Breeding Shrimp For Profit in 2023 - How to make money as a shrimp breeder!

for the past few years my wife and I have been breeding and selling near Carradine shrimp and it now makes up a sizable part of our income in this video I'm going to share with you how I would go about setting up a shrimp breeding business if I was starting today Hello friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Richard and I'm the author of the new ebook on neocaradin shrimp so if you want to start building a shrimp breeding business where would you start well before we start the video let me begin with a caveat everything I share in this video is based on my experience and this is how I would do it it doesn't mean it's the only way to do it it doesn't even mean it's the best way to do it but it is how I would go about doing it if I was starting again today as a second Point even though I live in the UK in this video I'm going to refer to everything in dollars and I think the main reason being dollars is probably the closest thing we have to a worldwide currency most people wherever they live in the world will know what their own currency is worth against the dollar whereas they may not against the British pound so I'll refer to Dollars although here in the UK we do sell everything in pounds and Pence let's start by looking at the setup you would want in my experience the simpler we keep the setup the better personally I choose to use the six and a half gallon or 25 liter tubs here in the UK class aquariums are relatively expensive an equivalent size glass aquarium to these tubs would set me back about forty dollars these I purchased for 15 a piece from Amazon would it be better if I had 10 gallon glass aquariums possibly yes would I breed and sell more shrimp no I doubt I would and I would spend another three or four hundred dollars just setting up this rack alone at the end of the day these are not display tanks they're shrimp breeding tanks if you have access to cheap 10 gallon aquariums then by all means use those if like me it's cheaper to buy plastic tubs just buy plastic tubs the shrimp won't care so with the tank itself sorted let's talk about heating lighting and filtration beginning with the heating now I don't heat any of these tanks behind me they are just left to be at ambient room temperature which means they're warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter in the winter they typically run at around 68 degrees Fahrenheit which is about 20 degrees Celsius and in the summer they tend to be warmer they tend to run at 74 degrees give or take which is about 23 23 and a half degrees Centigrade so does this mean that they breed more during the summer than they do during the winter sure it does but I find in my experience that giving the females that rest of two or three months where they're not producing anywhere near as many babies seems to improve their breeding rate over the summer plus during the winter I'm not shipping any shrimp out anyway we don't post out shrimp here in the UK in December January or February because it tends to be too cold so whilst shrimp kept in a heated aquarium at somewhere between 74 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit will breed more they will produce more shrimp in my experience over the course of the Year giving them a chance to breed more and breed less does tend to give you a better healthier Colony overall as for filtering the bio load in these small aquariums tends to be minimal there are no fish in these tanks it is only shrimp and so I found there is no need to filter these tanks at all I have made videos in the past that saying that you should filter your shrimp tanks and I think that comes down to a level of experience and if you're new to fish keeping or the nitrogen cycle more specifically within a fish tank then you should definitely get a filter it will make your life much easier but once you're experienced then you understand how to keep the water parameters stable without a filter there's no need to filter the tanks at all I don't run filters in any of these all I run in these tanks is a simple air stone which provides surface agitation giving me good oxygen exchange keeping the Water full of oxygen for the shrimp and it gives me circulation meaning I don't get any dead spots in the water I don't get any stratification of the water the air stone keeps the water moving like a filter would but I don't actually run individual filters in any of these tanks I do however think it is important to carry out water changes I do carry out anywhere between 10 and 25 water changes once a week in each of these tanks those water changes help me keep the nitrates under control and lower the nitrate levels in the tanks keeping the water safe and sweet for the shrimp to live in as far as lighting goes in each of these tanks here I just run a pair of LED light bulbs suspended above rows of three tanks these aren't display tanks we're not trying to show off the shrimp we're not trying to make a tank look as good as possible all I want the bulb to do is to provide a day and night cycle for the shrimp and also provide sufficient light for the Java moss to grow I keep java moss in each of these tanks but I'll come back tomorrow on that shortly so in my shrimp breeding tanks I don't run a filter I just run an air stone I don't run a heater I just allow them to be at ambient temperature which does mean shrimp production is higher in the summer in the warmer months and lesser in the corner months but in my experience that's okay and I use basic lighting there is nothing fancy about these setups the important thing to remember is we're not creating display tanks with creating breeding tanks these are purely places for the shrimp to breed so with heating lighting and filtration sorted let's talk about what else I would keep in a shrimp breeding tank if I was setting up a shrimp breeding business now I try and keep these tanks as fast as possible first of all every tank has a layer of gravel now it's just regular cheap aquarium gravel it's nothing special at all I do appreciate there are lots of fantastic substrates available but again this isn't a display tank this is just something to have on the bottom of the tank now I could run bare bottom tanks but I find having gravel provides an almost infinite number of places for bacteria to grow and that bacteria is helping process any waste from the shrimp or from Huntington food that we put in the tank in my experience I get far better results having a gravel substrate than having no substrate at all when I did run bare bottom tanks I didn't find the shrimp bread nearly as much as they do in these tanks here now as mentioned previously I also keep a clump of java moss in each of these tanks and the reason I choose java moss is one it grows incredibly easy to grow it barely needs any light at all and it will grow I find having the Java moss in the tanks means the shrimp seem to be more relaxed they seem to be more at ease because they have some cover and I found that shrimp do breed better in tanks with Java moss than without it the javamos is also a fantastic place for biofilm to develop and many shrimp will spend hour upon hour just combing the Moss looking for anything they can eat biofilm bacteria bits of uneaten food it really does seem to make a difference to them and the final reason I add Java moss if truth be told is it's something else I can sell we sell fairly small clumps of java moss for about five dollars a time and it is essentially Money for Nothing the Moss is growing anyway when we sell a portion of java moss we just bag it up put an envelope send it off it's fabulous it's it adds additional income to the the shrimp breeding project now the final thing I add to each of my breeding tanks is one or two catapa leaves katapa leaves break down slowly in an aquarium they're broken down by bacteria and the shrimp feed on that bacteria although they appear to be feeding on the leaves themselves they're in fact feeding on the biofilm or the bacteria that's breaking these leaves down by adding the catapa leaves I find we have more essentially more food for the shrimp to eat it seems to be particularly popular with baby shrimp and again I have found over the years that aquariums with catapa leaves produce more shrimp than those without it doesn't have to be catappa leaves you can use oak leaves Maple Leaves beet leaves the list goes on I recently ran a survey on this channel of leaves people add to their aquariums and the range was phenomenal really surprising for me to be fair so that's the breeding setup itself covered essentially simpler the better you're trying to create an environment for the shrimp rather than a tank for you as the shrimp keeper to enjoy if you have access to glass aquariums fabulous if not plastic tubs black bins it doesn't matter what you use as long as the shrimp are safe and have an environment they can grow and breed them so with the breeding tank set up let's look at the shrimp themselves next I only breed and sell red cherry shrimp yellow cherry shrimp and some blues I don't tend to get bogged down in the more exotic varieties and I'll tell you why first of all in my experience whenever you sell a live aquatic creature whether that's a shrimp a snail or a fish it does not matter how good your starting stock is how well you keep those creatures or indeed how well you ship them to the buyer all that matters is How likely they are to survive once they reach the buyer's house when you send shrimp through the post to a buyer that buyer could have the worst setup possible it doesn't matter how much information you provide them it doesn't matter how much you tell them they should set the temperature their pH their water parameters Etc no matter how their tank is set up if your shrimp don't survive for the first two or three days after they head into the tank it will be your fault now what that means to us as shrimp breeds and sellers is we need to be selling and shipping the hardiest shrimp we possibly can to give them the best chance of survival when they get to the other side countless times in the past we have so trimmed to people we have shipped them out in tipped-up condition they've arrived the buyer has added them to their tank 24-40 hours later they're complaining our shrimp are poor quality and we sell rubbish shrimp and they should get a refund and yet every other shrimp in the tank is doing absolutely fine and I don't believe it's the shipping process we have honed our shipping process which I'll come back to shortly we have honed that down to the best system we can possibly develop and when we ship shrimp to good homes they almost have an almost perfect survival rate we have learned the hard way you are best to sell and ship only the hardiest shrimp you can and in my experience that's red cherry shrimp yellow shrimp and the blue shrimp unfortunately as a seller it will always be your fault when the shrimp die no matter how much information you give the buyers they will still complain you can give yourself the best Chance by not selling more delicate varieties oh they're shrimp that are much cooler than red cherry shrimp of course there are red cherry shrimp are your bulk standard shrimp but believe me when it comes to selling and shipping shrimp the heartier the better now my next reason for selling just the Reds the yellows or the Blue cherry shrimp is because they're cheap I sell each of my red chair shrimp for about one dollar 1.50 a piece which means a group of 10 red cherry shrimp will set the buyer back somewhere between 10 and 15 dollars now to look at another example if I was to sell five orange eye red tiger shrimp I might sell those for 70 or 80 for the five now while on the face of it that might seem that the orange Eye blue tigers are a better bet because I get more money the reality is I won't sell nearly as many we can easily sell 50 or 60 red tradition per day whereas we might sell five orange Eye blue tigers once a month twice a month the money from the registration comes in day after day after day whereas with the more exotic species the buyers tend to be fewer and further between and on a similar note red cherry shrimp have Mass Appeal there are new comments to our hobby every single day and those newcomers are far more likely to buy 10 red cherry shrimp at 15 than they are to buy five orange Eye blue tigers or five Taiwan bees or whatever it might be which means the number of buyers we've got to choose from is far larger it's a much larger pool than the pool that want the more exotic more expensive shrimp so we give ourselves the best chance of making a sale by choosing to breed the shrimp that most people are looking to buy to give you some idea here in the UK we will sell anywhere between six hundred and a thousand red cherry shrimp in one month we might sell three or four hundred yellow shrimp in the same month and will perhaps sell 150 to 300 of the blue shrimp the reality is I only breed these shrimp to sell so it's in my interest and will be in your interest to breed and sell the shrimp that are in the highest demand in my experience there is far more money to be made selling bulk standard red cherry shrimp than there is selling the more exotic varieties now another point I should mention here is whenever I sell my shrimp no matter how good those shrimp are I just sell them as red cherry shrimp I will never advertise them as fire reds or painted fire reds or Bloody Marys grading shrimp can often be subjective it can be a matter of opinion something I think might be a fire red you might think is a painted fire red the next person might say well that's a bloody mary whatever it might be it becomes incredibly subjective we found in the past that we've sent out high grade shrimp and we've called them X and where the buyers receive them they've held the bag up and said these aren't X these are why you've conned me I want my money back I want a refund because we are working on selling in high numbers we have found it is better to sell as box down to Retro shrimp then send out high quality shrimp and the buyers are chuffed a bits they are super pleased they're expecting bug standard red shrimp and they've got these fabulous bright red shrimp they're chuffed a bit every single time essentially you're under promising and over delivering every time and in my experience that's how you keep the customer happy and you keep them coming back for more shrimp we have no end of feedback where people are saying how fantastically impressed they were with the color of the shrimp we supplied them and that's what you want at the end of the day happy customers of course ultimately which shrimp you would breed and you would sell is very much a matter of personal choice you may well decide you want to specialize in the more exotic varieties of shrimp and that's over well it is personal choice this is just how I've done it and this is how I've made a business which generates a decent side income so so far we've covered how we would go about setting up an aquarium and how we would then heat light and filter that aquarium and which shrimp I would choose to sell I think what I'll do is I'll break this down into two parts and in the next episode I will talk about how I go about feeding the shrimp how I go about selling those shrimp and the way I found is best to package those shrimp to guarantee they arrive safely we offer a 100 live arrival guarantee and we managed to do that because we've developed a system that pretty much Works 99.9 of the time we've had shrimp go missing in the British postal system for days and days and days and the buyer eventually received them and reported they were 100 Survivor rate they were all absolutely fine but we packaged them in case they are delayed for several days and the system seems to work so I'll share that with you all as well now if you're watching this video a week or more in the future I'll pop a link to the second episode just up here on screen if not do subscribe to the channel then as soon as the next episode is released you won't miss out thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: FishKeepingAnswers

Views: 72,014

Keywords: Breeding Shrimp for Profit, Breeding for Profit, Shrimp Breeding

Id: 2yBEmZI4znw

Length: 16min 9sec (969 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023