Baby Ghost Shrimp! Help! (Pics)

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apollosmith

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Aug 7, 2009
Messages
15
I decided to add some Ghost Shrimp to my tank and bought 6 of them last week. Surprisingly all are doing well. They're fun to watch tidy up the place.

One of the new shrimp was berried with 25 or so little ones, and after reading up a bit, I decided I'd see if I could make them grow, though I hear it's rather hard to do.

shrimp1.jpg

Notice the babies tucked under her swimmerettes.

I put mom in a one gallon tank with some well-used undergravel, a bit of moss, and some of the dirty post-vacuum water from my main tank. A small water stone and a light to keep the temps right and maybe promote some green water growth.

I was expecting to have a few weeks to get studied up and to get a batch of green water going for the babies to feed on, but today she started dropping the little ones. I'm getting a new one every 20-30 minutes. It's VERY cool to watch her drop the eggs in the water stream, then POP and the little larvae shrimp appears.

shrimp2.jpg

A tiny baby is highlighted. These guys are itty bitty.

I pulled some water and moss out of a local, stagnant canal and it is teeming with life and icky stuff, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to start feeding this, particularly because mom is going to move back to my main tank as soon as she's dropped all of the eggs and I don't want problems there. I've have this and a fresh batch of green water (some rotten lettuce, a bit of grass, some moss, and some dirty aquarium water all under a light), but I need something for the babies to feed on NOW!

So...

- Do you think the green water from my local canal will work?

- If not, any ideas on what to feed baby shrimp - at least something I could find at a Petsmart or make myself?

- Any other tips for getting baby Glass Shrimp to survive?

Regardless, it sure has been a fun experiment and the kids are digging the whole thing.

shrimp3.jpg

Notice all the tiny eyeballs? :shocked!: These guys are anxious to join their siblings in the open. Please help me save them!
 
im in the same boat you are. what i did is i went to petsmart and bought this stuff called "first bites" its a very tiny slowly sinking food. i dont know if it will work, but i have also read that snails make a substance that baby shrimp can eat. maybe put a snail or two in there. i have a black mystery snail im my shrimp tank.

i also went to my lfs and they sold me this stuff called rotifers, its a frozen food that comes in cubes, i just grab a pich and wave it around in the tank. you want to throw away any unused part of the cube.

its been about a week and i can still find a few live ones. (i have mine in a 10 gal, and lots of plants for them to hide in.)
 
That is SO COOL! :D
AWESOME pictures.

Unfortunately, I am completely green at this, so I wouldn't listen to me if I were you. Never had shrimp in my life.

Is it possible for you to feed them a bit of the canal water for now, since you need it, and then maybe quarantine mom for a while until she gets it out of her system? :neutral:
 
I would say just put in any fish food... shrimp are scavengers they eat dead stuff and phytoplankton. Just make sure that the water doesn't get toxic. Because bad water will kill anything faster then starving...
 
the best idea is to have some plants they can pick the micro organisms off it.
 
+1 what mg said. They will be smal and will do better if they can plant themselfes on a plant and eat, rather than chase their food that gets caught in the water flow.

Awesome pics too
 
Thanks for the advice. I put a moss ball thingy in there and the babies seem to like it. Mom has shed about half the babies now. I'll feed them some of the green water I have and some powdered flake food and hope for the best.

Any other tips are most welcome.

I've posted a more detailed, highly dramaticized, and illustrated rendition of this tale on my blog - smithplanet.com » Blog Archive » Tales from the Tank Enjoy!
 
After about 12 hours, she's done dropping the babies. There are probably around 30 swimming freely in the bowl.

tank9.jpg


Immediately after the last larva swam free, she did what many women do after childbirth - she pulled her own skin off and immediately molted.

tank7.jpg


I'm going to leave her to recover until morning before moving her to an isolation tank and will keep feeding the young ones a variety of foods every few hours.

For anyone interested, I added a video to my blog of her releasing the babies - http://smithplanet.com/archives/tales-from-the-tank
 
That is so cool... I've never actually seen any of my shrimp drop their babies so I'm like so jelous that you actually got to see them do that
 
I have a momma shrimp right now. Can you help me out? I just bought it like 2 days ago and when I got it, it was carrying babies. I have no idea what to do! :O
 
As you can read, things didn't work out so well for me, or at least for the shrimp. I think it takes a lot of work and a well established system for the babies to survive. I stopped trying to save them and have had several others have babies in my main tank without so much as a sighting of the babies. The adults, however, are thriving in the tanks quite well and are a lot of fun to watch.
 
I have a momma shrimp right now. Can you help me out? I just bought it like 2 days ago and when I got it, it was carrying babies. I have no idea what to do! :O
personally just leave them in the tank and see what ahppens. many of them need bw to breed. lots of different species sold as ghost shrimp
 
Ghost shrimp are very hard to breed in a tank, you need a really, really well-established tank, with lots of plants and mosses, some mulm, decaying leaves, all sorts of stuff like that to give them plenty of opportunities for microscopic life to eat. And even then, losses are very high.

Thankfully, ghost shrimp are very cheap in most pet stores so if we want more, they are easy enough to find. :) If you really want to share with your children the joys of watching shrimps have babies and watching the babies grow up from shrimplets to juveniles to adults, I'd suggest you try Red Cherry Shrimp. They are basically the guppies of the shrimp world lol. And they are quite colorful!
 
three of mine lived, dont know if it was the rotifers or the first bites, but my tank was only cycled for about 4 months before the babies. currently they are alive and well with a few cherry barbs in my 10 gal. hex. also, its really important to unplug your filter, or they will just get sucked up.
 
Immediately after the last larva swam free, she did what many women do after childbirth - she pulled her own skin off and immediately molted.

well that explains a lot about Ethan's birthday. :lol:

I have seen many of my shrimp with berries, but I never knew what happened to them.
 
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