I've had an aquarium for a few years now, and it's been an endless source of joy. Sometimes I'll just sit and watch the fish milling about other times I'll tinker with the unnecessary monitoring system I built for it 🤓

I love that it's a fully contained ecosystem and slowly evolves and reacts as the fish grow, plants spread and the seasons change.

One of the most recent changes has been the addition of 14 Neocardinia shrimps aka cherry shrimp. They are bright red, full of character and endlessly on the move looking for food. They are an important part of the ecosystem because they are the janitors, they clean up all the dead/decaying plant matter and any food the fish miss. They also importantly keep algae in check.

They will readily breed so long as there is enough food, this is a bonus because they aren't cheap. I was delighted then when I discovered that one of the shrimps had eggs. I scooped her up into a fry net to protect the tiny shrimpletts from hungry fish, I suspect most of them would've been able to hide amongst the foliage but this way they have a much better chance and I can watch them too.

These little things are tiny, at most 2mm long, which made photographing them a challenge.

They will grow up quite quickly and once they are bigger than the fishes mouths they can be released and help keep the ecosystem balanced.