Hawaiian Harlequin Shrimp Breeding Project!

Calappidae

Calappidae

Harlequin Shrimp
I've finally managed to get my hands on a pair of Hawaiian Hymenocera Pictas! :fun4:

(the photo is really big)
http://i.imgur.com/jnMnt39.jpg

These guys are so awesome looking! One thing that scared me was I thought they were both male at first.. but turns out, the spots on the female are actually white! They blend in with the rest of the body.

I managed to snag these guys off diver's den (Liveaquaria) for $300, and I was not disappointed! (at first I was as it took five minutes to figure out their sex and I was a bit upset to think they were both male). I also had a pretty dramatic morning as they started blacktopping my street and closed the road infront of my house.. literally the guys left before they arrived by minutes.

Now that I've finally got what I've been searching for from the beginning... My next goal is to actually breed these guys! It's been done only once successfully, and it was for regular harlies.. I want to actually try and breed these hawaiian harlies when they mature. I have a good idea how this breeding procedure should be done; Copepods for when they're born, I've seen my regular harlies eat marine snow as small fry (before nitrates..), and I have an Asterina species tank for them when they settle.

The breeding is going to be the hard part.. taking care of the shrimp themselves, not so much. Next week will actually be my 2 year anniversary of having the harlies I own now, so these guys aren't much new carewise for me, but I do have open eyes for strange characteristics (like the sexing, potentially picky with starfish, potential toxin from crown of thorns).

I will keep everybody updated! I hope to achieve reducing their rarity and collection in general as they really need them for those crown of thorns. Wish me luck! (Also how fun it is to have to feed TWO pairs of harlies.. worth it still :mixed:)
 
Thanks guy! I will be updating fequently with photos!

Right now they are inside a small critter container while a biocube cycles. However some interesting events have been occuring lately.

The most notable, is while inside the container.. I saw my regular harlequin male pouncing all over the lid of it. He hanged around the container for a couple hours until he finally left to go back with his own mate.

He did this again earlier, but I simply gave him his own starfish to distract him thinking that's what he's after.. nope he dragged the star to his wife, and then came back in 10 minutes.

The Hawaiians themselves are just casually munching at a starfish, they are the size of a quarter at the moment, and one just molted this morning and I can't tell if the male become larger than the female or they remained pretty much the same.

I'll be getting more pics soon, but because of the critter container's neon orange lid under the lighting, it really shades the shrimp's body color to look nothing like their appearence in the first photo.

Also, they accepted a chocolate chip starfish, infact the moment they touched the ground of the container after acclimating, they already tried flipping the star I left in there. It was like they've been here for years. My tank is somewhat built with a hawaiian setting (black sand) so maybe they felt in a familiar environment. They finished a 2.5" leg in 24 hours and are currently circling around the starfish going to the next leg over.
 
He's STILL up there..
http://i.imgur.com/OoMDwgM.jpg

I could be that guy who turns up his powerheads to keep him off there, but I find this more interesting to watch. If he refuses to eat I may have to relocate him back to his cave, and then turn the waterflow up so he doesn't go back. I'm really curious to know what he wants. The female doesn't seem interested... maybe I'll just move her to the container and bust him lol

I got a close up of the hawaiians themselves, but I apologize for the algea covering the inside of the container. Warns me when nitrates get too stagnant in there.
http://imgur.com/IQMsoFQ.jpg
 
Do you have another container? Maybe put an empty one in there and see if it's the lid color that has him interested. I don't recall reading anything about those guys being territorial, so that might not be it... is he perhaps just curious?
 
Harlys can definitely be territorial/aggressive to others of the same species but I would think if that were the case he would be right at the side of the cage trying to get at them. I have found that a lot of shrimp and crabs just love new surfaces to feel and pick at. Could be anything though. I wish we could just ask them lol.

Anyways it's great to hear how readily they took the chocolate chip star. I actually have a pair coming this week and have read that sometimes the Hawaiians prefer linkias so I was a bit nervous as to how easy they would be to feed. I mean I can get linkias but they are a tad bit more expensive.

Just so you know, the larvae should take artemia nauplii. A professor I had, who is a marine biologist, worked on breeding them long ago with Martin Moe (like at least 10-15ish years ago, I don't really remember) and he was able to get them to settle but they had some problem soon after settlement where they all would die. This was done right in the keys so they just caught copepods in plankton drags, used fresh sea water, and collected the feeder starfish right there. So at least for me in Michigan, it's hard to replicate that exactly but it's interesting nonetheless. I have been trying to get his notes on this. Gotta remind him again.
 
They just ate their second chocolate chip! Its a good thing too as the cheapest linkias are 30ish around here.

Just so you know, the larvae should take artemia nauplii
Click to expand...
Glad you said that, one of my biggest worries was buying the wrong pods, I know some can be counter predatory.

The male still continues to hang out on the top of the container, really strange. Right now I have a biocube on order so I can actually get a presentable system going with these guys instead of a critter container. They can grow in there, and then I'll have a breeding station built when they mature.

Seems like people are starting to really collect these guys lately. Either a large quanity collected or they're just increasing in availability?

Anyways it's great to hear how readily they took the chocolate chip star. I actually have a pair coming this week and have read that sometimes the Hawaiians prefer linkias so I was a bit nervous as to how easy they would be to feed. I mean I can get linkias but they are a tad bit more expensive.
Click to expand...

Speaking of which, I occasionally go on ebay curiousity sprees and there is a pair of hawaiians on ebay right now.
 
Well they used to be only slightly less common than H. elegans and only slightly more expensive and then they all but disappeared from the trade for a while. It's really just what the divers can find or decide to collect and they are not all of a sudden being found in large numbers. Harlies in general are a bit of a harder sell than other inverts or fish due to their unique feeding requirements so even though they are amazingly beautiful, it's easier to sell a lot of other common Hawaiian fish and inverts.
 
Update:

Some bad news, but the female Hawaiian passed away before she could make it into the now cycled biocube. Right now I only have the male hawaiian. I'm going to atempt to get a female elegans, and see what happens, as I've contacted many suppliers and collectors in hawaii to be on the look out for a replacement.

The second issue.. is one I never even heard of. Ever since the passing of the female, the male went on a hunger strike. He refuses to eat anything I'm offering him now. 3 Chocolate chips freely roam the biocube (as I used them to dirty it up a bit), and I offered him an asterina starfish to try and entice, yet he refuses to consume anything. I'm not exactly sure why he won't eat.. I've separated harlequins before without a problem, but this is new for me as I've never seen a harlequin go on a hunger strike before. It's something I have to just sit back and let nature take it's course, which is somewhat concerning as harlequins are more prone to starving then anything else I've had hunger strike before. I'm going to try and get him a female regular harly, thinking maybe a new partner would entice him to eat, but I don't know if that will be the outcome.

Until I get a replacement mate, looks like the "breeding" plans will have to hold off. Unless I decide to take on another pair, which a guy I know in hawaii does happen to have.
 
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He has decided to eat something last night, his hunger strike is over! Had me worried there a sec.

I have a Female H. elegans ordered, so we shall see how this interaction works out.
 
This is a neat project. I almost bought a Harlequin at my LFS this weekend. I just couldn't get over the dietary restrictions. I don't want to foul up my tank water with rotting pieces of chocolate chip starfish everywhere and I don't know that I'll be able to scrounge up enough Asterinas. I also have a bumblebee shrimp to worry about although they are a little easier than Harlequins.

Just for my information, about how many asterinas can a Harlequin go through per day/week/month? What about chocolate chips? Thanks!
 
It varies, but with 5" diameter chocolate chips it can take about 1-2 weeks for them to finish one.

Asterina they will eat up to 15 a day, they simply put, won't be enough.

They can foul up the water easily if the starfish rots, and they will leave behind little white pebbles (basically like a star's bones) laying around. The only reason I'm atempting this in a 14 gal biocube, is because of the ease of installing a skimmer. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend them in anything smaller than a 29 for bioload reasons. (it's possible, but you'd need to water change constantly, and keep an eye out for dying stars so you can remove them before they melt).

As far as cost, again it varies, but stars my lfs sell go for around 11 dollars a star (after a nice 20% discount) and it depends on how big the stars are. Lately the largest I've been seeing are around 3 inches in diameter, which is last about 5 days at best for my larger pair... making me pay close to 50 dollars a month for them. Adveragely I use to pay only 30.

It's comparable to affording a dog imo.
 
Update!

Little guy is still holding up. I have yet to find a mate (regular or Hawaiian) but honest if one showed up I don't believe I'd grab it, right now I'm focusing on Cuc since he is all by himself in the bio cube and the algae blooms are starting. I made my priority getting sandsifter and some scavengers. Right now he's with a sexy shrimp, Pom Pom crab, two anemone porcelains, and a Randall's pistol shrimp + yellow nose goby. I plan on getting more sexies for scavengers and a protien skimmer in addition to the mangrove plant I have.

For the past few days I couldn't see him and got really nervous, so I moved a few rock and he was just standing in the corner looking at me like: "um.. Right here you know." Threw in a star and took a photo while he was out for the first time in weeks! http://i.imgur.com/CAzyYEg.jpg
He's still little, but I notice significant growth. I'd say nearly half the size of my full grown male, maybe a bit bigger.
 
Interesting thread.
Im attempting to keep my first Harlequin
I have a sump where I plan on keeping a few cc stars as food & harvesting legs every week or so
Anyone know how long a leg will feed one shrimp for?
Should I feed more than 1 leg a week?
 
One leg for one shrimp, depending on size, should last about a week at a time.

You may need several CC stars to do the rotation method, I'm not 100% how many but 7 might be enough.. worse case just keep buying until it seems steady.


Also something to note is CC stars are infact sometimes canibilistic. It would be wise to seperate them in some manner.
 
Wouldn't it be cheaper to have asterinas reproduce like crazy in a sump or in a second tank?! Or that's been tried already?
 
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