Will ghost shrimp survive overnight?

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Well the shrimp arrived safe and sound and are in the process of being drip acclimated! And based on my not-so-expert opinion, I may have gotten a few pregnant females in the batch!! We will have to wait and see


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I'm so excited!!!!! post pictures as soon as you can!!! Lol I don't even know why I'm so excited they aren't even my shrimp!!!


NatureFish
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They're kinda hard to get pictures of, but here's the best I could get! ImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1411252389.701204.jpgImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1411252403.770939.jpgImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1411252415.048306.jpgImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1411252514.718399.jpg

I had to improvise when she got them home and I saw that some of them might be pregnant. I didn't want to put them in my community tank because I figured the fry would probably just get eaten. So I took the one fish I had out of my spare 10 gallon tank (knocking over one of my artificial plants in the process. That bothered me when I looked at the pics :p) and put them in there.


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What is your tank set up? I hope if I get ghost shrimp they don't die. I hate it when anything dies. It's sad and pretty gross. I hesitate on getting shrimp because they only live 2 years max.


NatureFish
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What I put them in is just my 10 gallon that I use as kinda an emergency tank in case I have to take a fish out of my community tank for any reason. It used to be my only tank but I recently upgraded to a 55 gallon so it's just had 1 fish in it for the last couple months to keep the BB alive. I'm hoping to experiment with live plants in it soon, since that's something I've never done and it goes very will with shrimp keeping! The adult shrimp will probably get moved to the community tank soon and if there's any fry that live they will stay in the 10 gallon till they grow up a bit.


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0 ammonia/0 Nitrites/0 Nitrates. I did a ~60% water change 3 days before the shrimp arrived. My pH is 7.2. Temperature 79 F. I need to get a KH/GH test kit for these guys to make sure the water is hard enough so they molt successfully. I was reading a thread on here where a guys shrimp kept dying right after molting, so if she comes home next weekend I'll get my sister to bring me one of those.


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Well I hope yours live a long time and breed like rabbits!


NatureFish
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Due to their complex life cycle, glass/ghost shrimp may be more of a challenge to raise compared to dwarf shrimp such as RCS. They go through a planktonic, free swimming larval stage whereas dwarf shrimp are born as replicas of the parents. Supplying sufficient amounts of appropriate food is a key factor of their survival. Not saying that it cannot be done, just mentioning some considerations.


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To add to what Fresh2o mentioned, ghost shrimp also tend to eat their young. Most people put the adult female in a separate tank to release their larvae, then put them back leaving the larvae behind.

Note fish store ghost shrimp are often feeder shimp, and subjected to awful conditions. Don't be too surprised if there's a heavy death toll the first few days. My first set had 15 and 5 died, and a big tank I bought about 40 and at least 10 died (the rest are getting good at hiding, so not sure). The ones that live seem very hardy afterwards, though, and got quite large. But no babies, as I just leave them in the tank (lots and lots of eggs, just none survive).
 
I haven't been home since the day after I got them! Been busy combining (work on a farm) so my moms been watching over them for me. She says they are all looking good though! I will take some pics when I get home


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Any new pictures? Looking into starting a 29 gallon over with 10 GS and other community fish.

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ImageUploadedByAquarium Advice1413697601.792462.jpg

One of my (I think?) pregnant females.

They have grown a lot since I got them, and I have actually seen some of them molt. The first time it happened I was terrified haha.

So far i haven't been able to keep any larvae Alive. But I'm still trying!


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While it's true that female ghost shrimp will eat baby shrimp, if the tank they are in is a decent size and has sufficient plantings, or decor like wood and rocks for babies to hide in, there's a decent change of having babies survive. The larval stage only lasts 4-5 days. Timing is temperature dependent. They do better at temps around 72 or 74 or so.

If you do get babies, you'll see them hanging upside down at the water surface during the days and they sink out of sight in darkness, until they begin to swim. Takes another few days for that once they show up. You'll see tiny shells in the water, which are the moulted shells, usually not dead shrimp babies. I've raised a number of broods in tanks with fishes galore, but do better if there are no fish. If you put a pregnant shrimp into a small tank to try to get more babies to live, take her out after she lets her eggs go.

Eggs hatch after they float to the surface, and the larvae float freely for the few days they need to morph. If you can, feed new morphed babies micro worms or new hatched BBS. Once they are moving around on their own they eat anything they can find and don't need special feeding. Most of them love sinking pellets though and will argue over them, but they don't fight to harm each other.

A sponge filter makes both a good filter and a good food source for any shrimp.

Incidentally, palaemonetes are a native species to the southern US, and live in many inland waters. So they're quite hardy and surprisingly tolerant of water conditions that will not suit other shrimps. This is not to say you can let the water conditions get bad, but compared to, say, Crystal shrimp, they're well able to take some nitrates in their water. Levels up to 30 ppm will be tolerated, but I prefer to keep it at 20 or less.

Cherry shrimp are Asian and come from similar habitats, and are likely about as hardy as Ghosts. The nice thing is that they are 'high order' shrimp who have babies just like themselves. Ghosts are 'low order' and have larvae first. But there are many other shrimps who also have larvae such as the Amanos and many other Caridina species, and Machrobrachiums, which include our familiar cocktail or BBQ shrimp among their numbers.
 
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