Question about egg clutch

[Nexus6]

Does anyone know how the eggs in the berried females clutch are held together? ive been observing a berried female and sometimes it looks like the eggs might fall loose.

[jonesinfershrimp]

from what i've read its a type of mucus-like substance. but im no scientist!

[mcdaney]

from what i've read its a type of mucus-like substance. but im no scientist!

It's either the eggs are sticky or their swimmerets haha!

[tooth]

My impression has been the swimerettes do most of the job. I see eggs just about to fall out, then the female adjusts the eggs back into the clutch with her swimerettes. If there is mucous, it must not be very sticky.

[Aquarimax]

I've wondered the same thing. Whatever method they use, it seems to work well as long as conditions are right. If there are water quality issues, sometimes females seem to drop the eggs. Luckily, that hasn't happened to me for a long time. This past summer has been the most productive summer I've ever had in the ~10 years I've been keeping opae'ula! I think it is in large part due to Mustafa's guidelines. My shrimp have reproduced off and on since 2007, and done fine, but they are now breeding almost constantly, in all four of my tanks...

[shrimpy4]

Do eggs that are dropped ever hatch? I've had a berried female for the past two weeks or so; she started out with about a dozen and over time has gone down to about a half dozen. This is pretty standard for my one gallon, when they do breed it's usually no more than 3-4 new larvae at a time.

In this case though, I can see one of the eggs floating free-form at the top of the bowl, and another down in the substrate. As long as they're not eaten, is there still a chance they will hatch in a couple of weeks?

[Mustafa]

That's still no entirely clear. It would appear like the eggs just perish, but we've had reports of some people saying that they had larvae floating around in the tank after their shrimp dropped all eggs. It could also be of course that there were an unnoticed berried shrimp somewhere in the tank (had that happen to me many times). So, I guess we'll have to continue observing.