Cleaner Shrimp Help

[hellonwheels]

Hi everyone as you can see iam new to all this but i have a pair of cleaner shrimp and the larger of the two which iam taking to be the female as what looks like a load of eggs in her abdomen.

question is how long will she carry them if they are eggs and what do i have to do to stop the other fish eating them
thanks

 

[rdd1952]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

When you say cleaner shrimp, are you talking about an algae eating shrimp, ghost shrimp that scavenge and clean up uneaten food or are you talking about the saltwater variety?

 

[hellonwheels]

yes sorry its a marine saltwater tank and its a skunk shrimp

 

[Colin_T]

Skunk cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) are hermaphrodites. They are both male and femlae. When a shrimp sheds it skin they release eggs onto the pleopods (little things under the tail) and the other shrimp acts as a male and fertilises them. A couple of weeks later the other shrimp will shed its skin and produce eggs.

They carry the eggs around for 3-4 weeks depending on temperature. The eggs hatch at night and are released by the carrier. A few days later the shrimp will shed its skin again and produce another batch.

If you feed the shrimp well (3 times a day with marine foods) they will produce bigger batches.

The larvae (baby shrimp) float around the tank until they get sucked up by the filter or eaten by the tank inhabitants. If you can scoop them out and transfer them into an icecream bucket they can be fed on newly hatched brineshrimp. Each day you tip the water out of the bucket and replace it with clean tank water.

The larvae will often survive for a month or two like this but are missing something that causes them to settle and metamorphose. If you add fish eggs or fish fry to their diet you might get them to settle and change.

Peppermint shrimp (Lysmata wurdemani) will breed in the same way but the young will settle and metamorphose on a straight diet of brineshrimp nauplii.

 

[waterdrop]

Skunk cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) are hermaphrodites. They are both male and femlae. When a shrimp sheds it skin they release eggs onto the pleopods (little things under the tail) and the other shrimp acts as a male and fertilises them. A couple of weeks later the other shrimp will shed its skin and produce eggs.

They carry the eggs around for 3-4 weeks depending on temperature. The eggs hatch at night and are released by the carrier. A few days later the shrimp will shed its skin again and produce another batch.

(...)

Fascinating! Clearly this is the problem in modern domestic society. We males are falling short in our pleopod duties!

 

[Lynden]

Agreed with Colin T, my old pair used to carry eggs for about 3-4 weeks.

 

[hellonwheels]

thanks for all your feedback

helen