Breeding ghost shrimp, need help!!

[cyates]

If there is an experienced ghost shrimp breeder here that could answer the following questions and help me get started, I would be forever grateful.

I just bought a bunch of stuff today to get started, but I don't really know what I'm doing. I could only find vague information using yahoo search.

1) Does the tank need filtered?
2) What should I feed them and how often? I fed them tropical fish flakes and they chomped away on flakes three times their size. Greedy little buggers.
3) How do I keep the egg-carrying female seperate? I read that the egg-carrying female needs seperated from the tank. I bought a Penn Plax Aqua Nursery, but it didn't work. It's designed to automatically pull the babies into a seperate compartment, but the adult somehow squeezed through the hole designed to catch the babies and got stuck in the tube on the way to the "Nursery" section. Don't worry, I got her out and she's okay, and still has all her eggs. So what can I use? Is there something similarly designed like the one I bought but with a smaller "baby hole"? Maybe one designed for shrimp instead of fish?
4) Can I put more than one egg-carrying female in the "maternity section"?
5) What temperature should I set the tank to? I read that the higher the temperature the more active they are. Like, they can survive in 55f but they just sit there, and at 85f they are really active and will even fight with a fish if they are stupid enough.
6) What should I feed the egg-carrying female?
7) What should I feed the babies? I bought Liquifry No1 for egg layers, but not sure if this is good. It says it's food for baby egg laying fish.
8) How long does it take for a female to go from no eggs to the babies being born? How long for the shrimp to grow from baby to edible size?
9) What water conditions would promote breeding the most?
10) Any tips or info you can give me would be great.

I realize it may be cheaper just to buy the shrimp, but this is fun and I want to see if I can do it. Plus these shrimp are funny, and I like to watch them interact with each other. Then send them to their gory death courtesy of a figure eight puffer.

Thanks!

 

[cyates]

Not sure how this got into SW & reef, I was just at the FW forum...hmm, I guess an admin will move it soon. Sorry!

 

[steve-s]

Moved

Cheers
Steve

 

[cyates]

Just an update on my progress. I'm still clueless about a lot of the questions above, but here's what I've done so far today (my second day).

I went ahead and got one of the small filters, a whisper 10. I also replaced the hatchery I talked about above with a simpler floating hatchery. It has a compartment to trap the babies in the bottom, and hopefully this will work. No more suction to swallow up the whole mama shrimp. 8O

I have six egg-carrying females in the hatchery. Hopefully before long there will be some baby shrimp in there and I can test to see if they'll survive off of this liquifry.

I hope the babies will last long enough for me to get a chance to feed them. I work full time, so it could be up to 8-10 hours before I notice them and give them some liquifry.

 

[Allivymar]

I personally haven't bred any myself, but I know its been done (I'm too busy with my oversexed cichlids atm LOL). I am pretty sure removing the moms is a definite once the babies are cruising round, or they'll eat the lil ones. Let me see if I can find the links I had about breeding em.

 

[Allivymar]

Okeydoke! Some info here: http://www.fishpondinfo.com/shrimp2.htm#ghost and links here (scroll down): http://www.fishpondinfo.com/shrimp.htm

 

[cyates]

Thanks! After reading up more, I've decided to try the rubbermaid approach for now.

I already have some 20 gallon tubs. I'm going to put them all in there, put plenty of live plants, and some javamoss and see if the babies survive without the mothers being contained. Containing the mothers is turning out to be quite a bit of work.

 

[cowfish7]

What are you going to feed the babies? I would think they will need microalgae, not liquifry. Maybe if your existing live plants have aglae growing on them it will be enough.
At any rate, i am interested to hear your progress, so keep us updated.

cowfish7
p.s. did your shrimps mate, or did you buy them already carrying eggs?

 

[cyates]

Along with that, what would you suggest I do to light the tub? Buy a normal hood and just lay it across the top of the tub? I'm not sure what size I should get, because if the bulb is close to the plastic it could melt the plastic.

Maybe there's something cheap I can get from the hardware store. It would be nice if I could just get some type of small desk lamp of sorts that I could point into the tub. Know what I mean?

From what I read you dont need much to keep duckweed alive, and most of the plants i put in will be floating on the top, so I dont think lighting needs to be that great.

Any recommendations? Thanks!

 

[Allivymar]

You might want to start a green water culture; I also think the liquifry may not cut it. Green water (aka infusoria) might be a better route. There are a zillion ways to start a green water culture (some of us don't do it on purpose LOL its also known as an algae bloom); here are a few sites to get you started:

http://www.fishinthe.net/html/section-printpage-17.html
http://www.thekrib.com/Food/infusoria.html

 

[cyates]

cowfish: I'm going to try the green water route. Thanks allivymar. The guy at the petstore let me pick out the shrimp with some coaxing (he said policy was not to allow that with feeders) and the tank was overflowing with the shrimp, and included many egg-laden females. Got six in one trip, plus lots of males and females without eggs. Around 30 or so have been alive for the past three days, and only one death. I noticed the shrimp eating another shrimp, but I think it was just a molted shell.

I did notice two males duking it out earlier, presumably for rights to mate with a female, however I didn't notice any boots knockin' after the fight was over. :shrug:

I'll keep ya updated on my progress. Might start taking pics, and create a detailed log. Not many sites out there with detailed information on all this.