Cleaner Shrimp Spawning?

[jefferythewind]

I noticed a small feeding frenzy begin in the tank this evening and I got close and noticed a zillion little things buzzing around in the water seeming to come from this one cleaner shrimp. I have 2 that have been in the tank for 18 months now. One of them seems to have a big greenish part under the tail and the other doesn't. Anyway has anyone ever had any experience with this kind of thing? Maybe it wasn't  the shrimp spawning. I couldn't tell if the shrimp was eating them or protecting them. 

[jefferythewind]

PS i do have a breeder box i could put in the tank.

[Tired]

Cleaner shrimp will spawn pretty regularly in aquaria, but their larvae are very difficult to raise. There's a reason you don't really see many captive-bred cleaner shrimp for sale. It can be done, but you're going to need to research and put together supplies. Let this batch be coral food, and maybe by the next batch you can get together the stuff to try raising them, if you want.

 

Cleaner shrimp don't care for their young. They carry the eggs and care for the eggs until those hatch, then they release the larvae into the water column and ignore them. The main thing keeping them from eating many larvae is their inability to catch them- I don't think they're programmed to know the difference between their own larvae and any other shrimplet-style creature. Or that their senses are good enough to tell a difference at all. 

[jefferythewind]

23 hours ago, Tired said:

Cleaner shrimp will spawn pretty regularly in aquaria, but their larvae are very difficult to raise. There's a reason you don't really see many captive-bred cleaner shrimp for sale. It can be done, but you're going to need to research and put together supplies. Let this batch be coral food, and maybe by the next batch you can get together the stuff to try raising them, if you want.

 

Cleaner shrimp don't care for their young. They carry the eggs and care for the eggs until those hatch, then they release the larvae into the water column and ignore them. The main thing keeping them from eating many larvae is their inability to catch them- I don't think they're programmed to know the difference between their own larvae and any other shrimplet-style creature. Or that their senses are good enough to tell a difference at all. 

Thanks for the tips. Yeah i would imagine it would be tough to raise those. Pretty cool though.

[Tired]

If you'd like easy shrimp to breed, check out opae ula. My avatar is one. They're a brackish-water shrimp species that can be kept in large numbers in a pico, needs functionally no food if given enough light to grow algae, produces so little waste that macroalgae can comfortably use it all up, and doesn't want or need any form of filtration. Their larvae are relatively large when hatched, and because there's no filtration in the tank, the larvae are free to drift around until they land and develop. The only downside is that it does usually take them a year or more to start breeding after being added to a new tank, but they're incredibly easy to keep. All they need is regular top-offs and the occasional tiny bit of food, maybe a little more food once their population grows slightly. They don't even need an automatic top-off system, or daily top ups. Once a week is fine, they don't mind the changes in salinity from evaporation. They're the second easiest aquatic pets to keep, beat out only by marimo mossballs, and certainly the easiest aquatic animal. And if you give them a year or so of lead time, they breed like slightly more reasonable guppies. 

[jefferythewind]

4 hours ago, Tired said:

If you'd like easy shrimp to breed, check out opae ula. My avatar is one. They're a brackish-water shrimp species that can be kept in large numbers in a pico, needs functionally no food if given enough light to grow algae, produces so little waste that macroalgae can comfortably use it all up, and doesn't want or need any form of filtration. Their larvae are relatively large when hatched, and because there's no filtration in the tank, the larvae are free to drift around until they land and develop. The only downside is that it does usually take them a year or more to start breeding after being added to a new tank, but they're incredibly easy to keep. All they need is regular top-offs and the occasional tiny bit of food, maybe a little more food once their population grows slightly. They don't even need an automatic top-off system, or daily top ups. Once a week is fine, they don't mind the changes in salinity from evaporation. They're the second easiest aquatic pets to keep, beat out only by marimo mossballs, and certainly the easiest aquatic animal. And if you give them a year or so of lead time, they breed like slightly more reasonable guppies. 

Thats really cool I will read about them. Yeah i looked up more info about the cleaner shrimp. Apparently they are just about impossible to breed in an aquarium. Someone did a doctoral thesis on it and only had 1 survive! Hard to believe. I read some people have had peppermint shrimp fry mature in their reef tanks. I will check out this one you mention. Thanks for the tips!