Baby shrimp?

[Newreefkeeper]

Hi,

Tonight, I saw something interesting happened in my 90G. While I was cleaning off some algae, I saw one of the three pepermint shrimp dancing along the front glass. When I watched closely, I saw hundreds of little creatures around it. Those little creatures did look like baby shrimps.

The clown fish was busy eating these little creatures.

I have 3 pepermint shrimps in my tank for over 2 or 3 months. Is it possible that one of them is giving out baby shrimps?

I have no experience, or read any articles on what I saw. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[Powder Blue]

yes peppermints will spawn readily.

 

[rlp1]

Once when I looked in my tank in the middle of the night with a flashlight I saw a huge cloud of tinee peppermints. Of course, by morning they were all gone but guess all the planktonivores got a good feeding. I assume this happened on a regular basis because I would see one of the shrimp carrying eggs for a while & then the eggs would disappear.

 

[davelin315]

Once they start breeding, it's a regular occurrence. The "dance" you saw was the shrimp shaking the eggs loose and allowing the frye to swim free in the water column. If you look at your shrimp, you will see under it's tail meshed into its swimmerettes a bunch of tiny tiny yellowish colored eggs. After a week or so, you will see the distinct black dot in there which I believe is the eyes forming. After a couple of weeks they hatch. I don't know the exact gestation for the eggs, but turnaround is fairly quick, as I have 2 cleaners in my tank that spawn about once a month or more often.

 

[esmithiii]

To get the fry to grow to adulthood, you will have to get them to a refugium where they won't be eaten by fish, etc.

How many peppermints do you have, how long have you had them and how much rock work do you have?

Ernie

 

[Newreefkeeper]

Thanks for all the replies! I learnt a lot.

I have three pepermint shrimps for about 3 months and about 100lbs of live rocks.

I saw some of the baby shrimps hidden in a patch of algae. I was going to remove the algae, but leaving that patch untouched. I want to see if some of the baby shrimps will grow into adults.

Thanks again!