This looks to me like a newborn baby shrimp, or at least pretty darned close to it. It's smaller than any baby I've seen so far, and while the other babies truck around actively eating, this one was just sitting here, occasionally cleaning itself. And look how big those eyes are!
This is the best I can do to show you scale -- the closest recognizable item was a tiny little tuft of (staghorn?) algae.
When it curled up on itself like this, it was just a bit larger than the size of the eggs I've seen the cherries carrying.
It does look like a red cherry shrimp young, although I have never seen one this close-up! That really is a great camera! (still saving up for one like that...)
The alternative explanation is that this one might be one of yoru mystery shrimp larvae that settled down....although I would have no idea where the red on the shrimp comes from in that case.
Mustafa, I forgot to post about it, but those mystery shrimp larvae died off (or at least disappeared) after a few days. The ones that were clinging to the glass only did that for the first day, and then they were all floating in the water column.
I've got another batch of them in there right now though. One of these days I have to set up a saltwater tank to try to rear them...
The only worries that I have now are what to feed them ... right now I have some frozen plankton food but I doubt that that will be sufficient for the survival of the larvae ... I dunno.
That really is a great camera! (still saving up for one like that...)
