Wolfenrook’s Fishy Journal

Oi mate, who are you calling a shrimp?

Well, our stock has been added to recently, and again today.  Click on a photo to see a larger version.

The saturday before last we added a group of 11 cherry shrimp that I purchased form a local chap.  They are cute red shrimp, about 1.5-2cms in size which are of the neocaradinia genus.  We hadn’t seen any for about 4 days, but we bought some Hikari Crab Cuisine today and upon throwing some in saw one of the little darlings in the middle of the tank.

Today we purchased, and added, 4 shrimp that we bought from the Hollybush Garden Center.  They were labled as freshwater shrimp, and we bought them in the hope that they were amano shrimp, which they resembled in the dealers tank.  Upon getting them home however, and them taking on their real coloration (nothing ever looks right in dealers tanks, thanks to been stressed and poorly lit), I was able to identify them properly as Macrobrachium Assamensis (red claw shrimp), a larger species of freshwater shrimp that grows to between 5 and 8 cms!  They are also known to be aggressive little beggars, I have even seen a YouTube video of one nipping at a fishkeepers finger!  However my researches on the internet suggest that they usually ignore small species of shrimp like the cherries, and the fish will soon learn not to mess with them!  They are certainly cute little fellows, and not at all shy.   They’re also greedy, one of them managed to carry the crab cuisine pellets both hugged to it’s body using the smaller set of pincers, and some more carried in it’s larger pincers, even pinching some that the snails were trying to eat (I wouldn’t be surprised to see them prise the snails out of the shells and munch them!) and facing off with a kuhli loach that made the mistake of showing signs of wanting it’s stash!   The kuhlis need bring down a peg or two, little so and so’s were starting to think they rule the tank.

Wol