American Glass Shrimp (Ghost Shrimp) larva

Congrats, They a hard species to breed. The babies are amazing looking though and totally worth it.

Separation of larva might be overkill but I was never trying to raise large numbers.

Keep us updated!

-Andrew

PS. Got any FTS of the breeding group?

The reason I separate the larva is 2 fold.

1.) The tank the breeding population in is fairly new and does not have a good source of food and to ensure the larvae get enough food, I moved them to a smaller container.

2.) I want to ensure that my population for this project are 100% captive raised.

Excellent pic and good luck with them.

Are they harvested in numbers large enough to affect the wild population? I had no idea, I just knew that they were worth 12 cents.

They are harvested in pretty great numbers. I am not sure how much the wild population is affected, but they do take a lot of them. They are mostly used as feeders and are treated poorly. Their survival rate in an aquarium is very very low because of this, so the main goal of this is to provide a viable captive raised population that will survive aquarium life and still be some what competitive. (I will be selling them for somewhere around $.50 a piece).

i have a big female ghost shrimp in my planted. i had two, but i decided to get rid of both. i caught one, but could never find my other. eventually i found her but left her.
i bought the two because they had eggs. never saw any babys ever.

what are you doing to breed them?

What am I doing to breed them? I put a bunch of shrimp in an aquarium, they breed all on their own! LOL.

You may not have seen any young for many reasons. If there are any fish in your aquarium they larva surely were eaten. If there are no fish, but a filter with out a sponge prefilter they were killed by the filter. Even water movement can kill the larva.

American Glass Shrimp larva are extremely small and make great snacks for fish!

Wow. Very cool. I had heard that they actually do not require saltwater to breed and apparently you have proved it.

Great job. How many larvae do you estimate come out of a single female?

-Ryan

Ryan,
It is hard to say. All the females that I had were wild caught females and were extremely stressed from shipping and acclimation to the home aquarium. The numbers were lower than they should have been. The egg mass under the tails when healthy seems to be close to that of a cherry shrimp, but this time around I had far few numbers.

There are some "ghost shrimp" that require salt water to grow past the larval stage, but the American Glass Shrimp (Palaemonetes paludosus) does not. They have a very short larval stage that only requires freshwater!

at one point I had 10 ghost shrimp on my 55g with no fish I was just keeping it cycled with them and 2 wks later there were 40ish , but I added fish they all dissapeared lol

I have similar experience. I had a mature 10G full of these little things. I used them as live food for my apistos.

It's really amazing seeing the larva jumping out from the female's belly.

And, the apisto hunting is another good show I love to watch all the time. LOL.

Great job, I would like to congradulate you. I used to get great satisfaction raising these little larva until they got to be large adults, a lot better feeling that just buying a billion at the store. Glad to see someone else who appreciates these little monsters. Keep up the good work!

I got 6 glass shrimp that I got at the local PetSmart because 3 were heavily berried. I put them into the shrimp tank figuring that for $6.00 it was a cheap way to get a little variety. They must not have been Palaemonetes paludosus because I never even saw any larvae. The adults did kill some of my cherries, though. When I discovered this they were culled and went into the 58 as snacks.

Tommy

Tommy,
It is hard to say that they are not Palaemonetes just because you did not see larva. The larva are extremely small and are often eaten by the parents when hungry, and besides all the ghost shrimp I know of (if not marco species) hatch as larva.

I got like a dozen of the for 2$ at my LFS for my ten gallon. Some had eggs and eventually I had larvae. Too bad the filter and got them...