Monday, July 16, 2012

Introduction: A little bit about me

Hi my name is Stephen,

I would like to start this short introduction by saying THANK YOU to Frank Jiang for not only trusting me BUT having me under Ebi-Ken Empire, it is truly an honour to work with such a dedicated & trust worthy person in the hobby. I have known Frank for a few years and in that time i have learned many things from him, i am happy that Frank not only became a close friend of mine but also to be working with him.

I seriously don't know where to start, Frank has asked my to do this for a few weeks now but never got the chance to because of hectic schedule of work & personal life being married not too long ago & still waiting for my wife to get here from Asia. 

I guess i will start from my humble beginning of keeping shrimps, before i got into shrimp keeping i used to keep & breed many types of fish from small fishes to large fishes such as Blue Base Cross Back Arowanas & stingrays. About 6 years ago i started a planted tank and quickly become a shrimp planted tank. The very first shrimp planted tank i had was the one that i will never forget, in the past the hobby of shrimp keeping was very new in Canada. However one of the moderators in our local forum did keep shrimps & that is where i got my first CRS/CBS. Information on how to keep them back then was very limited, knowing me i quickly spent hundreds of dollars just buying shrimps and equipments not knowing the full detail of what i really got myself into and just acted with the impulse of wanting to have shrimps and breed them. This was one of the biggest mistake i have ever made, back then i used Ecco complete substrate. I did manage to keep them alive for a few weeks and actually got them berried BUT babies doesn't survive over a week. After a month have past and lost most or all of the shrimps i have bought i decided to give up. Sure enough a year later i managed to pick up my courage to start another shrimp tank and this time i took my time to read more about what the requirements of keeping them and breeding them. From here the rest is history, the thing to always remember is when you are deciding to set-up your very first shrimp tank always keep in mind to read about them first and try to not act with your impulse "which is a common mistake of a person starting this hobby" thinking "how hard could it be to keep and breed shrimps"? Good thing is you have people like me and Frank that can advice people that are just starting in the hobby of shrimp keeping, back then i had no one to ask and had to learn the hard way.

Now after many years of keeping a variety of shrimps i'm fairly confident that i can venture into more deeper water of selective breeding & cross breeding. Selective breeding is time consuming thus you need A LOT of patience to succeed, through the years of keeping crs i know this because i also feel this that having quality crs brings joy in its owners heart. I know living so far away from Asia i envy thier selection of high quality CRS especially the PRL's, the only way i could ever some close to the quality of the shrimps i see online is through intense selective breeding. Not having the luxury of obtaining such high quality JPRL did not bring me down, instead i worked hard to create a line that i can be proud of maybe not now but in the near future. I also know that in North American it is very hard to obtain quality crs, so by doing this i might be able to offer quality crs for a fraction of the price they would go for in Asia. To me this was never about the money as i have spent thousands of dollars & many years of hard work & dedication to this hobby, i simply love keeping shrimp. It is also a stress reliever after a long day of work.

I just wanted to say thank you for all those of you who took the time to read my introduction & if you have any questions at all regarding shrimps i would gladly answer them the best way i can.

Best Regards,
MP

2 comments:

  1. Having an expert as a close friend and with your experience, I'm sure this will work out nicely. Can't wait to see the result. Congratulations.

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  2. I love your shrimp MP! Cant wait to get some in November!

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