Shrimp Breeding

[PsiPro]

First Question: Anyone have experience breeding Wood/Bamboo Shrimp?

Second Question: Anyone have experience doing selective breeding on cherry reds? I am trying to get my community to keeps it red color by simply removing the lighter colored ones and watching to see what happens. Anyone have any more tricks?


Also on the subject of the first question... How do you feed a bamboo shrimp. They seem to be doing OK by just sitting in there in the filter outflow, but i'de like to get them going with more.

[Lance M.]

Bamboo shrimp will just sit in the outflow and filter stuff out of the water. They'll eat flakes and at night they will sometimes go around the bottom using their fans to pick stuff off the substrate.

I have also been wooking for info on bamboo shrimp breeding and I found it a couple weeks ago because no one here knows how.

They breed basically exactly like amano shrimp (if you've bred those before). You will see them with eggs in FW tanks occasionally, but the eggs will never hatch. Like amanos, you have to move the shrimp with eggs to a brackish environment for the eggs to hatch (that is the only way, but even then it is still hard).

Same thing goes for vampire shrimp.

I just got cherry shrimp and I'm hoping to have a large colony.
I believe the lighter colored ones are females... so if you remove them all, you'll be having a gay ole time in your tank!

[toddnbecka]

I just got cherry shrimp and I'm hoping to have a large colony.
I believe the lighter colored ones are females

Actually, it's the males that are less colorful, not the females.

http://www.petshrimp.com/shrimpspecies.html

[YuccaPatrol]

How about ghost shrimp? I can buy them cheap as feeders and often large females will come with eggs underneath their abdomens.

do they need brackish water too? I bought 20 of them today and tossed them in my 10 gal QT/snail farm along with the single female guppy that is in there to keep the tank cycled.

Will those eggs ever hatch or do I need to convert to brackish? Sure would be nice to provide good healthy home grown feeders to some of my other fish.

[toddnbecka]

Ghost shrimp actually come from brackish water. The eggs won't hatch in fresh water. They also have a larval stage, like the amano shrimp. I'm goig to set up a 10 gal tank for cherry shrimp to raise live feeders, less hassle since they don't require different water chemistry to hatch/raise.

[YuccaPatrol]

So maybe I need to set up a cherry shrimp tank then. . . . ?

[Lance M.]

Ghost shrimp are much cheaper and easier to get that cherry shrimp. Although you do need brackish water for their eggs to hatch and larvae to develop (they are VERY hard to raise). They are the most common shrimp used as feeders (the only sold solely for feeding to larger fish, people keeping them as inhabitants is their secondary use).

Cherry shrimp are relatively expensive minimum usually $1.50 up to $8 each. I would rather raise them and sell them then feed them to fish. They are also GREAT algae eaters in planted tanks and look excellent in contrast to green plants. All neocardina breed in FW conditions. The new snowball shrimp is very cool also.

[hashbaz]

There are different kinds of shrimp labeled "ghost shrimp." When I researched ghost shrimp, I found a lot of conflicting information. As I understand, one species requires brackish and the other does not.

The "ghost shrimp" I got at petsmart hatched fine in freshwater, and had no larval stage. About have of them survived.

[Lance M.]

Originally Posted by hashbaz

There are different kinds of shrimp labeled "ghost shrimp." When I researched ghost shrimp, I found a lot of conflicting information. As I understand, one species requires brackish and the other does not.

The "ghost shrimp" I got at petsmart hatched fine in freshwater, and had no larval stage. About have of them survived.

Ya that is not uncommon. In ghost shrimp batches you'll usually have, mixed in with the ghost shrimp, small prawns which look exactly like ghost shrimp when they are young, but then end up eating fish.

[Hillbilly Jerry]

Also, often times South American Grass shrimp get labeled/sold as ghost shrimp. You'll see a little orange and yellow on the thorax area of these. These are the invasive shrimp you can find in most south Florida golf course ponds :P