The Planted Tank Forum banner

Help with breeding Ghost Shrimp?

4K views 8 replies 8 participants last post by  trixella 
#1 ·
Today I went to get some ghost shrimp, but I didn't realize how much I would fall in love with these little guys. I bough 4 for .49 cents each, and I would love to go back and get more. I have a 55 gallon planted tank with neon's, platties, 2 snails, 1 Chinese algae eater, and now 4 shrimp :icon_bigg

Instead of going and buying more I thought that it would be more rewarding to breed them. I have a 5 gallon tank that can be used for the baby shrimp. It's normally a quarantine tank. The only problem with that is that I don't think I can grow live plants in the little tank. The substrate is gravel and it doesn't have any Flora Max like my 55 gallon. I'm not an expert on plants so I don't know if any plants would grow in just gravel.

I also give a co2 supplement and a liquid fertilizer. If anyone can give me some tips on growing plants in the 5 gallon that would be greatly appreciated.

Anyways back to the original question, how can I go about breeding them? Could I put some flakes or bottom feeder pellets in there to feed them? Sorry I have never attempted to bread any kind of fish or anything. Also how can I tell if I have males or females? Thanks so much :wink:
 
#2 ·
You don't really need plants in the tank and if your main tank is planted, the babies would probably survive in there with a few getting pecked off by fish. Lots of moss helps give the babies somewhere to hide.

Now, don't quote me on this, but I believe ghost shrimp come in 2 varieties. Ones that need salt water for the babies to hatch and ones that breed fully in salt water and it's usually hit and miss what a LFS has. I could be wrong but I remember reading that before somewhere.
 
#8 ·
Now, don't quote me on this, but I believe ghost shrimp come in 2 varieties. Ones that need salt water for the babies to hatch and ones that breed fully in salt water and it's usually hit and miss what a LFS has.
This is correct. There are a few different varities of ghost shrimp. The bad part of it is, 9 times out of 10 (or maybe more like 9.9), the LFS doesn't know what species they are getting.
 
#7 ·
ghost shrimp breed in freshwater. At least the kind that most petsmart and big chain stores have anyways. They do have a larval stage, but it lasts only a few days and they do not need saltwater to survive. however, with fish in the tank, the larvae are easy prey because they can not avoid predation.

You would need to hatch them and grow them in a separate tank away from fish, and you'd have to feed powdered food, spirulina or something similar for the first few days. biofilm would be good food for after their larval stage.

As far as filtration is concerned, a small sponge filter would be fine. A little moss in the tank would be fine for plants, anything else would probably just get in the way
 
#9 ·
The ghost shrimp I bought from Petsmart had babies in my pea puffer tank that have now grown up to be adults (never separated them). I don't have any salt in the tank, have an internal filter(so it doesn't suck up the babies), and all I fed them was regular flake food that I would rub into powder.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top