freshwater ghost shrimp. surviving!@?!?!

[Chad Vossen]

sometimes i feed ghost shrimp to my fairy wrasses. they go NUTS!!!

anyways, one of the shrimp made it to the overflow, and made its way to my fuge however was stopped by a filterbag. today, TWO DAYS later, the shrimp is still alive in the filterbag and i just moved it into the fuge area to see how much longer it will survive...

how is this possible? a freshwater ghost shrimp surviving two days and seems perfectly fine... im positive i have salt in my reef tank lol, so dont ask me about that!

also, a year back, i added amphipods from my reef to my turtle tank to feed the fish. then i had millions of amphipods in the turtle tank.. im not sure though if i had introduced a freshwater strain or not, so it may just be nothing. i will introduce some amphipods from the reef into the freshwater tank today to see if i have similar results.

what is going on? how is this ghost shrimp surviving? ill keep you all updated on how long the shrimp lives.

anyone think i could keep my cleaner shrimp in the freshwater tank??? wouldn't that be cool lol.. (no im not going to try it.)

 

[Opcn]

Ghost shrimp sold in the hoby are brackish shrimp, not fresh water, they can handle salt water quite well in most cases.

I' not sure what strain of amphipod you have, but thats great that they took off in your turtle tank, amphipods would be great to add back to a reef tank as well.

 

[TankFabricator]

Opcn is correct, they are indeed brackish, I often have a few that'll live for days until oscar(frogfish) eats them. Tough little shrimp. I used to keep them in my discus tank until they multiplied and took over the whole tank!

 

[TFM]

I'm going to have to disagree.

There are certainly Brackish species of Ghost Shrimp, but there are also Freshwater species.

For example, in my area, all that is available is Palaemonetes paludosus, the American Freshwater Glass/Grass Shrimp, which is purely Freshwater.

Most likely whatever species you got, Armagedon48, is a Brackish/Marine species.

How is the shrimp doing now? Is it by chance turning milky white?
I once thought that the shrimp in my area were the Brackish/marine variety, so I tried acclimating it to SW. It survived for three days, then died.

 

[billsreef]

Even the primarily freshwater P. paludosus has been found in low salinity brackish waters and been shown in lab experiments to have some survival in salinities up to 35 ppt.

Intesting Abstract from the Journal of Crustacean Biology found here.

In order to determine the effects of salinity on adult and larval survival, egg deposition, egg hatching, and metamorphosis, shrimp (Palaemonetes paludosus) were held in the laboratory and exposed to treatment salinities ranging from 0 to 35 ppt. Tests of adult survival indicate a 96 h LC50 between 30 and 35 ppt. Shrimp became ovigerous in salinities of 0-20 ppt (27°C), with ensuing egg hatching and metamorphosis limited to 0-5 ppt. Starved larvae hatched from field-caught ovigerous females in 0 ppt were able to metamorphose in salinities of 0-30 ppt; the 96 h LC50 for these larvae was between 30 and 35 ppt at temperature of 24°C. These results suggest that P. paludosus can complete its life cycle in brackish water.

However, most of the feeder ghost shrimp I've seen in the trade have been of the typically brackish variety that live equally well in full fresh and full salt.

 

[TFM]

Wow, that was a very interesting link. I wasn't aware of P. paludosis occuring in low salinity water.

I had never had good experiences keeping them in Brackish water. They all tended to die after a month or so in even low salinity Brackish water.

Although, IME, most feeder shrimp are not in very good shape to begin with and have fairly low survival rates.

 

[billsreef]

Had a hunch you'd find that an interesting read. Still leaves a few questions, like what is survival like beyond the 96 hour mark and does the original collection location and salinity make a difference.

 

[TFM]

Yes - very interesting questions.

I couldn't read the full paper (Don't have a subscription) but the abstract seemed to contain most of the info.

I'll do some more looking-into on the natural occurance of P. paludosis. I know there are MANY different species of Palaemonetes shrimps. It seems only a few species are primarily freshwater, while many others are primarily brackish and marine.
I know that P. paludosis larvae do *not* require brackish/marine water to be raised, unlike many other shrimps larval stages.

Another interesting read:

http://estuariesandcoasts.org/cdrom/ESTU1982_5_3_165_174.pdf

Doesn't nesecarily contain info on P. paludosis, but has info on other Palaemonetes shrimps, and could be applied to P. paludosis.

Do you know of any scientific literature concerning Palaemonetes shrimp? Such as the original reports of a species discovery, how to ID them, where they are found....anything really.

 

[Chad Vossen]

on the 3rd day, i dropped it back into the display to be eaten. it did start turning a white color.

this shrimp i got from petsmart.

i used to live in NC, and ghost shrimp (glass shrimp maybe?) could be found in most of the lakes and ponds.