Cleaner shrimp laying eggs

shark32

shark32

Active Member
This morning I noticed a few of my fish in one corner of the tank bothering one of my cleaner shrimp....they have never bothered either one of them before so I was curious what was going on...of course when I came right up to the tank, most of the fish that were pestering her swan away, so she was able to move higher up on the rocks...I still didn't notice that her whole bottom was green...I walked away from the tank again, only for the fish to return to bother her again...I went back over there and then noticed little things were coming out of her... I then realized she was laying eggs (I had no idea she was pregnant) so I grabbed my camera to try to catch a video of it...I m not the best aquarium video taker, but here is a short clip...I am just glad that they are doing well in there...and now that she laid all of her eggs, my fish pay her no mind again...


 
nanoreefing4fun

nanoreefing4fun

Well-Known Member
RS STAFF
Cool vid !

if you have not seen it... here another neat one from RS member El Turco [video=youtube;Sk06hP6ys00]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk06hP6ys00[/video]
 
shark32

shark32

Active Member
Thanks Nanoreefing!!
That video is awesome!! those eggs came shooting out!! I wonder if the more times she lays eggs, the faster they come out...
I'll have to keep an eye on her....
 
DianaKay

DianaKay

Princess Diana
RS STAFF
My 2 cleaner shrimps are spawning also.... FREE FOOD for your fish a couple of times a month :D
Your video makes it appear that she was eating some of the left-overs maybe?
I've noticed that mine get a green color going on when they have egg clutches under their tails.
Might can see it in this photo of mine:
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shark32

shark32

Active Member
Dianakay--- That's exactly what she looked like!!...that same lime-green coloration...and talk about free food...my wrasse was all over her while she was laying them before I went over to the tank...I think as fast as they were coming out he was eating them...my fish looked like a swarm of kids surrounding an ice cream truck (my poor shrimp) at a block party!!

Thanks blackbeltmom!!
 
Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson

Well-Known Member
Just a little clarification for your knowledge. Cleaner Shrimp hold there eggs until they hatch. What you are seeing is the release of the larvae from the eggs.

I'm sort of an expert on crab, shrimp, and lobster ecdysis, mating, breeding; that's what I did my dissertation on.

Just in case you have any questions.
 
nanoreefing4fun

nanoreefing4fun

Well-Known Member
RS STAFF
Mike it common for so many to hatch all at the exact same time? When she releases them, are they all ready to go, so to speak... ? Anyone have any survive in the tank without intervention or do they all, always become food?
 
J

jerry26

Member
Mike Johnson said:
Just a little clarification for your knowledge. Cleaner Shrimp hold there eggs until they hatch. What you are seeing is the release of the larvae from the eggs.

I'm sort of an expert on crab, shrimp, and lobster ecdysis, mating, breeding; that's what I did my dissertation on.

Just in case you have any questions.
Click to expand...

do cleaner shrimp have cannibal tendencies like alot of shrimp?
 
DianaKay

DianaKay

Princess Diana
RS STAFF
+1 to wondering about survival. I've seen freshwater "crawdads" have the undersides of their tails be totally covered in ready to swim away & survive on thier own babies. Makes me curious. When I get my refugium, I'm going to try & see if they will let go of babies in there. Will they survive?
 
Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson

Well-Known Member
Well, a couple of questions. I love this as I don't get to talk about this to too many people and if I do they don't care to listen.

Yes, the eggs pretty much all hatch at the same time. When the eggs are ready to hatch they turn from a green color to more of a brown color. She will also move the eggs off her body and onto her legs. She will carry approx. 1200 eggs. They have a very high mortality rate when just hatched; they are very tender.

I have had a couple make it in a tank before. With the strong filtration most of us have it makes it even more less likely. You'd also have to have what most of us would call a dirty tank.

When they are larvae they need to be fed frequently, like 4 -5 times a day, at least a couple hours apart. They need small food like brine shrimp or copepod nauplii that has been enriched in phytoplankton. They need to be fed like this for 2 -3 weeks. At about 9 - 11 days they will be recognizable a baby shrimp.

Yes, they will cannibalize each other if there is not enough food. But most of the mortality is due to their fragile nature.

I would guess that if you do everything right and feed them every four hours throughout the entire day that it would be considered successful to raise 30 to 3 weeks old.

I would definitely give it a try since they are just so darned expensive.

Finally, being asked a question about this raised my interest. There really isn't a lot about breeding them published out there. Maybe I should consider writing a how to article. When I was in school (20 years ago) we didn't know a whole lot about ecdysis and I actually had a couple papers published. I just assumed that it was common knowledge now since we've had so many advances in marine reef keeping.
 
Oxylebius

Oxylebius

Well-Known Member
Please write an article about it. I think more people know about peppermint shrimp breeding, at least I have read articles on them on reefing online sites, but not the cleaners.
 
Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson

Well-Known Member
Well, that would be an undertaking. I do have a couple tanks laying around. I do have phytoplankton cultures. Well, thinking about it, I have everything except the Cleaner Shrimps. Mine died from old age about 1 1/2 years ago and I never got any new ones. They only live to be 3 years old on average. I'd probably need a better camera.

I was engaged in breeding a rare unidentified Mithrax crab, but one of them died a couple months ago. And, since it's a rare unidentified crab, can't get another one. I do have a tank that I'm trying to breed rock boring sea urchins in, for a year now. But, the more I study that the more I think that it can only be done in the ocean.

I'm rambling. I'm going to get on that right away, put a post it on my desk. It really is my passion.
 
shark32

shark32

Active Member
Ramble away!! :) It's great there are people willing to share what they know about thins kind of stuff!!
 
Oxylebius

Oxylebius

Well-Known Member
@ Mike - When I used to work in a lab, I used inject purple urchins w/potassium chloride to get them to spawn, then collected the eggs and sperm. I never worked w/warm water species, but in lab settings you can get the purple urchins larvae to grow. I can dig up some info on it if you would like. But, I'm sure you've done lots of research on it and I'm not sure how different the rock boring urchins are.

@ shark32 - one of my cleaners is looking a little green and on closer inspection I can see eggs. Do you have any idea how long she may have been carrying the eggs around before she started to spew them into the water? I'm gonna have to keep a camera by the tank, just in case....
 
Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson

Well-Known Member
She carries the eggs for 14 - 20 days. But an easier way to do it is by the moon. It's usually the three days before the full moon or, to a lesser extent, during the new moon. Why don't you get yourself a 5 - 10 gallon tank, some copepods or baby brine shrimp, and try to raise them?
 
shark32

shark32

Active Member
Oxylebius,
I have no idea how long she was carrying them...it was pure luck that I even saw her laying/expelling them...she acted no different while she was carrying them either....if it wasn't for my fish pestering her by trying to eat the eggs as she was laying them, I probably would have missed the whole thing...it was over in about 2 min....
If yours is lime green like, do keep a close eye..maybe you catch her laying them!! Good luck with them!! :)
 
theplantman

theplantman

Active Member
Just read this thread through. Very good read. I would love to hear about results of keeping shrimp fry to maturity. Good luck everyone.
 
Oxylebius

Oxylebius

Well-Known Member
Mike Johnson said:
She carries the eggs for 14 - 20 days. But an easier way to do it is by the moon. It's usually the three days before the full moon or, to a lesser extent, during the new moon. Why don't you get yourself a 5 - 10 gallon tank, some copepods or baby brine shrimp, and try to raise them?
Click to expand...

Now you got me thinking about it, I already have everything on hand..... I already have a new 'shrimpery' going that I started over the weekend to test it out and it is producing brine shrimp larvae, I have a bottle of marine snow and a bottle of phyto in refrigerator (coral food), and I have a frozen rotifer package in freezer.... I guess I can get my little 5 gallon out of the garage, set it up, and try it.

You know I did try to raise peppermint shrimp larvae a year and a half ago. My very first post on this forum I mention it. Nothing ended up surviving, I didn't have enough food source, they were ravenous. I had transferred over all my critters from my 40 gallon into my RSM250 over a 5 month period, let the RSM250 run w/o fish for that time, I only had inverts and corals and was slowly building up a pod population. I had four peppermint shrimp to eat the aiptasia (that I had let run rampant) and two out of the four shrimp were the same species (I later was able to ID three different species of Lysmata shrimp). Well, I cut the skimmer and main pump, let the small pump run, the shrimp grew to where you can see that they were beginning to look like shrimp, but slowly the numbers dwindled in numbers and in the end none survived. Wasn't the right tank I know.

The little 5 gallon that I have has a undergravel filter, that will be safer on the shrimp larvae.
 
Oxylebius

Oxylebius

Well-Known Member
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