Water parameters, molting, and species guides.
How many months before your young Sulawesi shrimp reach breeding size? Nobody has timed a Sulawesi shrimp from hatching to first brood, so judge maturity from visible cues such as a female’s ovarian saddle, not the calendar. Care sheets say…
There were three shed shells on the sand last week and none this week, and you’d like to know which week was the normal one. Adult cardinal, Sulawesi White Sock and blue leg shrimp are thought to molt roughly every…
Can you grow aquatic plants in a Sulawesi shrimp tank? For most keepers, no, because water held at 79-86°F (26-30°C) and pH 7.5-8.5 leaves plants almost no free carbon dioxide to work with. Worse, any leaf that melts there becomes…
Your Sulawesi tank’s pH keeps wandering even though the GH reading looks fine. The number you’re missing is KH, the carbonate reserve that decides how far pH moves each day and where it settles when it stops moving. You’re asking…
So how often should you be changing water in a Sulawesi shrimp tank? Much less often than most shrimp advice suggests: Sulawesi shrimp don’t need frequent water changes, and a fixed weekly schedule is one of the easier ways to…
There’s a berried female in your Sulawesi tank, and the clutch tucked under her looks surprisingly small. That’s normal: published counts for the lake Caridina of Sulawesi mostly fall between about 12 and 30 eggs at a time[[1]][[2]], and the…
Losing a Sulawesi shrimp or two every day, with no obvious cause? That steady trickle usually means the tank has drifted into a condition the shrimp can hold out against for a while but not indefinitely, so the weakest animals…
You’ve fallen for photos of a Cardinal shrimp or a Blue Leg, and now you’re deciding whether to set up a tank for them. The short answer is no, they aren’t easy: compared with other freshwater shrimp, Sulawesi shrimp are…
Why would Sulawesi shrimp that look perfectly healthy go month after month without a single shrimplet? Almost always it’s the tank, not the animals: water that drifted out of range or moves too much, a tank that was never mature…
You’ve got a filter running on your Sulawesi tank and an air stone you’re not sure you need. The filter is enough on its own when it keeps the water surface moving. Air-driven sponge filters, airlift undergravel plates and trickle…
How long until your berried Sulawesi female’s eggs hatch? Usually about three weeks from the day you first see them. Each egg hatches straight into a tiny shrimplet that settles on the bottom, with no free swimming larval stage. She…
Setting up a Sulawesi tank and not sure which numbers to aim for? Sulawesi shrimp need warm, alkaline, mineral-rich water held very stable: about 79-86°F (26-30°C), pH 7.5-8.5, GH 4-8 dGH, KH 3-6 dKH and TDS 150-250 ppm, with ammonia…
