Monthly Update: April 2019

Winter is nearly here, and the weather has gotten a lot cooler down in Melbourne!

A big focus in the past few months has been on breeding the neocaridina shrimp in our collection and preparing for travel. I, as the owner of the store will be away for most of June and am leaving the care and security of my invertebrates to friends and family.

We’re selling off most of our juvenile shrimp before I head off, so it’s a good time to snap some up before the long wait for anymore in the future. I’m very pleased to say that the quality of our Bloody Mary and Blue Dream shrimp juveniles has improved over time, though our Black, Yellow and Orange lines need some work to get deeper colours.

Travelling does mean that store operations will be paused in June, while stock is being maintained behind the scenes- I won’t be present to do packing, sending and all the logistic stuff.

Mantis breeding and raising is also in a bit of a pause with winter coming. Our False Garden Mantis ootheca are in diapause and won’t be hatching until it warms up again. As you can imagine, maintaining captive bred mantises from captive born parentage takes a very long time for each generation.

I did recently acquire a macro lens to help take better photos of our smaller sized invertebrates, since they can be very hard to see unless you are up close in-person. Enjoy this video update of our shrimp in HD macro!

Amendments to stock:

• All neocaridina shrimp are in stock until the 2nd of June.
• Limited amounts of springtails are now available.

On going projects: Projects will largely be on hold until July.

• More new shrimp food for a better complete diet. (packaging and label stage)
• 10 South American fishes colouring cards set. (looking for printers)
• 10 South East Asia fishes colouring cards set (illustrating)
• 10 Oceania fishes colouring cards set (planned)
• Breeding mealworms (starting the first generations)
• Aquarium botanicals (looking for sources for new things)

Thanks for reading, and stay warm!