Cleaner Shrimp pair

[Rowdeus]

I am thinking of buying another cleaner shrimp to see if they will breed. Anyone ever done this? Any suggestions?

 

[olemiss reb]

They are hermaphroditic and will breed regularly. Raising the larvae is not easy but possible. Same as fire shrimp.
- http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2004/11/breeder

 

[SushiGirl]

Less possible with cleaners than with other shrimp (fire, peppermints). I've only read of the Waikiki aquarium having success with it. That's why links provided to successfuly breeding shrimp are never about skunk cleaners LOL.

Will be great food for the rest of the critters in the tank, though.

There have been several threads asking this here over the years, you can search those or just search the internet on your own, but near as I can tell since I first searched in 2000, nothing has changed in the success of raising these to adulthood in home aquaria.

 

[MAVX]

one of my cleaners has eggs every so often, i'd love to capture them, raise them and make some money to throw back into the aquarium but the effort looks to outweigh the benefit.

 

[SushiGirl]

Yeah, I have 2 peppermints that are constantly carrying eggs. My skunk cleaner is now too after I added a 2nd one. If it were easy, everyone would be making $$$! LOL

 

[AJSTITAN14]

Right. It is technically possible but the larval shrimp are so fragile and sensitive that they can't even tolerate your tank lights in some cases. Pumps and filters will kill them and you have a whole system of live rock and larger animals who will readily eat them.

Best success comes in a system that optimizes their chances of survival using proper lighting, filtration and feeding. Setups like that tend to be expensive and time consuming and you need to be constantly breeding plankton and rotifers etc...

 

[rugby74]

I had mine breed and once one released their egg the other was showing eggs. The fish go crazy when they release the eggs.