Help getting sexy shrimp to spawn

[jakik]

Hi,
I have had sexy shrimp in one of my aquariums for over 4 years. I always have 3 and sometimes six. They have never carried eggs. I asked Brian for suggestions and he thought I should post here.
My last post to him said: Thank you for the offer to help. Right now I have 4 sexy shrimp in a 10 gallon aquarium. I think at least 1 of them is a male and 1 for sure is a female. The other 2 are young. I keep 3 to 6 shrimp in that aquarium at all times. Every now and again 1 will disappear and I will replace it with 2 more when they show up at the LFS. I feed them live brine shrimp, shrimp pellets, hikari marine S, flake food and black worms. Also in the tank at this time are 2 flower sand anemones, mushrooms, zenia, a dark red leafy macroalgae, halimeda, 3 small gobies and a pom pom crab. I have water movement but no filter and it is unskimmed. The temp. is 78 to 80 F.
There are a lot of asterina starfish and tiny limpets that proliferate in there. I would love to breed the shrimp. All suggestions would be appreciated.
sincerely,
Jaki Kalionzes

["Umm, fish?"]

It's hard to say. I certainly saw my males fighting over the females at mating times, but I never saw any eggs either. Maybe Chuck can help, as he was working with them at one point.

[charlesr1958]

With a good number of shrimp, a few or at least one is bound to be a female, what I suspect is happening is that there are hatches but within a "community" type aquarium, the larvae would quickly fall prey to any number of other creatures or simply trapped or smashed against objects in the tank along with a pump intake to deal with. Unless you are right there at the moment of hatching, you are unlikely to see any.
I would suggest you set up a small 1/2 to 1 gallon tank with nothing but an airstone set on low and put all your shrimp in there. A small heater set to 82 is the only other possible piece of equipment needed besides something in the 20 watt range, single CF bulb for lighting as you do want some algae / biofilm growth on the glass walls for the shrimp to feed upon. To maintain water quality, a small water change every other day should suffice, and given that the tank is so small, so would the amount of water needed to change out. Also, don't get carried away with adding prepared foods, if you see food just sitting on the bottom after an hour or two after feeding, siphon it out and replace the lost water right away.

This is the tank I used for my sexy shrimp, minus the rock, coral and sand of course.

http://www.chucksaddiction.com/desktank.jpg

This page details how I built the air stone trap:

http://www.chucksaddiction.com/bubbletrap.html

Chuck

[jakik]

Andy, thank you for the reply. I too have noticed interaction between my shrimp. This tank is in my kitchen and is one of my most watched tanks. I have looked for eggs many many times and have never seen any. I still love watching them though. The tank is crowded with life now but crowded or plain, it hasn't made a difference. I wonder what the trigger is to reproduce.
Charles, thank you also for your imput. I will try to figure out where to put even a tiny tank. With 10 tanks in a very small house and numerous jars of copepods, phytoplankton, brine shrimp and feeder fish plus 3 tanks already taking up kitchen counter space, I may have a hard time convincing my family I need more room. I would love to try your suggestions though. I will let you know.
Jaki Kalionzes

["Umm, fish?"]

Chuck--I never saw eggs on the females. Shrimp only tank, plus a few nassarius. Sorry. Can't sleep. Hope I'm making sense.

[charlesr1958]

Granted, the eggs are very small as are the adult shrimp for that matter, yet a gravid female was always quite obvious to me by its "full" or expanded appearance. In such a small tank as I was using and its obvious viewing advantages, you should see eggs, although in young females, or poorly fed ones, a reduced egg count could make it appear not much is going on, but a well fed, "big mamma" should be quite obvious.
Sorry ya can't sleep, never had that problem unless it was job induced... :)

Chuck

["Umm, fish?"]

Throat ailment. Doc's pain management from yesterday not enough to let me rest more than a few minutes at a time.

I took macros of the egg storage space on females. Never found any.

[BrianPlankis]

I feed them live brine shrimp, shrimp pellets, hikari marine S, flake food and black worms. Also in the tank at this time are 2 flower sand anemones, mushrooms, zenia, a dark red leafy macroalgae, halimeda, 3 small gobies and a pom pom crab. I have water movement but no filter and it is unskimmed. The temp. is 78 to 80 F.
There are a lot of asterina starfish and tiny limpets that proliferate in there. I would love to breed the shrimp. All suggestions would be appreciated.
sincerely,
Jaki Kalionzes

Jaki,

Thanks for posting this, hopefully we can get your shrimp to a successful breeding attempt! Monitoring is certainly important, they are very small and daily monitoring should be done to detect eggs.

As with most species, the diet of the shrimp is one of the most important factors. So lets look at what you are feeding them:

1. live brine shrimp: Nothing harmful here, but not very nutritious food. You can still feed this, but it shouldn't be the main diet. I would feed them immediately after hatching so hopefully the sexy shrimp get to eat them while they still have some nutritional value.

2. shrimp pellets: What kind of shrimp pellets? Brand? Ingredients? Probably a good food, but depends on ingredients.

3. Hikari marine S: I feed these to my clownfish and the Nassarius in my tank. These are probably a good food and the ingredient list contains several things (such as DHA and EPA) that are considered good for nutrition and reproduction, although the analysis does not say what percentage. Probably a good food to have in there regularly.

4. Flake food: Again depends on the brand and ingredients. If you can provide those then we can talk.

5. black worms: Probably not a good part of the diet. Black worms are freshwater critters, so the shrimp did not evolve to eat this food. It is impossible to know (without testing) if feeding it is harmful or not, but I would recommend stopping this food. It is probably not harmful, but filling their stomachs with a food they didn't evolve to eat doesn't leave room for food they did evolve to eat.

6. Enriching of food: It is a pretty common practice to soak food in Selcon or other nutrient liquids, but the benefit of this not known very well by food type. Some foods could adsorb the nutrients, others might not at all. When enriching foods it is best to enrich live foods that actually ingest the nutrients. That way it is certain to make it into the target animal being fed. Most soaking practices probably lead to a very large percentage of the nutrients being washed away immediately on the food entering the tank and being lost to the skimmer or being used by a non-target species.

There are also a couple of peer-reviewed articles that showed that enriching live foods can actually decrease survival of larvae, so enriching is not a guarantee of increasing success. As far as I know, testing of enriching has not been done on sexy shrimp and would certainly be an interesting experiment.

Perhaps others can suggest some additional better foods you can add to their diet. If not I'll be back later to add some.

Brian

[jakik]

Thank you Brian,
I have been reading April's book on peppermint shrimp while my server was down. Is raising sexy shrimp babies the same process? It seems tricky but I would love to try.
About the food.
I meant hikari shrimp cuisine not shrimp pellets. I just looked at the package and it was formulated for fresh water shrimp.
The dry food is from Ocean Nutrition and I buy 3 types: Brine shrimp Plus, Prime reef and Formula two.
This time of year the tides are good for fishing so I have been feeding roe from rockfish my husband catches, which they love.
I also feed frozen mysis.
April makes her own food for peppermint shrimp, maybe that would be better.
if you tell me what I should feed I will do it.
Thank you, i appreciate your help.
Chuck, I have found room for a small aquarium for the shrimp. You said minus the sand rock and coral. Is that for the parents or the larva?
Did you grow the shrimp to maturity? If you have a thread on this please point me in the right direction. By the way I really appreciate all you have done providing information and photos to all the people trying to learn about the life in the reefs and in their aquariums.
Gratefully,
Jaki kalionzes