Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

I have found some eggs in my tank by the filter that seem to be from my RCS. Thats all I have in the tank but I thought that RCS carry eggs? There is one female that keeps picking at the clump of eggs and chasing the other shrimp away. Some of the shrimp seemed to be a little agressive. Not cichlid agressive, but more agressive than they usually are.

Here is a picture of the eggs. They are dark yellow and there seem to be 60 or so. The female shrimp is in the picture too.

http://enginecontrol.dyn.ee/images/Shri ... gs0022.jpg

Does anyone know what happened? Thanks for the help.

Today the eggs were gone when I got up. Is there a chance that they made it or hatched? Could an RCS have picked them up? There was a female that seemed to picking at the eggs and guarding them.

I have about 12 male shrimp and 3 female shrimp. They were fighting last night and they knocked each other on their back a few times. Do I have too many make shrimp? This is just the number that was given to me. I have more baby shrimp shrimp growing up that seem to be looking red.

Anyone know why the eggs were left by the filter? They are the yellow in the picture.

If the eggs are dropped, they won't hatch. The mother shrimp must care for it until it hatches.

But why were they dropped? I don't quite understand why they would be just left there. Did I do something wrong?

There are two main reasons that eggs are dropped:

1) the eggs were not fertilized in the first place, OR
2) there was excessive stress on the mother carrying the eggs.

There may be other reasons, such as water conditions that may have contributed to the demise of the eggs (e.g., temp, pH, GH, KH, etc.). This leads back to reason 2 above.

You state in your 2nd followup post that the ratios of males to females is 4:1. This is a bit high. The males will harass the heck out of the females when they catch the "scent" that starts their whole mating instinct. I've seen it happen with my amanos, which is also about a 4:1 ratio, and it's not pretty. I'd try and bring that down to 2:1 at the very least. 1:1 is ideal.

The dropped eggs will be consumed by any shrimp, other invert, or fish in due time. The chasing behavior is to keep other shrimp from taking her "food". If you ever drop algae wafers or crab pellets into the tank, you will notice that they try and chase each other for that one bit of food. It's a fight instinct.

The hatch period is 3-4wks approximately. This applies to most species of shrimp you come across, be it amano, CRS, RCS, tigers, etc.

Sorry for your loss.