The journey of keeping my halocaridina rubra shrimp started Nov. 4th, 2014, when my dad got me an ecosphere for my 18th birthday. It was advertised as a self-containing ecosystem, containing everything the shrimp would ever need. It contained four small, reddish shrimp. I didn't know much about them at the time, and while dubious of the claims, kept the sphere. I collectively called them Orbies due to the shape of the container they lived in. Slowly, the population of 4 dwindled down to just one inhabitant, a singular Orbie.
Late 2015, I brought her to college with me. She kept me a little company through those years, sitting on my desk.

August 9th, 2019, almost five years later, Orbie was still with me. Doing a little research into what she was, I learned about her species, and that there were people who broke open their ecospheres to put their shrimp in a better environment. I did some planning and research, bought a 5.5 gallon tank, and bought her 10 new friends from someone who bred them. I remember that night they came home, and I carefully cracked her ecosphere over a glass bowl. When the water hits fresh air after being enclosed for so long, it rapidly ammonizes and would become toxic for her. I had to quickly scoop her out of there and into the glass pie dish I was keeping the others in, steadily acclimating to the tank water they'd be living in soon.

I didn't take any pictures that day of the process, but I have a picture I took after getting the 10 new friends in the mail.

A piece of green yarn was put in the bag for them to sit on for the bumpy ride ahead, all the way to me.

I still remember, after scooping Orbie out and putting her in with her friends, that the 10 of them started gathering around her. They took turns feeling her with their feelers and lightly with their claws. Then, satisfied, the 11 of them galloped happily around the glass pie dish's circumference. I was so glad to give her new friends, having not seen any of her kind in 5 years.

Soon after they were put into this tank they started breeding. Mother shrimps have to carry their clutch in their swimmerets and "fluff" them to oxygenate and protect them. It takes a few tries for new mothers to be able to "juggle" their eggs effectively without dropping the clutch, so it was a few tries before I actually had any baby shrimp populating the tank. The starting tank I made for them was simple, sand and two large lava rocks to crawl in and around. I have a video of them roaming about in their early tank.


Their tank has changed over the years. I've drilled larger caves into the lava rocks for them to hang out in, redid the tank with black sand, got more chaetoalgae for them to graze and sit on. Now, there's over 50 of them in their 5.5 tank! I've also obtained one 16 gallon spherical tank I'm wanting to flesh out and call their home ... I've been working on sourcing brackish plants for them to live alongside. Trying to make a filter work for their tank is difficult, as they don't like strong flow and they're so small that most all filters will suck them right in. I'm waffling between a sort of Walstad method to oxygenate the water without the neusance of a filter, or something small that's cordoned off from the rest of their aquarium somehow. I also picked up a 20 gallon rectangular tank someone threw out (!!!) that I'm playing around with (currently filled with brackish water + driftwood that I cleaned. and so many tannins that I can't see inside of it lol). BUT!!! I'm hoping soon to move them all into something much larger for them to really get some leg-room in. But I'm happy with how long they've all been with me..!

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