Baby Cleaner Shrimps

[sholzrichter]

I think I have a bunch of baby cleaner shrimps. About a month ago, my cleaner shrimps had eggs on them. When I was cleaning the tank yesterday, I discovered a bunch of very small shrimps everywhere in the tank, sump, overflow, etc. They are very small about 3/8" long with clean color in the shape of cleaner shrimps. I don't know how fast they grow. I guess I will find out.

[MikeP]

More likely they are mysid shrimp. It is possible they are cleaner larvae that survived but they are notoriously difficult to raise even in highly controlled conditions - the larve go through several morphs and eventually settle into their adult form over 4-6 weeks. Mysids are a common hitchiker in most tanks and lacking predators such as fish they can reproduce rapidly.

[sholzrichter]

I have hundreds of mysid shrimps in my tank, so I know for sure they are not mysid shrimps. In about 6 weeks or so, I will find out if any of them survived and actually become adult shrimps.

[MikeP]

Neat, well I hope they survive - I have a book on raising Peppermint shrimp and it has brief chapters on Cleaners - similar but a bit more work:

The book is called 'How to Raise and Train Your Peppermint Shrimp' by April Kirkendoll - you can get it from Amazon or Powell's online.

Also here is some more info on raising cleaner shrimp larva:

An article from Reefs.org on raising Lysmata species

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/magnasco_toonen.html

A collection of reports from the Breeders Registry:

http://www.breeders-registry.gen.ca.us/cgi-bin/swishsearch.pl?Lysmata+amboinensis