a 35L aquarium, the Danios are a bit bigger than the Badis, but the Micros are even smaller (possibly the smallest invertebrates in the world). I like these very small species, and the shrimp I keep them with, it’s like owning Fabergé miniatures or a precision mechanical watch, they are so tiny but so perfect. I have a pair of males, I’d hoped the smaller one was a female but it turned out to be a male that had not coloured up yet..

What I had not reckoned on was that they are fussy eaters in a way that would make most girls with ‘Anna‘ really, really jealous. I’m currently having to feed them individual live bloodworms with a pair of tweezers.. But they seem to have finally got the idea that the little critters in their tank can be eaten too. I noticed the number suddenly start to decline last week, and I eventually saw one of the Badis chasing and eating them; they seem to have cleaned them up now. Going forward I need to wean them onto frozen live foods, and if I can I’d like to get them accepting small flake and pellets. I actually tricked one of the them to eat a pellet last night, he spat it out really quick. This may be even harder than I imagined.

shrimp, just hanging around

In the midst of bad news in the family, there is good news in my aquaria, I have baby shrimp in the nano-cube tank. And the female is carrying eggs again.

Baby shrimp, and an adult for comparison.

The baby shrimp are amazing, even after a week they are just 2 milimeter long red-and-white blobs, hard to see any detail at all, but they move and feed like adults already.

Wonderful! A crystal red shrimp carrying eggs in my 10L tank; look for the little ‘berries’ under her belly. I’m really rather pleased to see this happen in such a small tank. Now I need to think of how to get rid of the juveniles, at 3-7 euros each it may be worth feeding them up and selling them.

Click on the image for a better view, she will carry the eggs for a month or more before they hatch as minute versions of the parents.

In a moment of weakness I brought a 10L Dennerle nano cube today, it’s to house freshwater shrimps, and some micro rasboras.

Should be interesting, I think it will live in my bedroom, nicer to look at than my alarm clock in the morning

I’m really keen to see how the shrimp work out, they are totally fascinating, I spent far too long checking them out in the shop. It will be a few weeks before it’s set up properly, getting it stable with some plants, rocks and decoration comes first, then shrimp. The fish will follow later, once I’m happy with the shrimp.