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Cliff
After observing my 2 100% captive raised berried females for a while now I have decided to move them to their own aquarium in preparation for the larval hatch.
The females were first observed to be berried on June 24th and I plan on keeping a close eye on these females so I can give a rough estimate of gestation time. It looks like eyes are starting to become visible in the eggs so it shouldn’t be to long before they hatch.
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I have written you a personal email, however I thought I would pipe in that my experience with breeding what I *think* are American Glass Shrimp has been somewhat successful, and the details seem to coincide with your observations.
I had a few berried females out of a total of 10 shrimp that I had just purchased from Petsmart. I covered the intake tube of the filter with a filter bag so that water could get through and make it less likely that the larvae would not get sucked up into the filter. Also, I had heard that snails produce something that creates microscopic food for the larvae, so I put several mystery snails in the tank with them. The tank is somewhat well planted, with lots of java moss and a few other plants. It has black sand substrate.
After about a week or so, the two berried females disappeared, and I assumed had died and that I was out of luck with getting any babies to hatch. But I left the tank the way I had it, just in case.
One day, three tiny babies appeared, swimming like crazy back and forth in the tank, often knocking themselves against the glass. They did not eat the food that I put in for the adults during this time, but swam through the water column.
After about a week of this nutty behavior, I noticed two of them started to land on plants or the substrate and eagerly came to gobble up food that I was feeding the rest. It took the last one about another week to start eating the regular food, but he/she still swims around like crazy.
Another female from my original Petsmart purchase soon became berried. I read up on other’s breeding experiences on the internet and most people had reported putting the berried female into a tank by herself (many people claim success with putting the berried female into a mason jar with a lid on it!). I made the mistake of taking this female out of the regular tank and put her in a smaller tank. I used the same substrate, some plants, a few snails, and water from the original tank so as to decrease possible shock. However, as I did not have an extra heater, I placed her smaller tank right next to the heater of the main tank, wrapping a blanket around both tanks to keep the heat in. Others had reported having no heater for the berried female or the larvae, so I thought this would be ok.
The next morning she looked dead but moved as I picked her up. I immediately put her back in the main tank, however, she had taken on a bit of a whitish color (and I know that is bad news). She quickly became active again, eating well with the other shrimp, but her eggs had also changed color and were now a sort of olive green. Three weeks after the tank changing fiasco, I found her dead.
So, I do not know if her death was a result of the trauma of a tank change, perhaps her tank did not stay well heated, or maybe it was simply that she was one of the original Petsmart shrimp I purchased and was thus destined to die a premature death?
I thought I’d share this experience with you. I am anxiously awaiting your update #5!
Actually, I am awaiting your update #6;-)
I’d like to see #6 as well.
I also want to breed Ghost shrimp. There are some very nicely colored ones from the adults I got at Petsmart about 2 months ago, and it would be cool to expand on that and get one of our native species to become one of the prized shrimp in the trade. Delusions of Grandeur? Maybe. But everyone has seen what wild type neocaridina look like, so who knows.