My Neocardina Are Not Breeding

I have about 13 assorted neocardina shrimp. I have 1 black sakura, 2 snowball, and 10 assorted mix blood neocardina. I have had the 10 for about 3 weeks and the 3 others for about 2 months. None of them have even been berried yet. I thought neocardina were supposed to breed like rabbits. Can anyone tell me what is wrong?

 

Are they in the proper conditions to breed?

 

They are in a 29 gal tank with a dwarf gourami 9 neon tetras, 1 bristlenose, 1 albino bristlenose, 1 clown pleco 2 amano shrimp 7 assassin snails and a ton of pond snails. I have hard water. The temp is 80. I have 2 filters running on it (an aquaclear 30 and a penguin biowheel 100). It is planted. I have an ocelot sword, a red flame sword, an Amazon sword, el Nino fern, anubais, anubais nana, micro sword, flame moss, 3 crypt undualta and 5 crypt lutea. I also have 2 pieces of drift wood I Mylasian and 1 mopanI and 1 moss ball. And 2 plastic caves so they have plenty of hiding spots. They are on sand.

 

Is the tank cycled? What are you feeding? You may want to try lowering the temp a little bit. Mine seem to be most prolific around 76.

 

The tank is cycled. I recently switched them from a ten gallon and switched the filters from the ten while upgrading. I will try lowering the temp.

 

I feed omega one super color flakes for the general population and omega one shrimp pellets and veggie rounds for the bottom feeders. I also give them blood worms once a week and brine shrimp once every other week.

 

Hopefully that will help. The only other things I could think of would be stress from the other tank mates - I'm happy to hear that you were able to upgrade. I was thinking the stocking may have been part of the concern, especially when everyone was in the 10. I also saw on your profile that it was still showing some ammonia, thus asking if it was cycled, but not sure how long ago the profile was set up Have you been able to see all 10 neos at the same time? It could also be possible that one or two are berried and just not coming out to be social to keep the little ones safe from the other fish. I know when I first purchased my RCS and only had 8, I initially thought I lost about half of them, since I never saw them all at once. They had a nice hiding spot in the driftwood they liked and didn't start to come out more until their numbers increased.

 

I have not been able to see all of them at one time. They hide really easily.

 

Well then, fingers crossed that you have a couple berried females who are hiding!

 

Hopefully. I really want them to breed.

 

Make sure to cover your filter inlets or the shrimplets will get sucked up. And like bithimala said slowly lower your temp.

 

Both my filter intakes have sponge prefilters on them.

 

Maybe they can’t breed because of the other inhabitants?

They can’t really breed well when stressed out.

 

The other inhabitants don't seem to mess with them. Which ones do you think could be causing the problem?

 

Maybe the gourami. The presence of just a larger fish can stress them out, even if they aren’t being attacked.

Also, I agree. Lower the temp to 78.

Also, neons like cooler water ~75 degrees which is too cool for the other inhabitants. You can swap em with Cardinal tetras.

ADG has them healthy and cheap.
I got some today. They are $36 for 10.

 

I only had the temp that high to combat ich. It is gone now but hadn't lowered the temp to be sure. It's been three weeks since the last sign of ich so I am lowering it.

Will adg take my neons?