It isn't as easy as it appears. This is my third or fourth go-round. I've tried blood shrimp, scarlet cleaners, and peppermints. I always get them to the last stages before transformation and then they all die. This time I am determined to solve the puzzle. Others have done it already but I'm hoping to branch out into more difficult ornamental shrimps as I get better at it. We'll see what happens. In any case, I encourage people to try breeding things. It is fun and interesting and in some cases you can even make a modest profit-- like I said, no one's getting rich doing this.
My thing is for people to master the basics of culturing rotifers and greenwater and brine shrimp and other sources of food, to master the basics of raising baby fish, then move on as quickly as you can to breed something no one else has yet. Thing is, most of the "easy" ones are already taken... and none of them are easy! Clowns, neon gobies, purple dotty backs, and even some damsels, and others have been done. I tried to raise mandarin dragonettes at one point. I got them to spawn but I didn't know it at the time. They do this mating dance and release their gametes directly into the water column. I saw them doing this on several ocasions but never could find any eggs anywhere. When, to my chagrin, I discovered the ugly truth, I gave up on them... at least for now.
Honestly, I highly recommend raising freshwater angelfish to get your feet wet-- pardon the pun. Once you've done that, move on to clownfish or something like that. For me the next step after jack dempseys, oscars, jeweled ciclids, angelfish, and a few others, was to raise neon gobies. I'd actually like to do that again. I love those little guys. I don't think I ever actually sold any of the offspring. I decided to create a hybrid between the blue and gold neons but soon after got sick of all the hassle and quit.
Something else I have been toying with is trying my hand at giant clams. But nut yet-- one thing at a time.
and they are eating!!! Now I just wait and see how fast the colony grows.
