Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

Hi all - newbie here. Thanks for all the great info - I've been learning a lot. Enjoy my pics

Facing the skeleton:


Yummy(?) new snack:


Shrimpy being himself:

hey great pics, i dont wanna steal your thread but i have a question that goes along with it.

How can you tell the difference between a dead shrimp n a molted skin? i have found a few like 2-3 different skins that look like the above photo all within 2 days. do u think they are molts or dead shrimp?

Yeah - unfortunately I know all about dead shrimp. They turn pink when they die - not clear like the molt.

aight, well mine are white and look just like the pic above so im guessing they molted. they are a lil more timid if that helps determine.

There is nothing inside a molt. There is a dead shrimp inside a dead shrimp.

JayD976 wrote:
How can you tell the difference between a dead shrimp n a molted skin? i have found a few like 2-3 different skins that look like the above photo all within 2 days. do u think they are molts or dead shrimp?

I have to laugh because I thought the same thing when I first saw their molts lying on the floor of my aquarium. I knew that shrimp shed an exoskeleton but wasn't really thinking about it at that time. I soon realized that all of my shrimp were still alive. Whew!

most my shrimp are under a 1/2" so it was hard too tel what was what. and they are to hard to count since they are so small

Where do you live, phantom_shrimp? Your shrimp is most definitely not an american glass/ghost shrimp (Palaemonetes paludosus). It's also not the asian glass shrimp (Macrobrachium lanchesteri). Those are the two shrimp that are most commonly called glass/ghost shrimp worldwide in the shrimp hobby. Yours is also a Macrobrachium sp., just not sure what exactly it is. Its rostrum looks almost like that of Macrobrachium rosenbergii, but it's hard to tell from the pictures if it's a very young M. rosenbergii.

Mustafa wrote:Where do you live, phantom_shrimp? Your shrimp is most definitely not an american glass/ghost shrimp (Palaemonetes paludosus). It's ... looks almost like that of Macrobrachium rosenbergii, but it's hard to tell from the pictures if it's a very young M. rosenbergii.

Hello Mustafa!

I live in New Jersey - I got this little guy like a month ago from Shark Aquarium in Hillside. They referred to it as a "ghost shrimp"-- then again, their expertise is fish. Hmmm....I'll need to look into M.rosenbergii.

I don't think these are rosenbergii, although the head sure looks like it. These don't seem to have the long arms. Even tiny juvies 1/2 long have them.