Expectant Ghost Mother

Well, here she is, normally, the eggs are all tightly held close under the mother. When a couple of them look as if they'll fall off, as in the below photo, I think that means she's pretty close to hatching these (48 hours or so). This is for a thread I started in the invertebrates section.

Smaller pic is a month-old juvenile of the 14 who made it from first clutch of eggs; note that despite being one month old, the two strands of Java Moss in the pic are still relatively large. Really, they have a decent survival instinct; when I approach w/ the digicam, they all make a run for the java moss forest. B) These guys grow incredibly slowly.

v/r, N-A

P.S. Mother shrimp just hatched the latest clutch last night, all but about 2 hatched in an 8-hour period. My kids are 8, 5, 3 and 1, and the older two have their own tanks, but this is something that's pretty cool for them. Have to relocate the mother shrimp to my daughter's 10-gallon tank, which is right now a bachelor pad for the adults.

Big pic: mother w/ clutch of eggs. Smaller pic: month-old juvenile. Note size of Java Moss strand.

Your ghost shrimp is having babies? This is the first time I've seen this on the forum.

very cool

Look forward to see some piccies of grow big and

Can't wait to see pics of the babies

This was a real photographic challenge.

1. The newly hatched shrimp (less than one day old) tend to put themselves near the sharply radiused bend in the bottom of the Eclipse acrylic aquarium. There's a lot of optical distortion there.

2. They're small (the biggest ones are about 3.5mm).

3. The rolltop desk on which the tanks rest is nicely varnished...and thus reflects the flash. Had to toggle off the flash.

4. Without flash, the CCD on my digicam gathers light for a fair amount of time (equivalent to leaving a shutter open longer in low light for wet film photography). No way I could hold the camera by hand in unsupported fashion.

To overcome all this, I removed my Burris 15-45X60mm spotter from its bench rest tripod and mounted the camera on it. Properly aimed and aligned (using azimuth and elevation fine adjustment knobs on the tripod), I got the following picture in the LCD viewfinder. I don't have a remote trigger for this camera, so there is a little bit of "shake" from touching the button on the camera body.

The hatchling in profile view measured out at 3.5mm using a ruler against the tank's acrylic face.

There are two new hatchlings circled in back. I hadn't noticed them there until I snapped the picture, as they look like little bits of detritus on the tank's bare bottom; there's a fair number of them on the tank bottom.

The white dots are bits of powderized Hikari micro pellets that expanded a bit in size upon immersion. These guys are latching onto them and eating them, which is quite encouraging.

v/r, N-A

AWWWWW how cute

AWWWWW how cute

Edit: what happened here, oh well

I heard it's really hard to breed em. They're soo small! I remember when I used to have Ghost Shrimp.

That's incredible how you can see right into the mother's stomach. Guess that would explain the "ghost" Also, congrats on the breeding. IME it's the most rewarding aspect of the hobby. Along with the joy of setting up a new tank!

That's really very exciting and can imagine it must be for the children too ! and I know so very well what you must have gone through to get those photos not an easy task is it ? They are just so incredibly tiny

Perhaps once they've grown up, you can do a breeding "how-to" and post it on the Index so that other people can learn from you experience

From what I have learned, children, let alone other adults, have a hard time looking for things that small

bloozoo2 said:

That's really very exciting and can imagine it must be for the children too ! and I know so very well what you must have gone through to get those photos not an easy task is it ? They are just so incredibly tiny

Perhaps once they've grown up, you can do a breeding "how-to" and post it on the Index so that other people can learn from you experience

Click to expand...

Ma'am, I'll try and collect my thoughts and build a "how to" that is a bit more concise than the goodly number of posts I did on the two threads. Okay, make that a lot more concise!

As far as the photos go, you are way ahead of me on preserving good image quality...I'm using three of your Grey Nurse Shark pictures from your South Africa holiday as my computer desktop image on a 19"LCD screen...they're fabulous.

And to all, thanks for the positive feedback. So true, onemisterchristian, this is one of the truly rewarding facets of this hobby. One of the best results is setting up a chair and just relaxing, while watching the aquarium occupants go about their business of living. Very therapeutic, especially after a really long, noisy day at work.

blitztidus, my kids now think that every floating thing is a "shrimpy"...but we're still stumped at finding the many missing Lego pieces around our home, no matter how brightly colored.

And oppositearmor, this truly was a case of trying it just to see if I could do it...of course with a lot of good posts from people on this board much more knowledgeable than myself. Just happy with the whole process and results; truly fun.

Well, have to open some books and do some review study for work tomorrow. Cheers, until I get a better pic of slightly bigger young ones in the tank.


Very Respectfully, N-A

Native American said:

Ma'am, I'll try and collect my thoughts and build a "how to" that is a bit more concise than the goodly number of posts I did on the two threads. Okay, make that a lot more concise!

Click to expand...

That would be fabulous. So many people often wonder how to go about these things and it's so much better if they can read from first hand forum member experience. Believe me, I've learnt a lot from everyone on TFF since I've joined.

As far as the photos go, you are way ahead of me on preserving good image quality...I'm using three of your Grey Nurse Shark pictures from your South Africa holiday as my computer desktop image on a 19"LCD screen...they're fabulous.

Click to expand...

oh wow I'm chuffed you like that photo. I still need to print some of those photos to make an album.
These aren't desktop type pics, but thought you might be interested in when I actually went diving with some

I hate it when the lego pieces go missing, I actually finally found one that had been missing for about 5 years when I went through my room Sunday , Anyways good luck with the Ghost BABIES

This was 3 days ago.........there were 2 carrying eggs
And this morning there were none carrying eggs!
I didn't have time to search for hatchlings. Not sure if there are any survivors. I did not remove anything from my tank as it was not my intention to breed the shrimp. Now I am regretting and thinking I should have tried! Atleast I know my tank conditions are good for breeding them!
Nice job on your breeding Native American! and great info in your posts!