Baby Cleaner Shrimp Everywhere.

Scott-CapeCoral

Scott-CapeCoral

New member
There are hundreds floating around my tank. It's my 1 feeding night of the week where I shut my pumps down all night and feed the corals. I looked in an hour after lights off to get ready to feed the tank, and Cleaner Shrimp are everywhere. I know they aren't mysid shrimp, I'm watching the mother shrimp release more. I wish I could rear these little guys but there's nothing I can do. Well I know how to do rather.. What would you do to grow these guys up? Starting from step one and scooping them up?
 
I realised this wouldn't be fun for you guys without pics. Here are some I just took. It's amazing how they group in the light.

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Try asking in the invert or fish breading forum. I would suspect the mortality rate will be high, but at the price these guys sell for, I can't imagine they wouldn't be worth the effort. You can expect having to start with a bare smaller tank with an established sponge filter. This won't set you back much at all, and you can find small tanks at garage sales or craigslist for free in most cases. The toughest part is feeding and keeping up with water quality. Maybe someone in those other forums can point you in the direction of what to feed them at various stages of development. And you can get an idea of what their particular settup looks like. With so many people raising clowns in their basements and other fish as well, I can't see this being too much tougher. But like any effort along these lines there surely will be an investment of your time.
 
Maybe some day I will try to raise them. They do this about every two weeks. my corals were pretty happy last night though! I have a bright l.e.d. flashlight, and they would follow it all around the tank. So I bounced the light from chalice to chalice, palythoa to palythoa, acan to acan.. It was easy pickings for them :) Watching how chalices and acans catch live prey is amazing.. One of my chalices caught about 100 in a slime ball that was completely invisible. Then it slowly "reeled" them in to the mouths. The acans reached their long feeding tentacles out and when a shrimp touched them it almost seemed to get zapped by the acan and very quickly enclosed into the mouth.
 
I did a lot of research on this about a year ago when I had a pair of blood red cleaner shrimp spawning thousands of larva. You will need a plankton carousel to keep the larva suspended in a very slow current. The larva are extremely delicate and from what I have read, just bumping into the tank walls or settling on the bottom can damage them. It is a lot of work but well worth it in the end. Just think, aquacultured cleaner shrimp. People have done it already. Here is a pretty cool link that gives a pretty good outlined description on how to do it.
 
I don't have anything constructive to offer for raising them, other than I have wanted to provide my reef with this type of food for quite awhile. My hawkfish says otherwise. Thanks for sharing the photos.
 
UWUALineman said:
I don't have anything constructive to offer for raising them, other than I have wanted to provide my reef with this type of food for quite awhile. My hawkfish says otherwise. Thanks for sharing the photos.
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Sorry to hear that. A friend of mine had 3 huge cleaner shrimp in his 180 bow front, I bought my cleaner shrimp because I liked the look of his. He purchased a 4-line wrasse not long ago and it apparently ate all three :( Be careful with thier tankmates.. I have a small yellow coris wrasse that I'm worried about once it gets bigger. I really don't want to lose these shrimp.
 
I have a lyretail hawkfish also known as a red hawkfish and he hasn't touched either one of my cleaners. Granted one of the cleaners is almost as big as he is, but I'd love to see this happen in my tank as I think my shrimp have paired up. They never leave each others side and when I first put them in the bigger one would throw a jab to the smaller one for the first day they were together. Now they just sit less than an inch away slowly swaying in the current together. I've heard that the eggs are great nutrition for your reef! Good luck!
 
great pictures - thanks for sharing

I hope one of these days rearing shrimp larva in a hobby environment becomes a reality
 
scubasteve06 said:
I have a lyretail hawkfish also known as a red hawkfish and he hasn't touched either one of my cleaners. Granted one of the cleaners is almost as big as he is, but I'd love to see this happen in my tank as I think my shrimp have paired up. They never leave each others side and when I first put them in the bigger one would throw a jab to the smaller one for the first day they were together. Now they just sit less than an inch away slowly swaying in the current together. I've heard that the eggs are great nutrition for your reef! Good luck!
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Cool, sounds like they may take to each other soon. You'll see the eggs on the underside of them. When they are new eggs, they are a greenish color. Both shrimp will be able to produce them. Neither one is solely male or female. They both will become pregnant. Yes, like you said, I'm sure the newborn shrimp are great nutrition :) The parents don't release eggs though. They must hatch straight from under her, and pretty much all at once. I saw 2 or 3 floating around the tank at first, then looked at both parents. The one that was letting the babies go, still had thousands under her. I figured she was scared to let them go because my kitchen light was on. So I walked over, turned the light off so the entire house was pitch black. Walked back over to the tank and shined the light in to see where she moved from, and BOOM she released them all at once like a gigantic cloud. The babies you see were probably only half of them. My shrimp molt the same night they have thier babies, and immediatley get pregnant again. I always miss this happening though because I only feed the tank at night once a week. Every other night, I just shut the lights off and walk away. I can always tell when they had thier babies though by the looks of my acans in the morning. They have thier feeding tenticles stretched out in the flow verrry far. So When I see that, I look around and sure enough there is a shrimp molt behind the rocks :)
 
psteeleb said:
great pictures - thanks for sharing

I hope one of these days rearing shrimp larva in a hobby environment becomes a reality
Click to expand...

thank you. Yes raising this many cleaner shrimp would be absolutely amazing. They wouldn't be $25 each anymore if we were able to captive breed them easily.. :) I've heard people having some success though, so that time is coming nearer.
 
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