Need help identifying shrimp

[filterfeeder]

Hello. I was trying on another forum to identify some weird looking shrimps I got. While doing so, someone pm'd me and reccomended me to post here. Let me just say that I always loved this site for the information on shrimps it provides. Its outstanding work!

Well, here are the shrimps (sorry for the bad pics, my photography skills are not too great):

Here they are over a week ago when I got them:





Here they are today:




Now a little discription in case the pics are too blurry. The shrimps are around the size of ghost shrimps. They are extremly transparent (the flash in the camera makes them look hazy somtimes, but in real life, they are many times more transparent than a ghost shrimp). They have these weird yellow dots over their back and a line of the dots on their belly. The dots are fluorescent. They also have this 'horn' which also have little yellow dots. The horns are more pronounced in the last 3 pics since the shrimps molted and grew. On their 'cheeks' they have these little black lines. The tail also has some black lines.

I have got a guess of Palaemon concinnus, but I am a little douptful. The store owner that I bought it from said it started with Palaemon, but he didn't know the rest. He also mentioned something about it being called spider shrimp.

Well, thats all the info I got. Thanks for your time!

[Newjohn]

filterfeeder

Hello and welcome to the forum.

As to the identifacation of this Shrimp, I , cannot help you.

It is a very interesting loking Shrimp.

Are any of them , carrying eggs ?

Good Luck
John

[Mustafa]

If it's "the" spider shrimp showing up on import/wholesaler lists once in a while, then it's a Palaemonid shrimp from India. It's *not* Palaemon from what I can tell in the picture as it does not have the characteristic morphology of a Palaemon species. Palaemon, Palaemonetes and Macrobrachium are all closely related and none of those shrimp even resembles the one in your pictures.

The Palaemon concinnus identification given to you is 100% wrong in my opinion. Here is a description of P. concinnus:

http://www.indian-ocean.org/bioinformat ... /Tax41.htm

It's a totally different shrimp from yours.

Your dealer probably just used the "scientific" name that was provided to him by his wholesaler. "Scientific" names on import/wholesale lists for shrimp are usually 100% wrong, so I would not trust them.

Having said all this, I can't really tell you the exact scientific name of this shrimp. It has either not been identified for the hobby yet, or maybe it has not even been scientifically described (i.e. not yet "discovered" by science). You'll have to get used to this when it comes to shrimp as research in freshwater shrimp has not been done to the extent as it should have been. Also, the hobby is very young and there has not been all that much attention on shrimp, but that will change in the future.

So...at least you know now that your shrimp comes from India and is a Palaemonid shrimp. Better than nothing.

[filterfeeder]

Thanks for the help . I'll guess I'll just leave the name alone for now, maybe they'll develop some more identifying features as they age. Plus, another one just molted .

[Mustafa]

Do you see any egg-development in ovaries, yet? If you have males and females it would be interesting to see how large their eggs are. If their eggs are fairly large, then they should be breedable in freshwater.

[filterfeeder]

Nope, so far none of them has eggs, although my fingers are crossed!

And another one just molted. From the size of the shell, I can see it was one of the big ones I have.

Unfortuneately, I think I see some small little animals in the tank too, like nematodes, cyclops, and other critters. They came with the sand and periodically appear when I overfeed. Time to do some water changes again....

[Newjohn]

Hello filterfeeder

How are those Shrimp doing ?

Have any started to develope eggs ?

Have a great day
John