Sigh... my shrimp are just floating around in the water. I think a few of them have died because there seem to be less shrimp floating around everywhere. To be honest, I think that all these months stuck in a jar has sucked the life out of them. Just floating around... don't think I have any luck with babies either!
Well, I have just fed my opae'ula and I am still feeding them once a week. I think they are really used to their new habitat. It's funny. When they moved in, they were all over the place but they are kind of just floating around and resting. When I also fed them, only a little of them went up. There are still no babies! I wonder if it is a coincidence... Anyways, I guess they are not the little balls of energy they used to be!
I am really glad to see that my opae'ula are doing really well. They are just swimming around and resting. I am feeding them once a week. I just checked and I found it weird and interesting... They were all resting on the same rock with only about one swimming around! Well, maybe that means they are getting to know each other! :) Anyways, I still don't see any babies but they are really tiny so I hope they are there and that I just can't see them! :)
Well, I just looked at my shrimp and I just fed them and I haven't fed them all day so they were hungry! About 7 shrimp were up there! I just love to watch them be so energetic. Though there was some on the rocks just relaxing but they are going to have to go up there sometime. Though, there aren't any more shrimp to feed then there was before. How disappointing. But I will definitely notice when they do have babies and I will be sure to post it up here right away! As usual, there are some slacking back on the rocks. [I bet they are the same ones] We just had an event this weekend so we moved my habitat onto a coffee table in our living room. I think it might be getting a little bit of better lighting there so hopefully there will a little bit of algae for the shrimp to eat. It is amazing to watch them when they eat and swim around even if only once a week and only for a second. There are [actually] no white shrimp and that makes me glad because that means that there is nothing bothering them and I think that means that they are getting settled into their new habitat! I am really glad that they are totally used to their habitat! In the beginning, some of them were white but now they are all a bright red. [The color that they are supposed to be] Anyway, I hope they are never white again!
As far as I know, the number of shrimp hasn't changed. To bad. Most of them are really active, though. There are a few sitting on the rocks but there are a lot of them swimming around the tank. I think that they are really getting used to it! Sadly, there is no snacks growing on the sides of the tank for the opae'ula to eat. Wow, though! I am surprised that they can still swim that fast! Now I have been feeding my opae'ula about three times a week. This time, all of my shrimp are red! I am really happy! To bad. None of my shrimp yet have eggs. I bet if they did have baby shrimp, though I wouldn't to be able to see them! Maybe soon, though. I have these opae'ula for just about a month. I hope there will be some eggs at least soon!
I have been feeding my shrimp daily and they have been getting really fat! It is kind of also because sometimes my grandpa feeds it in the morning and then I come home and feed them again. But by the time I feed them, the food is gone from the top so it should be okay.What I find interesting is though, I see that most of the shrimp are a bright red but I see 1 or 2 shrimp that are white but I think that they would have settled down by now. I can't imagine what they could be startled about. It could be that I am feeding them twice a day but somehow I don't think that is it.I still haven't moved my habitat because I was going to put it on my desk because I haven't cleaned it. :] So this means it is getting dull sunlight because the windows provide some light but it doesn't fully reach. Although, I do not yet see any females with shrimp or eggs. They have been very active. There are some sitting on the rocks but about half of them are swimming around the tank. There is not yet algae growing on the tank, though. Hopefully, there will be soon
This is a short video about how to prepare a habitat for opae'ula. It includes every step [Steps can include preparing gravel, water and putting some finishing touches] and is has music with voice over recordings. It also has finished results so you can check if you are doing it correctly. It has text to tell you what you have to do that the voice overs do not.
Today I got to finally take my opae'ula home! I am so excited! I placed on the dining room table kind of in the middle. I just fed my opae'ula. They are swimming eagerly around the tank. It looks like they are ready to eat! Most of them are hanging out at the top. Some of them are cruising on the rocks. So far, there is no algae growing in my tank. I am going to feed them daily for about a month. There are windows kind of by where I put my opae'ula but it won't get a lot of sunlight but it is right below a light. Sadly, none of them have eggs yet but how could I have expected that to happen!? I saw 1 shrimp that was kind of white but I think the others are settled down because they are all a bright red. Right now I own 14 shrimp but hopefully I will have more soon!
There are many steps to taking care of shrimp. But I think the number one rule to taking care of shrimp is that never let any mold near your shrimp or get into your food. If you see even the slightest speck of mold or even lots of mold spores in your food source [which is in this case spirilina], immediately get rid of your food. Do not try to take some food where you don't see any mold because chances are there are probably mold spores, you just can't see them.
Speaking of food, to feed your shrimp, I would recommend taking something flat, thin and metal or plastic for feeding. To get the right amount of food out, try and dip whatever you are going to us e and take the cover off so you can tap the utensil on the container and the spirilina will sprinkle of into the tank. How do you know if you are feeding it to much? Well if you feed the opae'ula and you come back a few hours later and there is some spirilina still bobbing at the top, you are feeding them to much. They should be able to finish the right amount of food up in a couple of hours. In order to keep your shrimp away from the mold, try to avoid leaving out a utensil with leftover spirilina. Eventually, mold will invade it and if you dip it into the food, that will cause it to get mold.The main thing that causes spirilina to go bad is moisture so once you are done feeding the opae'ula, seal the container holding the spirilina tightly so moisture cannot get in. If you also try to keep the cover on while you are feeding the shrimp, eventually spirilina will get stuck in the hole which you are trying to feed through, mold will grow on it and it will cause the shrimp to die. If you are feeding the shrimp too much when you first get it, that is okay because you will adjust. If you would like to go on a trip, do not feed the shrimp all at once and think that is enough. If you do that, eventually the spirilna will fall to the bottom. You may think that they will eat it but the decomposers will pick at it and the shrimp won't eat that. This will also be polluting their habitat. If you would like to do this, teach someone how to take care of your shrimp while you are away. If you would like to feed your shrimp daily, you can but at the minimum, 2 days a week. When you first take your shrimp home though, you should feed it daily for a little while because you just got them. These are my tips on feeding shrimp. Have fun! Finally! The shrimp are here in my habitat! I originally had 9 shrimp bucks. {Each one allowing me to have access to 1 shrimp! What was also really cool was that we got an extra 5 shrimp bonuses! That gave me 14 shrimp! So the way this was done was that the teachers started calling us up in the order they saw the vases [our container for the shrimp] on the table. Then they could count our shrimp bucks and add 5 to that. They started scooping up the shrimp from the tanks and to make it easier, they took out the rocks so that the shrimp wouldn't have a place to hide form the net. {I don't blame them, though} The next step was to then get rubber strips form a teacher that were really sticky once you take off the yellow covering. They drew lines on the yellow rubber so you could cut the strips the right size. You needed to cover the outside of your cover with the strips twice so we needed to cut out two of the sticky strips. Once you were done withe that, you went straight outside to another teacher named Ms. On. {That is what we called her} She helped us pull the strip to outline the cover and then we did the rest ourselves. We put the cover on lightly so the shrimp could have air but we were going to drill a hole later. We just didn't do that because the teachers were gong to do that. Now we are so close to being done I can practically smell the finished habitat!
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