# CRS stopped breeding in winter?



## Symplicity (Oct 14, 2011)

Hey All,
Ever since it started getting cold outside my CRS stopped getting berried. I have not changed anything in terms of parameters. Everything seems stable from my perspective except for the temp. Last I checked it was high 19 Celsius.

I turned on the heater to get it to 20.5 to see if that helps. Does anyone else seem to have this problem?


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

Symplicity said:


> Hey All,
> Ever since it started getting cold outside my CRS stopped getting berried. I have not changed anything in terms of parameters. Everything seems stable from my perspective except for the temp. Last I checked it was high 19 Celsius.
> 
> I turned on the heater to get it to 20.5 to see if that helps. Does anyone else seem to have this problem?


I have the similar issue. The tanks in my basement was at around 18 degree range for about two weeks before I turned on the heaters in the two CRS tanks (back in late October). The breeding didn't resume though, for 3 - 4 months I only had four berried females (and around 60+ babies surviving so far ranging from 2 weeks to 3 months).

I made some changes to the tank the week before Christmas, and one got berried a week after, and one of my three CWS is saddled (they're clear so very easy to spot). She was never saddled. I got those CWS in late August so they must be around 6 months old now. Here is what I did,

1. Add one more air stone in each of the two tanks.
2. Removed 50% of the floaters. The two tanks were almost dark even when the lights were on due to the thick floaters. The nitrate on both tanks were non-existence due to that, after the 50% removal, nitrate is still near zero.
3. Increase the flow in the tank. I have my HOB mod on both tanks, I just move the utensil holder a bit to the side so more water flows into the tank directly.

PH (5.6 and 6.0), TDS 140-150, GH6, KH0, NH3/NO2 zero, NO3 very low -- these didn't change.

With these changes, shrimps are more active and got one berried and at least one confirmed saddled.

There are 100 things we can change in the tanks so what works for me may not work for you, I'm just sharing my experience. I made the changes mainly because the flow in the two tanks were very minimum. One of the tanks has about 20 adults and 60 juvi/baby shrimps (16G tank), they could use more oxygen I thought.


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## Symplicity (Oct 14, 2011)

Thanks Randy. I will give it afew more weeks with the heater on (just turned it on last week)

P.S I did cut my lighting intensity down to 1 bulb (vs 2 bulbs) as algae was out of control! Maybe that could be a reason.... the timing lines up right


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

Shrimp, like most animals, pick up on clues from nature that we don't sense so sometimes something just isn't right to them.


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## chinamon (Jun 16, 2012)

feed the females some tequila and see if that helps. jk


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## Symplicity (Oct 14, 2011)

randy said:


> I have the similar issue. The tanks in my basement was at around 18 degree range for about two weeks before I turned on the heaters in the two CRS tanks (back in late October). The breeding didn't resume though, for 3 - 4 months I only had four berried females (and around 60+ babies surviving so far ranging from 2 weeks to 3 months).
> 
> I made some changes to the tank the week before Christmas, and one got berried a week after, and one of my three CWS is saddled (they're clear so very easy to spot). She was never saddled. I got those CWS in late August so they must be around 6 months old now. Here is what I did,
> 
> ...


My TDS has spiked to 180 for some reason after re-introducing my pre-filter (full of biomedia). I will try to slowly lower it to 150 (back to normal) on next water change this weekend. I failed to rinse the media prior to use, which I believe caused the spike in TDS


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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

I don't think TDS 150 vs 180 has any significant impact on the shrimps.


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

randy said:


> I don't think TDS 150 vs 180 has any significant impact on the shrimps.


+1. Not for them to stop breeding all of a sudden. I've let my tanks go up to the 300 mark before.

Symplicity, I think you are not taking your username to heart and doing the opposite with your CRS.

Take it simple, they are less hard than most people make them out to be. Look at Tina, bare bottom tank, tap water and her CRS are out breeding her RCS. Look at Ricky, hasn't changed water since before Harper was PM, tanks full of CRS every time I've been to his place.

I too, as many, fell victim to the you need a million additives and this and that and freaked over every thing. I honestly did better with shrimp when I didn't have a TDS meter or pH meter and just went with it. lol. Then I tried to go fancy, screwed up my stock, now I'm back to basics. Bare bottom tank, hamburg matter filter, no active substrate, just RO water, pH is around 6.8. Spotted this little guy the other day










and this guy came out last night.


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## Zebrapl3co (Mar 29, 2006)

For some odd reason, I am getting the same thing a well. But it doesn't really make sense. I think it has more to do with the water. Last year, mines are breeding like crazy when I took off for China in Novemeber. This year in Novemeber, I had nothing. But Recently though, I do have a few burried shrimps. Seems like you need to make water changs once in a while, this "no water change" concept isn't working out for me.

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## randy (Jan 29, 2012)

Zebrapl3co said:


> For some odd reason, I am getting the same thing a well. But it doesn't really make sense. I think it has more to do with the water. Last year, mines are breeding like crazy when I took off for China in Novemeber. This year in Novemeber, I had nothing. But Recently though, I do have a few burried shrimps. Seems like you need to make water changs once in a while, this "no water change" concept isn't working out for me.


Funny thing is in those 4 months of not much breeding, I did weekly 10-15% WCs in one of the tank. And I stopped the WCs before Christmas and they started to breed (at least some). This shrimping hobby is just full of variables and nothing really adds up until it works. Then when it does work, it rarely is because you are doing something right, but not doing something wrong.


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## Symplicity (Oct 14, 2011)

Nice pics!

I am thinking of setting up a new tank soon as my tank is close to 1.5 years old now  im going to do a 10% water change saturday with 100TDS 4GH water to bring it down abit over a span of 48 hrs.

My BKK seems to be the most active -_-


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

randy said:


> Funny thing is in those 4 months of not much breeding, I did weekly 10-15% WCs in one of the tank. And I stopped the WCs before Christmas and they started to breed (at least some). This shrimping hobby is just full of variables and nothing really adds up until it works. Then when it does work, it rarely is because you are doing something right, but not doing something wrong.


Yup. Picky little creatures and as much as there are "norms", there aren't. lol. There was a thread on PT about people keeping neo's in low pH and there was a lot of replies of people keeping them and breeding fine in 5.5-6pH, which goes against what we are "told".

I talk to some Polish and Eastern European breeders online, who don't have access to a lot of things we do, or are very expensive and their water is like 8+ph and they keep TB's, CRS, all kinds of shrimp in the water.

That's part of the reason for my no active substrate tank test. See if keeping the minerals content, kH0, gH4-6, will let them breed and if that's more important than a pH of 5. I couldn't get a snail to live in a 5pH tank, now when my tank is 6.8pH, my snails are doing good, shrimp are doing good, got some berried ones, some babies as posted in the photos on the other page and it's 50% bare bottom and a bit of flourite and a big sponge wall. No 9 canisters chained together, no $400 in fancy media, I feed laguna barley pellets, Hikari algae wafers and Ebiken EI is the only "shrimp food" I really feed and with that I do seem to see a difference in growth, activity, etc in the shrimp.

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Symplicity, If your tank is 1.5yo, you may be at the end of the substrate life or facing what mine did, releasing all kinds of nitrates and phosphates and crap back into the water.


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