"How To Raise & Train Your Peppermint Shrimp"

Authored by April Kirkendoll, this marine shrimps aquaculturing book is one we recommend for aquarists of all levels. "How To Raise & Train Your Peppermint Shrimp" is well organized and takes you in logical, simple to understand steps from describing the shrimp, to how to build the equipment required, to the breeding, hatching, feeding process, and beyond.

• Description - 147 pages of text with black and white drawings throughout.
• Price - Low Range
• Publisher - Lysmata Publishing
• ISBN #0996778421 (Paperback; 2002)

Even if you aren't planning to raise and/or train your own Peppermint Shrimp, this book is an excellent read. April Kirkendoll's style of writing leaves you with the impression that she is sitting across the kitchen table, sharing some very interesting experiences, rather than droning on and on from behind the dias in a college lecture hall.

Every chapter is filled with first hand information, gleaned from 17 years of work as a professional aquaculturist and marine aquarist. As you can tell by the chapter names and descriptions outlined below, this book is well organized and takes you in logical steps from describing the shrimp, to how to build the equipment required, to the breeding, care and feeding process, and beyond.

The following chapters are covered in this book:

• Introduction
• Shrimp Biology 101: Anatomy & Vocabulary, What Makes Shrimp Different, A Quick Introduction To Shrimp Reproduction
• Breeding Peppermint Shrimp: Obtaining a "Pair", The Spawning Tank, Feeding The Prospective Parents
• The Eggs
• Larvae Collection
• The Larvae
• Building The Nursery
• Larval Care
• Foods & Feeding: Hatching Brine Shrimp, Feeding Peppermint Larvae (Parts A & B), Growing Juvenile Brine Shrimp, Growing Brine Shrimp To Adulthood, Alternate Foods
• Summary
• Troubleshooting
• Training Your Shrimp
• Notes on Other Species: The Striped Cleaner Shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis), The Flame Shrimp (Lysmata debelius).
• A Note on Commercial Rearing
• A Request
• References & Suggested Reading
• Index

Much of the information contained in this book is of value for many other facets of saltwater aquaria. Just one example is the Foods & Feeding chapter, which gives a detailed description of how to produce top quality brine shrimp (an essential food for Peppermint Shrimp and many other marine species) from egg to adult for a continuous source of nutrition.

How To Raise & Train Your Peppermint Shrimp is a book that we highly recommend for any aquarist to have in their reference library.

About the Author: April Kirkendoll is a professional aquaculturist and marine aquarist with years of experience working with Peppermint Shrimp. In 1997 she started Crunchy Critters, an aquaculture venture that specialized in captive-raised invertebrates. Through this venture she raised Peppermint Shrimp in commerical numbers and experimented with two related species of Cleaner Shrimp, as well as two species of Lobsters.