Cuban Shrimp

[Veneer]

See this link. While German aquarists have apparently managed to secure Cuban-collected specimens of Micratya poeyi, does anyone know of any references (technical or otherwise) to any of the other genera listed there? In particular, what information is available about the ecology and cladistics/phylogeny of Troglocubanus? If, as indicated by the scientific name, this genus is stygobitic, what general husbandry parameters are implicit (lighting, temperature, salinity, foodstuffs, etc.)? [A range map may be viewed here. A photo gallery, may, in addition, be accessed here.]

[Mustafa]

Only one person actually brought back some shrimp from Cuba. Some cuban shrimp are actually quite common in the caribbean in general. Others are endemic. That website is an interesting reference site which I discovered a while ago, too. If you want to know more about those shrimp mentioned there you would have to do a scientific journal search at a research University library or similar place. The web, unfortunately, won't give you much info as of yet (hopefully that will change in the future and we can search journals online).

As for cave-dwelling or underground living shrimp, they will eat most anything you give them (i.e. fish food will be enough). The temperature will probably have to be constant considering that caves or underground habitats have a constant temperature year-round. What that constant temperature should be depends on where the shrimp come from. Since most of these shrimp have no eyes or non-functional tiny eyes, they could care less about light, but I don't think they would mind light either...just like the very common cave-dwelling tetras without eyes sold in petstores. Of course this is my guess until I get some cave-dwelling shrimp at some point an conduct some light experiments.

As to salinity....unless these shrimp come from anchialine environements they should do just fine in total freshwater.

Mustafa

[theshrimp_123]

Cave shrimp......I would luv to get some more.