Cleaner Shrimp just hatched a massive load of babies

[duoc9119]

So just looking over my 3 gallon today and found out that my Cleaner Shrimp has been releasing hatched babies. Kind of exciting but probably not looking at any surviving the filter or the torch coral. Would be neat if some were able to make it and grow some.

 

[mr_X]

yeah...that's a pretty common occurrence. the main issue is food, or lack thereof.

 

[austinsdad]

The babies will be the food. Neat to see that explosion though.

 

[duoc9119]

Yeah wasn't really prepared for it, but I will give it a go next time around

 

[mwilliams]

To bad you coulldn't catch them and put them in a smaller tank till they get bigger and sell them to your LFS. Not sure what baby cleaner shrimps eat..

 

[duoc9119]

I'm not too sure either. I wasn't really prepared to raising baby shrimp and after searching around it seems like a tough thing to do even with specialized tanks

 

[mwilliams]

Oh okay just a thought.

 

[duoc9119]

I will give it a go next time around though. It will give me plenty of time to prepare it. That was my first thought too. Raise the shrimp to adults and sell them to the LFS. lol I certainly don't have room for 30 or so Cleaners in a 3 gallon

 

[mwilliams]

Maybe a 10-20 gallon. But you are right I just read about them and it sounds like a very hard job to do raising baby cleaner shrimps.

 

[duoc9119]

I will be working with different filters to see what is best to keep them from being sucked up and keeping them floating around. Then look into coral food to feed them while in the floating stage

 

[mwilliams]

Maybe some airstones instead of a mechanical filters? Or maybe an undergravel system not to sure about that one though...?? At least with airstones they want get sucked up into anything and you have a variety of sizes that can be used.

 

[duoc9119]

I'm looking into a DIY Kreisel tank as we speak. =D Its a German designed tank for things like seahorses and jellyfish

 

[mwilliams]

Yeah I saw those they should work. Good luck.

 

[cabezon]

On a 3 gallon nano, you shouldn't need more than an airstone and PWCs. Dibs on a shrimp

 

[duoc9119]

Thing is I have a Torch coral in there as well. lol I will wait for the next batch of hatchlings, seeing how i'm down to a few that somehow dodged the filter intake. By the next batch I will be ready to attempt to grow these fellas

 

[mr_X]

you will not be able to raise them to adults because you don't have the food the babies need to live. they don't hatch and go right to picking at the rock.

here is some info on a successful breeding-
FAMA August 1994. Scarlet Cleaner Shrimp

 

[duoc9119]

Thanks X! I'm going to be focusing on building a tank to raise the next batch. I think going along the lines of a Kreisel tank would do well.

As for food it looks like the first few days or weeks will be live newly hatched Brine Shrimp, easy enough.

The link you sent helped me out quite a bit. I think from here its all about the preparation and a lot of luck