What is the green splotch on some of my cherry shrimp?

Hailey · Post by **Hailey** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 4:56 pm

I got some juvenile cherry shrimp recently and I am starting to notice that some of them are developing greenish opaque areas on their backs...is this normal? At first it was just one, but now I have noticed it on three more of them, and it always seems to be the biggest ones. There are zebra shrimp in there too and they seem to be fine (one is even carrying a lot of eggs). I checked my parameters, and my ammonia is at between .25 and .5ppm. The tank is cycled, but I recently had to change my filter cartridge because it was falling apart...I have biofoam too and have not disturbed it or the substrate, but I am having an ammonia spike anyway (the nitrite is still 0ppm though). I will do water changes daily to bring this down until the mini-cycle is over.

Here's a photo of some of them.

Lotus · Post by **Lotus** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 5:18 pm

If you're talking about the yellowish patch on the shrimp in the center, those are her ovaries.

Hailey · Post by **Hailey** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:11 pm

Oh...thank you! No one else seemed to know (and I sure know nothing of shrimp anatomy). That's great to hear though...I was worried they were sick.

JoshGuppy · Post by **JoshGuppy** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 8:42 pm

i believe those overies, once fertelized will drop down to her tail area, where she will care for them, they should hatch in 3-4 weeks after that unless dropped from stress or not being fertelized

Hailey · Post by **Hailey** » Wed Jun 29, 2005 5:48 am

Cool! I had no idea how shrimp bear offspring....there is prescious little info out there on that (on shrimp at all really). So they carry the eggs until they hatch? Do the parents care for their offspring after they hatch or do the parents and other grown shrimp have to be removed so the fry can survive? Any other info anyone can give me on breeding these little guys would be great. I don't hold out too much hope for this batch since I am having a mini-cycle, but I'm sure they will be at it again sometime.

And if the eggs drop down into the tail when they are fertilized only, one of my 2 zebra shrimp (that is what I was told they were, but they actually look just like the tiger shrimp in the profiles here) is pregnant. She has a bunch of eggs in her tail and belly area that have been there for a week and a half or so now. This is exciting...I would love to have more shrimp (I have 10 red cherries, 2 tigers (?), and an amano).