Amano shrimp breeding

[hadjici2]

Hello,

I have what I believe to be Amano Shrimp. A female was gravid and the eggs hatched a day ago. I left the zoes in the hatching tank for a day with light airation and heater while I prepared a full salinity 33/34 ppm growing tank for the zoes. Until this morning many zoes died as I believe (maybe I m wrong) and I have now transfered the remaining zoes into the saltwater tank. Unfortunately I cannot see any of them gliding in the tank since the water is green. The really interesting thing is that the when I placed the female shrimp into her original tank which is shrimp only and planted, she kept some eggs which hatched into the main tank. Now I see zoes not gliding in the water BUT stuck on the glass moving about the tank using the tank's side glasses!!!! How can it be that in the main tank the zoes are stuck on the glass moving about and in the hatching tank the zoes were hanging upside down gliding in the water?????!!!!

Thanks

[Mustafa]

There may be various explanations for this. I'll throw out two: 1. You are looking at some other microorganism walking around on your tank walls 2. If you have light entering the tank from the side (such as room light, window light..etc.) the larvae swim towards it and get "stuck" on the glass and orient themselves towards that light source.

[zamboniMan]

Can you just put the adults in brackish to start with so you're not having to transfer them back and forth?

[Mustafa]

You can try. Adults can live at up 17-18 ppt salinity and there are reports of larvae surviving and turning into postlarvae at that salinity, too. I've been actually thinking about trying this myself for quite sometime but never got around to doing it. If you try, let us know.

[zamboniMan]

What salinity do the larvae/post larvae do best at?

[Mustafa]

There are reports of successful rearing attempts at various salinity levels...somewhere between 17-35 ppt with 35 being average ocean salinity. You'll have to experiment around a bit. The main issue will be to keep the water clean (i.e. not even minor bacterial blooms) by not overfeeding the larvae.