# Have you noticed how cheap cherries are becoming?



## JerseyScape (Nov 18, 2005)

Wow, I can't believe how cheap these things are becoming. I continuously see the price getting lower and lower when it comes to the cherries. When I look on aquabid, there are sellers that are charging 15 and 20 bucks for 10 of them. Of course, you still do run into crazy ridiculous prices but the decline is finally noticeable. I can't wait until the Crystal Reds get cheap like the cherries -- it's bound to happen.

It seems like there are many people breeding them, hence the price decline.


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## Piscesgirl (Feb 25, 2004)

Yes, I've noticed the price decline and it always worries me that they will soon be sold as feeders


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

At our last club auction there were 4-5 bags of them. The last bag of 15 went for $5.00.  We've taken to calling them red roaches...heh heh.


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## milalic (Aug 26, 2005)

JerseyScape said:


> Wow, I can't believe how cheap these things are becoming. I continuously see the price getting lower and lower when it comes to the cherries. When I look on aquabid, there are sellers that are charging 15 and 20 bucks for 10 of them. Of course, you still do run into crazy ridiculous prices but the decline is finally noticeable. I can't wait until the Crystal Reds get cheap like the cherries -- it's bound to happen.
> 
> It seems like there are many people breeding them, hence the price decline.


It will be some time until the crs price decline...there is a grading system in them and they do not breed as fast as cherries do.


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

Excpet for local instances such as club auctions cherries will probably not drop much lower then $1.50 - 2.00 ea. Lower prices than that remove the incentive to continue breeding them as certain fixed costs will not be met. What I think you will start seeing is selective breeding to bring out even more vibrant reds.


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## plantbrain (Jan 23, 2004)

They do breed like flies.
Started with 20, added another 20, have 300 now after 3 -4 months.

Regards, 
Tom Barr


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## JerseyScape (Nov 18, 2005)

plantbrain said:


> They do breed like flies.
> Started with 20, added another 20, have 300 now after 3 -4 months.
> 
> Regards,
> Tom Barr


All my females are walking around pregnant. I think you can drop them in the toilet bowl and they can breed. I tried a test by putting one of these roaches in a cup of pure untreated water and it lived to my amazement. She's back in my regular tank where she has a full belly of eggs. She also survived over 100ppm of Co2, my ottos died but she kept walking around as if nothing was going on.


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## macabelli-bra (Feb 1, 2005)

Now im really sad ... Here in brazil is not easy to find cherrys and the price is around US$12 each   
Regards
Gustavo


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## acbaldwin (Nov 3, 2005)

*salesman voice*
Hola Gustavo, What would you say if I told you that you can have _fifteen_ of these _incredible_ red cherry shrimp for the _low, low_ price of *nine dollars* apiece!?! If you call now, we'll also through in this vegetable juicer absolutely *FREE*!!!

....sigh... I miss totalfark....


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## Simpte 27 (Jul 16, 2004)

Heh. Still can't find them locally in this aquarium devoid area.


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## JerseyScape (Nov 18, 2005)

I bought my shrimp about a month and a half ago for 20 bucks plus 7 shipping. The seller sent me close to 30 cherries for that price. [smilie=k:


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## acbaldwin (Nov 3, 2005)

I actually got mine from the same guy as JerseyScape, after reading the thread about all the extras JS got. His user name is T_om on here and Aquabid. Just goes to show ya how important word of mouth is.


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## JerseyScape (Nov 18, 2005)

gnatster said:


> Excpet for local instances such as club auctions cherries will probably not drop much lower then $1.50 - 2.00 ea. Lower prices than that remove the incentive to continue breeding them as certain fixed costs will not be met. What I think you will start seeing is selective breeding to bring out even more vibrant reds.


I do agree with you on the last part that selective breeding will occur but I still think that prices are going to go lower than a dollar a piece. I bought mine for less than a buck which included shipping from Florida. I've been watching Aquabid daily and I always see new sellers getting rid of their Cherries because they have overrun their tank.....once mine breed they will be going on aquabid as well. On the other hand, since there will be little incentive for professional breeders to keep these, they will concentrate on harder to breed species or new ones that nobody has yet.


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## JerseyScape (Nov 18, 2005)

acbaldwin said:


> I actually got mine from the same guy as JerseyScape, after reading the thread about all the extras JS got. His user name is T_om on here and Aquabid. Just goes to show ya how important word of mouth is.


Are they breeding yet? Mine started carrying eggs after about a 45 days. I also vary their diet by giving them the following foods:  HBH Crab pellets, Fruity Pumpkin Crisps, Hikari Algae wafers, Wardeley shrimp flakes, Ken's earthworm pellets, frozen brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms, cooked peas, and crushed snails once in a while. My girlfriend says the shrimp eat a more diverse meal than I do. Oh yeh, I also live by the theory that if food is abundant the shrimp will breed like crazy since the environment will be able to sustain the babies.


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## acbaldwin (Nov 3, 2005)

They are breeding, in fact I just realized that at least one batch has hatched and is doing well. I got them just before x-mas, but I wasn't home to put them in the tank (55 gal heavily planted), so I never got an accurate count. At least four (very) vibrant females have been carrying eggs for at least the last 3-4 weeks, but I was never sure if any had hatched since it's hard to find an "="-sized shrimp in a tank that big. But, lo and behold, I noticed about a dozen youngsters grazing on the leaves of my anarcharis forest! Now I'm interested to see my ghosts hatch their young.

EDIT:
Oh and BTW, I planned on breeding them just like you to cover the cost of the hobby, but noticed the Aquabid market has been especially saturated in the last month or so. Instead, grow out the cherries to roughly maturity and bring them into you LFS. Cherries still run about 3-6 bucks a pop, at least around here.


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## JerseyScape (Nov 18, 2005)

acbaldwin said:


> They are breeding, in fact I just realized that at least one batch has hatched and is doing well. I got them just before x-mas, but I wasn't home to put them in the tank (55 gal heavily planted), so I never got an accurate count. At least four (very) vibrant females have been carrying eggs for at least the last 3-4 weeks, but I was never sure if any had hatched since it's hard to find an "="-sized shrimp in a tank that big. But, lo and behold, I noticed about a dozen youngsters grazing on the leaves of my anarcharis forest! Now I'm interested to see my ghosts hatch their young.
> 
> EDIT:
> Oh and BTW, I planned on breeding them just like you to cover the cost of the hobby, but noticed the Aquabid market has been especially saturated in the last month or so. Instead, grow out the cherries to roughly maturity and bring them into you LFS. Cherries still run about 3-6 bucks a pop, at least around here.


The LFS was my next move  
I just ordered some orange crays since not many people are breeding them.

Oh yeh, one more thing. I don't know if I mentioned this but I just found a few bumblebee babies in my shrimp breeding tank. I have a few mothers carrying too. From what I have read on here, people are having difficulty with breeding these so you might want to give them a shot.


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## acbaldwin (Nov 3, 2005)

LFS seems to be the way to go for the common stuff, surprisingly enough. I've been thinking about getting some bumblebees, I think they are pretty nice looking and they definitely go for more. I don't think the LFS ever sees them around, they would probably end up jacking the price to $15 lol.


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## Ibn (Oct 20, 2004)

They've dropped in price considerably for the last year or so. I shipped in 100 of these guys for $3.50 each awhile back and they're still floating around in various people's tanks.

Working on the next crustacean - orange C. patzcuarensis.


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## wolfbane (Aug 2, 2005)

*Roaches?*

My Christmas present shrimp are multiplying too. The one male I have is a busy fellow, there are a bunch of babies in the tank now. I am down to 6 females, reason unknown, I started out with 11.

I hope I can do some trading of shrimp and guppies at the LFS before long. The guppy tank is getting over populated fast!


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## milalic (Aug 26, 2005)

JerseyScape said:


> I do agree with you on the last part that selective breeding will occur but I still think that prices are going to go lower than a dollar a piece. I bought mine for less than a buck which included shipping from Florida. I've been watching Aquabid daily and I always see new sellers getting rid of their Cherries because they have overrun their tank.....once mine breed they will be going on aquabid as well. On the other hand, since there will be little incentive for professional breeders to keep these, they will concentrate on harder to breed species or new ones that nobody has yet.


I do not think they will go down from $1.50 for the cherry red, unless LSF is selling for less. you can not count freebies as in most cases with shrimp, people send extras and you never know how many extras you can get(it can be one, it has happened to me or it can be you buy 10 and get 9 alive and 5 dead). Apart from being a good seller/person there are other reasons to send extras like happy customer who will get you more clients, risk of shrimp dying on the way to your home, shrimp dying during the first couple of days, shrimp being imports, etc.

Even if a lot of people start breeding them...what will happen is that eventually people will go to the LSF and sell them or get credit. Most LSF give you 1/3 of what they sell the shrimp for...

Selective breeding is an option like gnaster says.

In my case, cherries(mostly very very red ones) breed slowly because they are with my tigers at a temp of 70F. I have to say that I have more tigers than cherries and at this temp I have occassional dropping of eggs by my cherries...

cheers,
Pedro


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## milalic (Aug 26, 2005)

acbaldwin said:


> LFS seems to be the way to go for the common stuff, surprisingly enough. I've been thinking about getting some bumblebees, I think they are pretty nice looking and they definitely go for more. I don't think the LFS ever sees them around, they would probably end up jacking the price to $15 lol.


An LSF nearby has bumblebee shrimp(99% of bumblebees you buy are imports) sometimes. They sell for $4.99...remember, unless you convince someone that your shrimp is high grade and someone bought your grading system, like the CRS grading system, and you can prove that there are different grades of shrimp, pricing (depending on species) will stay in the range of $1.50-$8.00 per shrimp.

Cheers,
Pedro


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## T_om (Dec 23, 2004)

JerseyScape said:


> Are they breeding yet? Mine started carrying eggs after about a 45 days. I also vary their diet by giving them the following foods:  HBH Crab pellets, Fruity Pumpkin Crisps, Hikari Algae wafers, Wardeley shrimp flakes, Ken's earthworm pellets, frozen brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms, cooked peas, and crushed snails once in a while. My girlfriend says the shrimp eat a more diverse meal than I do. Oh yeh, I also live by the theory that if food is abundant the shrimp will breed like crazy since the environment will be able to sustain the babies.


Glad to hear the shrimp you got from me are still doing well.

You feed them WAY better than I do! 

Mine get a diet of Omega One Tropical Fish Flakes.

By the way, be careful crushing snails. Don't use your fingers. Back in my Discus breeding days, I almost lost my index finger to an infection the doctors could not stop. I routinely crushed snails against the side of the glass. One shell cut me.

Actual flesh loss under the bed of the nail and skin sloughing off the side of my finger. They finally found something that worked, the name of the drug had about 36 letters in it and I do not recall how it was pronounced... but it worked. It took MONTHS for the skin to grow back. The doctors were talking amputation up until the very last before they got whatever it was under control.

Crush snails with ANYTHING except your fingers.

Tom


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## acbaldwin (Nov 3, 2005)

T_om said:


> The doctors were talking amputation up until the very last before they got whatever it was under control.
> Tom


Now THAT is hardcore shrimpin'.


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## oceanaqua (Oct 24, 2005)

Dang...I just started to get them breeding and now seems that most people have them. Even my lfs store are selling them out for $1.99 a piece--adult size! I notice that the snowball shrimp are gaining popularity very quick. I'm waiting for freshwater clams to be popular, cuz I got thousands of them


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## jgc (Jan 30, 2006)

I think selective breeding might help maintain demand - I would have probably paid more for a different color. My wife told me that she did not want any minature cooked lobster in the tank, so I searched out a wild strain. Ultimately paid $8 for a dozen or so (with at liest that much in plants thrown in bonus).


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## mozesyap (Mar 9, 2005)

I am not surprised. Back in Singapore, They costed slightly less than USD$0.50 each. I had 20 and they breed very fast even in my community tank with all the predators around. I got 100s in the end.

But I don't see the shrimps (like CRS) that are more difficult to breed coming down in price soon.


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## iris600 (Feb 12, 2004)

I know I could get (easily) 2 or three dollars a shrimp in trade at local LFS. Anytime the LFS near here get in shrimp, they aren't algae eaters and sell for between 5.99 and 12.99 each. I know some pretty red shrimp would be awfully easy to sell if they were priced similarly, if they can already sell the brown fan shrimp for higher prices.


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## Don135 (Jan 12, 2006)

T_om said:


> Glad to hear the shrimp you got from me are still doing well.
> 
> You feed them WAY better than I do!
> 
> ...


Tom that order I received from you last month is also doing great. You shipped on one of the coldest weeks we've had here in MI for awhile and not one casualty. No more finger crushing for me...Wow!!

Thanks Again :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Don


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