Cleaner Shrimp Eggs/Larvae

[ShilohPSU]

I have a pair of cleaner shrimp that regularly spawn green eggs under their tails. I was checking out the micro-organisms (copepods) that multiply in the refugium and I found something interesting. I run my refugium lights on an opposite cycle from my main lights on the tank, so the main lights were off for about 2 hours and the refugium was just turned on for about two hours. I noticed a little translucent thing with 2 dark black eyes about the size of the smallest baby aiptasia before they anchor and grow. I saw it move and it looked almost exactly like a mosquito larvae but with dark eyes. I followed it for a couple of minutes until it got sucked into the sponges of the refugium. My best guess is that it was a tiny cleaner shrimp larva. Is this possible and is this what they look like? Are there any chances of getting a survivor or two in the refugium, overflow, ect without any extra care? How hard is it to raise the larvae in a separate 10g tank and how long does it take them to develop?

 

[greenbean36191]

Cleaner shrimp take up to 5-6 months to settle into juveniles and during that time they're extremely fragile and hard to feed. There's really no established protocol for breeding them yet. Only a few people have had limited success (as in one or two survivors per couple batches) and they've mostly been using specially designed tanks. Chances of them surviving for a few days without care aren't horrible, but beyond that they drop off precipitously. Chances of getting them to metamorphose without extra care are essentially zero.

More than likely what you saw were mysis, which are common in refugia.

 

[ShilohPSU]

Thanks for the quick response. So i checked my shrimp today and it still has a bunch of eggs under it, so there probably wasn't a big event last night after the lights turned off. How do baby mysis appear in the refugium? The same way copepods appear everywhere from the live rock/sand or from feeding frozen mysis that have eggs attached to them? I'm still not sure if I saw a baby mysis or cleaner shrimp, but i'll keep checking until the shrimp loses its eggs. If I see hundreds of little larvae swimming around and the shrimp lost its eggs around that night, I'll let you know.