Shrimp

We received ten shrimp in the mail yesterday. When I mentioned that to people, they would automatically assume I was having seafood shipped to my house. Actually, the shrimp were alive . . . and freshwater versions. They're red cherry shrimp for our aquarium. I wanted to add this little scavengers to our fish community and since I couldn't find any locally I went online.

The shrimp arrived priority mail. The first step was to empty their transport bag into a bowl. From there, Steve added a couple of tablespoons of water from the fish tank every five minutes for 45 minutes. This helped them acclimate to the environment within the aquarium.

Here they are in the bowl toward the end of their acclimation period. The two really small ones would be juvenile shrimp and the rest are young adults. The juveniles were only about a 1/2 inch long, and one wasn't particularly robust. We ended up losing that one shortly after this photo was taken. :-(

Here's a close-up of a few of the shrimp. The juvenile is gray. I think that's a sign of stress. I read that shrimp lose their color when they're stressed or ill. So I'm not all that surprised we lost one. 

We used a net to gently put them in the tank. The fish paid them no mind for the most part and the shrimp scattered around the tank. They seemed to like their new surroundings. One was frightened when one of the catfish blundered close by and it darted inside the ship. I never saw him come out.

When the tank light went into night mode, the shrimp all disappeared. I guess they went into various hidey-holes. The tank was still in night mode this morning and the shrimp were still missing, so I have no idea if they made it through the all-important first night or not. Fingers crossed I go home today to find nine healthy shrimp flitting about the aquarium.

In the meantime, here are some photos of them in their new digs:

This guy liked the English phone box we have in the tank. From the photos and videos I saw on the Shrimp Farm website, I expected the shrimp to be a brighter red in a hue closer to the phone box color. They're still pretty, though, just not as easy to spot. Of course, their red may be dulled to stress.

This guy liked hanging out under one of the aquarium plants.

There's actually a shrimp in the cave there. You can make it out on the left side of the entrance. Although it's a lousy photo of the shrimp, I thought it was a pretty one of some of our fish. The three fish at the top are some of our Glofish tetras. On the bottom is a longfin leopard danio and the white blur behind him is one of the albino cory cats.