I have decided that I would like to add some PK grass shrimp (Palaemonetes kadiakensis) to my pond here in S. Louisiana as an additional forage species. However, after a quick search, it appears that the going price is about .60-.65 each! I wonder if they can be raised in a 300 gal rubbermaid tub? Does anyone here have any experience in this or have any sources of info on raising them?
Thanks!

Are pk the same as the ghost shrimp you catch in ditches?

Possibly, but not sure. These (PK) are known as Mississippi grass shrimp and are more cold tolerant than the other varieties. There is a guy in N. LA that sells them, but I want to see if I can raise my own.

Go to a weedy creek and use a fine dip net and probably get enough to get a start of them . I did that and I still have them in the pond.

Thanks, that would work, and I don't mind buying a few to get started, but I want to raise a bunch. My trouble is finding info on rearing them.

Used to get them from a bait dealer in Baton Rouge, deadly on almost everything: CC, CNBG, RES, LMB, you name it. We'd put ice in the bottom of the bucket and use mesh to keep PK above it in moss. They didn't survive well totally immersed.

Be aware that if you don't have extensive weeds, PK won't prosper. They are slow & easy pickings in open water.

I have a 1/4acre bait pond that I stocked with them last fall. I bought maybe 300 off a seller and after shipment I would be surprised if 75-100 lived.

I saw no signs of life all winter long... extremely heavy freeze (For us in NC) with a couple weeks in single digits and I assumed all had died. I shocked the pond this fall just to see what was going on... and I was amazed that the water was literally "boiling" with shrimp. I have since several thousand to a 10 acre lake and will let you know the survival rate next spring in that body of water.

It would be hard to estimate but I'm guessing that 75-100 shrimp easily turned into 50,000 plus ?!? There was also almost no predation in that pond, except for a few errant BG.

Good Luck.

Great work! PK shrimp are just the ticket for YOY LMB and most BG. You must not have had many BG in that pond or all the PK would be gone quickly.

By the way, did you have plants in the pond? Thought I read somewhere that PK shrimp lay eggs on plants, but maybe I'm mistaken.

Swingle reported some tests with PK. ("BIOLOGICAL MEANS OF INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY IN PONDS"). I've posted the link before. It's open source so google if interested.

PK benefit greatly from plants. The plant he noted was chara. I found it remarkable what they can do for an infertile pond with chara. He noted that najas didn't seem to benefit them. He reported an 89% increase in BG production over BG and Chara alone in an unfertilized pond.

His production cycle involved stocking 19.3 lbs PK/acre and 48 lbs BG/acre. The PK shrimp increased BG production by 109 lbs (from 124 lbs/acre to 235 lbs/acre) in an unfertilized pond and the production of PK was 162 lbs/acre. This is quite remarkable (standing weight of 180 lbs of PK). Don't know what the conversion for PK is but likely greater than 5 to 1. So as much as 707 lbs of PK were produced in the presence of predation. Quite remarkable indeed. The standing weight at the end of production suggests that PK are better than gambusia and FHM at maintaining a population at least in the presence of chara.

jpsdad - Would you please repost the link to the grass shrimp article by Swingle? My Google search was inadequate to find the article.

Well I tried to just upload it but the forum doesn't allow pdf in the file manager. I will do a quick google ...

http://www.nativefishlab.net/library/textpdf/15116.pdf

Thanks. Interesting, but still no data on tank (stock tank) rearing of PK shrimp, and that's what I'm after. I have no doubt that they will increase BG/LMB production once established in a pond, I just am trying to figure out if they can be efficiently tank raised. Since their young goes through a planktonic, not benthic, stage, I'm not sure how that will work with the filtration system etc. My guess is that if it were easy to do, there would be more info online about it. Hoping to figure it out eventually, if it's possible. Thanks again for your input.

I gleaned some things from the paper that could be used in tank culture. Read the part about fertilization and brush for adding substrate. I would personally use organic fertilization (alfalfa or cottonseed meal). Remove to the brush to harvest. They produced 1000 lbs of them to the acre with bluegill eating them along the way. I bet you could produce a fair number of them even if it weren't optimal.

BUMP.

I wouldn't filter the water, that will remove food they will eat. At high density you may need aeration but they produced 1000 lbs/acre of them without it.

I cannot imagine how many PK it would take to add up to 1,000 lbs

That said, maybe I should look in to getting some in my BOW. I have chara and need to more efficiently feed my CNBG so they can in turn feed my LMB!

That's a heckuva load of critters. Any concern about a DO crash?

jpsdad - thanks a lot for providing the link to the grass shrimp paper/study.

Dave, especially in monoculture I think this should be a concern. I doubt it would be a problem in a pond filled with predators like BG and LMB.

To attain these standing weights PK must be harvesting primary production to some degree. I would think they might harvest decaying phytoplankton in addition to the periphyton they are known to harvest. One poster describes the water boiling with them, so maybe they harvest live phytoplankton too while free swimming. If so they would have an effect similar to tilapia in that they can reduce nighttime respiration O2 drawdowns. Don't know because there is little research on them. If they feed on phytoplankton, PK would compete directly with Nile and Blue tilapia and when in combination would reduce tilapia benefits to large LMB but would benefit LMB recruitment and BG.


The predators were limited in Swingle's trials and so one shouldn't expect the same standing weights. There was little difference between fertilized and fertilized and brush in the production of BG. At the rate he stocked, the BG were getting all they could eat without the brush. This tells me that PK were limited by habitat not by BG or fertility (in his trial).

There is a lot to glean from this paper. I find myself going back to read it or portions of it frequently.

Most welcome Bill.

somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.36 million

Here is an old thread on PK shrimp.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=371764

Just a FYI. Can't remember if there's anything useful for growing them or not.

Any thoughts on how scuds compare to PK shrimp as far nutritional value, etc?? If they are close to the same then maybe they are a viable substitute. I have heard they are very easy to raise if PK wind up being difficult.

I put PK shrimp in my forage pond two or three years back and see no sign of them any more. The first year I would catch one in a minnow trap once in a while.

I just did not have adequate cover for them, in my opinion. I think the fish eventually extirpated them.

I put ghost shrimp in my big pond about 5-6 years ago, really expecting them to not make it. My shoreline is fairly steep in most places so the percentage of weedy cover is low as compared to the entire BOW.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and his boy were fishing in that pond and the boy had a fine dip net he was horsing around with in the shallows....lo and behold he was hauling in shrimp left and right!!

Guess they did just fine.