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Caught some of them in Cyber Jaya, Malaysia where my office is. Their favourite food is the dead fish or left over of pellet. Lfs selling it as feeder shrimp. Some lfs called it as ghost shrimp. Is there any scientific name of this shrimp?

dom wrote:Caught some of them in Cyber Jaya, Malaysia where my office is. Their favourite food is the dead fish or left over of pellet. Lfs selling it as feeder shrimp. Some lfs called it as ghost shrimp. Is there any scientific name of this shrimp?

It looks to be some sort of Macrobrachium sp. What was the size range amongst the specimens you collected? Have you observed any of them bearing eggs?

Hi,
The biggest size is around 1.5inch. Average around 1inch+-. Yes. There are 2 female with eggs.

I'm almost 100% certain that this species is what has been identified as Macrobrachium lanchesteri or a very closely related species. They get imported en masse into Germany as "Glass Shrimp."

They have medium sized eggs out of which medium sized larvae hatch, which can be brought up in complete freshwater. However, the larvae are not nearly as developed as the huge larvae that Palaemonetes paludosus produces.

This species is pretty widespread in south Asia.

Hey Dom, mine have been identified as M. lanchesteri, do these ring a bell? They have the dark/black line on them like yours...







-GB

This may be a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway.

Is Macrobrachium lanchesteri able to reproduce through parthenogenesis?

I recently bought a M. lanchesteri female, that during the last waterchange molted and soon after took eggs under her tail.
Now I'm wondering if her eggs will ever hatch.
Is she probably able to preserve male germs, and later fertilize the eggs by herself?

Wirbellose.de does not give an answer, as it only says that "Female carries eggs every 20-25 days etc.

She will drop her eggs soon. Some Macrobrachiums have the habit of carrying around unfertilized eggs for a few days to over a week. Maybe even longer but the timeframes are my personal observations.

I can confirm what Mustafa said. I had two females who continued to go through the cycle of carrying eggs and dropping them (I suspect eating them, straight from their pleopod just before they drop). Finally, after about 3 - 4 cycles and with lack of male presence, they stopped having eggs in their pleopod after their molt.

My personal experience has been that they carried the eggs for about 2 - 3 days, then over the next couple days, I could see the number of eggs diminish, then finally disappear altogether (most likely eaten). In my first picture above, you might be able to make out a few remaining green eggs left on her belly.

Here's another pic with green eggs:


While on the subject, wanted to mention one more observation; it was actually a question I asked some time ago, but never got a response to:

"I often notice on ovigerous shrimp that there will be an egg or two that looks to be barely attached. Is there some adhesive material on the egg or is there a velcro-like function on the pleopods?"

Well, while looking through a 10X Agfa loop, I saw that my female Red Cherry's swimmerettes are actually a series of feather-like appendages. Then I recalled having pictures of the swimmerettes on my M. lanchesteri:




So I *think at least in part, it just might be a velcro-ish like thing!

-GB