I have eggs! Ghost shrimp

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 8:51 pm

Horray, I think. One of my ghost shrimp has a whole messload of bright green eggs in her swimmerettes. I'm almost tempted to try and keep them. I went to go feed my otocinclus some blanched romaine lettuce, and she emerged, swimmerttes franticaly flipping to keep eggs in place, before hiding again under the bogwood.

I know I can do a gob of research on this forum and site, but do you think someone as new to shrimp keeping, like me, should even bother?

edit: And now, a very bad photo...

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:15 am

If you have access to microfood and a way to isolate the fry, give it a shot. Set up a small tank and move the female to it. Keep her fed until they hatch, then remove the female before she can eat them. Be sure the filtration won't eat small fry. I used a foam filter discharging under gravel. The tank was well established and I kept it stocked with monia (small daphnia). Rotifers or copepods would probably have been better. The fry are very small "tail hangers" for about a week. They then dissapear for a week or so and re-appear as micro shrimp.

The key is safe filtration, greenwater and microfood, lots of hiding places, nothing that can eat them.

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 11:05 pm

Yep, sounds like I can't pull it off, this time. It's interesting, though, to see her wandering around flipping her swimmerettes. She doesn't do it all the time, but a good lot of the time she does.

I'm glad my shrimps are enjoying their stay in that tank. I mean, I knew they were having a good time, but not that good a time.

chlorophyll · Post by **chlorophyll** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 3:35 am

looks like a nice tank. Ghost shrimp don't seem to "hit it" as readily as Cherries and Amano do

I had Ghost larvae once, but they didn't make it

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 3:53 am

It's kinda surprising when you realize I haven't even owned them for a full month, yet.

And regarding the tank:

Thank you, but to put it mildly, this would be my tank's "good side". Right now, it's actually very ugly, none of my plants are actually planted yet, and my substrate is a mishmash of whatever I had around. Sometime this week or next, I'll be tearing it down, laying down some laterite and solidifying the substrate, planting, resassmebling, and adding everyone again. I'm told that doing it that way is easier/less stressful than adding a little at a time. I just need the free time and the nerve to do it.

I had ghost shrimp about a year ago, in a 2.5g, and they didn't last a full day. So I bought 7 this time, figuring I'd probably have significant die off, I wasn't expecting to actually see eggs for several months (if at all).

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 6:48 am

It takes close to a month for the eggs to hatch. They will get a little yellow and you'll see little tiny eyes if you have good magnification when they get ready to hatch.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 6:11 pm

here is what a 2 day old hatchling looks like:

That smudge in the middle that looks like an upside down seahorse is it. They look a lot like the adult shrimp but they hang upside down. They are tiny- under 1 mm.

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 7:44 pm

That's pretty cool. The only microfood I can locate, locally is 'fry food', and brine shrimp eggs (I hatch them). I've been doing some casual study, just in case I suddenly change my mind and realize that I want to breed my shrimps way sooner than I had intended.

I do have an empty 5g sitting around, and an empty 3.3g, and an empty 2g.

I think part of what I'm worried about, is suddenly having Waaaaaay more shrimp than I actually care to have...

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 7:57 pm

Not much chance of getting overrun with babies. Out of 5 females with 30 eggs each I got 4 post laval shrimp. I wasn't prepared. You need to set up an entire infrastucture, or build a pond. I have a wall for green water, rotifers and monia. I didn't have the rotifers ready in time for the last batch. I have several ghosts with saddles, I should be ready next time.

Anyone notice that the large females have bright red bands on their forelegs? Like ruby cufflinks! no kidding.

People tell me that if you have even a small backyard pond with pond plants you can grow a million of these. That is why they are "feeder" shrimp and sell for 10 cents each. I did it as a training exercize on the path to breeding amanos and bamboos.

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Fri Dec 09, 2005 10:51 pm

The arm-band thing, yeah, I've noticed some of my shrimps have them, and some don't. If it's a gender thing, that'd explain it.

I've also noticed some of my other banded shrimps have green bits on top of their bodies, but I didn't connect the dots until what you just said.

My shrimps been getting busy.

A few of my other shrimp are also turning white, which I've read is caused by a number of things, one of which is old age. I'm not shocked, since they were bought as feeders, but I am a little surprised to see it happen so soon.

I'm quite glad I got these guys for my tank. They remind me of little squirrels, time and time again. Definately fun.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 3:41 am

Make sure the white shrimp have a hidey-hole. They are going to molt. My ghosts and amanos both get white on the inside a day or so before they shed.

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Sat Dec 10, 2005 10:30 am

Mine have molted several times since I got them, and I've never seen any of them actually go white before they did that. I'm not saying they don't, it's probably that they are hiding as soon as they feel molt-y.

Once, I saw a shrimp casually walking along, rip off its own face and begin to eat it. *laugh* It was great.

Lots of places to hide in my tank, half the time I'm not sure all seven of my shrimp are alive, but sometimes I get lucky and they all dash out for bloodworms.

I know quite a few were molting last night, because I fed bloodworms to my african dwarf frogs, and only a couple came out to steal some. My frogs rarely get to eat so many bloodworms before a shrimp races in and steals it.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Thu Dec 22, 2005 7:47 pm

I got some "resting rotifers" eggs from Florida Aquafarms and started a batch I thought failed. I wanted to get a good batch of freshwater rotifers going to feed the baby ghosts the next time there were eggs. The culture did fine for about a week, then suddenly crashed. I figured they were done & just dumped the container into my algae settling tank. That was about 2 weeks ago. Last night all of a sudden the settling tank was a light rust red. This morning one of my green water tanks went the same color. This afternoon the other two tanks did the same thing.

I took a sample and looked under 30X magnification and they were all LOADED with rotifers. I've raised water fleas for quite a while but have NEVER seen such rapid growth. Absolutley astonishing. If you culture these take care not to contaminate your green water or you won't have any.

I now have two pregnant ghosts isolated and am keeping the tank supplied with green water, moina, and rotifers. I also added some Nerite snails to the house keeping staff. We'll see if this batch does better than the last bunch.

Anybody need a start of these, let me know. I've got plenty to share after the holidays. I know they can make it live as I just got an order of saltwater rotifers and they are growing well.

badflash · Post by **badflash** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 1:06 pm

Just an update. My first batch seems to be 3 baby ghosts. One came out of hiding today and went for a ride on an apple snail. He looks to be about 1/2"long. That is a really big apple snail.

This baby tank is looking really prime. Lots of rotifers and copepods, algae, and who knows what else. I have a couple more weeks before the next batch hatches.

soritan · Post by **soritan** » Sun Dec 25, 2005 3:47 pm

That's too cool.

I think my big decision to help with the ghost shrimps... is to leave off changing the substrate until the whole egg thing is done with. *laugh* It's a heavily planted tank, and I know there's detris in there. It's going to take me ages to hand wash 30 pounds of sand for a 1" cover, anyways.

I think another one of them is showing signs of eggs, can't tell, everyone's hiding at the moment. If that's so, maybe I'll have a shot at keeping these guys alive.

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