Cleaner Shrimp Breeding

[Chheng86]

I've been monitoring my cleaner shrimp fry for a while and some have become quite big. The cleaner shrimp had the babies in different batches that's why there's various sizes. I shot a video of the biggest one I could find, which is the only one that you can clearly see the antennas without looking too close.

Anyone have any experience with them? They're all over my tank and mostly roam around the rocks and mangroves. There's hundreds of them, various sizes all over the tank.

http://youtu.be/7O_HOVrxpMo

I've been feeding them fish pellets, which they quickly pick up and take away.

Here's another video of them, you can see them running around:

http://youtu.be/JjKWpClZGrc

[slief]

I do not beleive those are cleaner shrimp. They look more like mysid or arthropods. I've got thousands of those things in my system. A good thing none the less and good food for your fish.

[ichthyogeek]

+1 on the mysids

Cleaner shrimp (Lysmata spp.) have a planktonic larval stage. The pepperment (L. wurdemani) is the easiest to breed, and there are currently experiments on raising viable skunk cleaners (L. amboinensis) to maturity. If they're running around that small, then I strongly suspect mysids, as from what I've seen on the net, L. wurdemani settle as miniature adults.

However, congratulations on getting mysis to thrive in your system!! They're a wonderful food source for many, many species of fish, and you must be doing something right to keep them in such large numbers without them cannibalizing each other!

[Chheng86]

Ah, I think you guys are right that they're Mysid shrimp. Figured that my cleaner shrimp had eggs that those were from that.

[meidinad]

Would've been sweet though!!!!!

[oseymour]

Ah, I think you guys are right that they're Mysid shrimp. Figured that my cleaner shrimp had eggs that those were from that.

I think you should update the description on the Youtube video. Don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.