Question about freshwater shrimp

[texan279]

Hi all. I'm new to the board. I've had my aquarium established for a little over 2 years. Tank is 45 gallons.Tank has one gourami, 8 tetras, 3 danios, and 5 or 6 otocinclus. Ive got several live plants including Christmas moss and moneywort. About 6 months ago, I started buying adult Amano and ghost shrimp. I love watching them. I bought some locally and some from online dealers. They started dying at a pretty frequent pace, so I pretty much gave up and stopped buying them. Fast forward to now, I've got maybe 7 or 8 adults still alive in the tank. Yesterday my wife was cleaning the tank and removed some structure out of the tank. Low and behold there were about 20 tiny baby shrimp that scattered when she picked up tge structure. In addition there are were more that are bigger but not quite adult size. So about 3 or 4 of the shrimp are red/orange like cherry shrimp, 2 are solid black with white stripe down the middle of their backs, and a few others are random colors. All of the tiny ones are clear like ghost or amanos. Two questions. First, I've always read its really difficult to breed shrimp in captivity. Second, how am I ending up with all the different color shrimp? I've never purchased any colored shrimp or put any into my tank. Thanks in advance for any help. I'm baffled.

 

[Colin_T]

If you provide any organism with a clean, safe, predator free environment that has lots of food and clean water, an ideal temperature, and lots of habitat to live in, they breed.

Baby shrimp are usually transparent or semi transparent. As they grow they develop colour. A lot of shrimp sold in shops have genes from different colour forms and these can occur in the babies.

 

[texan279]

If you provide any organism with a clean, safe, predator free environment that has lots of food and clean water, an ideal temperature, and lots of habitat to live in, they breed.

Baby shrimp are usually transparent or semi transparent. As they grow they develop colour. A lot of shrimp sold in shops have genes from different colour forms and these can occur in the babies.

Thank you!

 

[Slaphppy7]

Welcome to TFF, always nice to see another fellow Texan join up

The shrimplets are most likely the grass/ghost/glass shrimp; amanos need brackish water to breed successfully

Many times, the ghost shrimp are sold as feeders, so they don't get the best care in the shops...breeding and having healthy offspring is a good sign, congrats

 

[texan279]

Thanks for the replies. Came home today and took some pics of some of the smaller shrimp. I also have 2 adult females full of eggs.

 

[texan279]

One of the females.

 

[BrianK]

The reddish ones are definitely not Amanos or Ghost. They appear to be Red Cherry Shrimp. Must have hitchhiked in on a plant or something.

 

[texan279]

The reddish ones are definitely not Amanos or Ghost. They appear to be Red Cherry Shrimp. Must have hitchhiked in on a plant or something.

That's what I thought. But I haven't put any new plants in the tank in the last 3-4 months. No new fish. No new shrimp. I'm kind of baffled.

 

[Slaphppy7]

The RCS could have been mixed in with the other shrimp at the shop, and are just now coloring up...

 

[texan279]

The RCS could have been mixed in with the other shrimp at the shop, and are just now coloring up...

They're pretty small. I last bought shrimp June 5th from a local shop.

 

[Naughts]

Maybe you bought/acquired a berried neocaridina?

 

[texan279]

Maybe you bought/acquired a berried neocaridina?

I haven't bought any shrimp since that same day. It was just huge tank of feeder ghost shrimp. I got 12 for like $2. Didn't see anything red in the bag. The red/berried ones are small seem fairly young. Nothing new has gone into my tank since June 5th.

 

[Colin_T]

Have you added any plants to the tank?
If yes, they might have come in on that.

 

[texan279]

Have you added any plants to the tank?
If yes, they might have come in on that.

Not since before I bought the last shrimp on June 5th.

 

[Naughts]

I haven't bought any shrimp since that same day. It was just huge tank of feeder ghost shrimp. I got 12 for like $2. Didn't see anything red in the bag. The red/berried ones are small seem fairly young. Nothing new has gone into my tank since June 5th.

Red cherry shrimp (neocaridinia) can look clear, depending on genetics. Their offspring could then be much redder, particularly the males. The breed easily.