Kurt_Nelson
Aquarium Advice Addict
A different post somewhere about the Peppermint shrimp with eggs the other day answered a lot of questions for me as my Skunk Cleaner was carrying around a clutch of eggs about 3 weeks ago. But check this out...
I have one skunk cleaner and one peppermint shrimp in a 46 gallon. No other shrimp in there. Maybe 3 weeks ago, I notice the skunk cleaner has a clutch of eggs on its underside. Hmmm... I think. How did that happen? OK... then after that other thread I start researching and find out that skunks are hermaphrodites and can fertilize themselves. But from what I'd read it sounded like that's not a very common thing to happen. OK... so I've got a "uncommon" skunk cleaner shrimp. No problem.
But tonight while feeding, I notice it's got ANOTHER clutch of eggs. About a week ago, the first bunch of eggs disappeared. I assume they dispersed and my clown and the peppermint shrimp (and probably the skunk for that matter) had a smorgasbord. Shrimp don't put their eggs somewhere and pick them back up later, do they? I'm thinking not, but this thing having ANOTHER bunch of eggs only a week after getting rid of the last batch... man... prolific little bugger. With itself even!
The only thing I can think of is that we had a power outage 3 weeks ago, and my tank went from 76 to 70 over the course of 36 hours. Everything survived fine, but I'm wondering if the thermal stress kicked in the survival instinct and the thing figured it'd better start reproducing?
Anyone else have this experience?
I have one skunk cleaner and one peppermint shrimp in a 46 gallon. No other shrimp in there. Maybe 3 weeks ago, I notice the skunk cleaner has a clutch of eggs on its underside. Hmmm... I think. How did that happen? OK... then after that other thread I start researching and find out that skunks are hermaphrodites and can fertilize themselves. But from what I'd read it sounded like that's not a very common thing to happen. OK... so I've got a "uncommon" skunk cleaner shrimp. No problem.
But tonight while feeding, I notice it's got ANOTHER clutch of eggs. About a week ago, the first bunch of eggs disappeared. I assume they dispersed and my clown and the peppermint shrimp (and probably the skunk for that matter) had a smorgasbord. Shrimp don't put their eggs somewhere and pick them back up later, do they? I'm thinking not, but this thing having ANOTHER bunch of eggs only a week after getting rid of the last batch... man... prolific little bugger. With itself even!
The only thing I can think of is that we had a power outage 3 weeks ago, and my tank went from 76 to 70 over the course of 36 hours. Everything survived fine, but I'm wondering if the thermal stress kicked in the survival instinct and the thing figured it'd better start reproducing?
Anyone else have this experience?
