ghost shrimp with eggs

[AquaBry]

I have several ghost shrimp in my tank, one of them seems to be carrying a large number of greenish eggs under her. If i remove her and move her over to my nursery tank, do you think the eggs will be safe with my molly fry already in the nursery tank? I can try to get a pic of her tomorrow if that helps. I know ghost shrimp are dime a dozen (well actually more like dollar a dozen here) but i would kind of like to see the lifecycle at work here.

 

[gzeiger]

Pet stores here charge 39 cents apiece for those! Lucky I can scoop them out of the ditch for free

Make a close observation of the shrimp before moving her. The eggs will appear some time before they are fertilized. Initially they are carried inside the shell, then the shrimp mates immediately after molting and the eggs are externalized and carried in the swimerettes in the tail (same place they were before, but slightly further down, so look closely - you'll be able to see her fanning them to get water movement at this stage).

The larvae are quite small and probably would get eaten by fish fry of any sort, but it's worth a try. They also are not strong swimmers, so filtration may be a problem for them. I've had limited success using just a bucket with no filtration. The single shrimp doesn't produce enough waste to require cycling, and they're happy enough to eat algae and various infusoria if you just put some bits of plants in there with them.

Some species of ghost shrimp require brackish water to breed, so you may not be successful in any case, but some will be fine in fresh water. I don't know how to tell the difference between the two except by collection location.