Sexy Shrimp Breeding Project

Hatchery for brine or mysis? I've never noticed it before. I'll have to check it out. I haven't seen my boy anywhere i don't think he made it how long do they usually hide out for?
 
Bummer. I've never had one hide. A new shrimp usually finds the others almost immediately and joins up with the clan.
 
Nope, but I've had another spawn since then. I changed the tank size and lighting conditions and got a more reliable heater, so I'm hoping for the best. The new spawn will be 48 hours old tonight, and that's when they always die on me. If there's any good news, I'll let you know.
 
Don't want to jinx myself, but look...4 day-old sexy babies! Some of them have molted and have a distinct pair of legs and tails. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

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They are easy to collect. I've spent so long staring at my adult females, that I know within a day when they are going to release their larvae. They'll do it about an hour after the lights go out. I watch them under moonlights, and when I one let the larvae go, I then clip a mini flashlight to my tank with the beam pointing straight down into the water. The larvae are very attracted to light, so I can then scoop them up in a cup. I was siphoning them before, but I believe it was damaging them and adding to my mortality issues.
 
Jay,

this is soooooo cool.

Can I ask what size is your primary tank with the adults,

and what other animals/fish do you have in the tank?
 
The breeding colony is comprised of 6 females and 2 males, although two of the females are not yet mature. They are in an aquapod 12 with a pom pom crab, an emperor shrimp, a few nassarius and cerith snails, and a flaming prawn goby whom I rarely see. I also have two maxi-mini carpet anemones and a pair of glass anemone shrimp. There is a medium duncan coral which hosts the emperor shrimp, and hydnophora coral that the sexy shrimp like to hang out in. So basically, 11 small shrimp, one crab, a few snails, and a tiny goby.

I have a Rainford's goby in another tank that I plan to move in with the flaming prawn goby, because it was suggested that a "dither fish" who will get out and give the all clear signal might encourage the prawn goby to come out more often.
 
A guy on my local forum makes larvae traps for all kinds of species. all different sizes. those could automate your collection and help you with your success by assisting your acclimation too. he says he leaves it in his tank over night and the larvae have more time to develop and a more stable condition until you can transfer them to the rearing tank.
 
A larval snagger would be fantastic. All the plans I've seen for them require a lot of space, and an aio 12g tank has very little room, so I've never tried to make/buy one.
 
Thanks for the support, everyone. I'm pretty anxious today for several reasons:

1) the power went out this morning right before I went to work. I am imagining all sorts of horrible scenarios where that happens again and everything dies.

2) I am going out of town overnight directly from work, and no one at home knows how to care for the shrimp. If #1 occurs, or if there is a mass die-off, the water will foul and I'll lose them all. It's going to be about 30 hours before I see them again.

I'll get home a few hours before the meeting. I hope to have good news to report and evidence of further development.
 
This is coming along nicely for you. It looks like you've got it pretty much figured out. Now for the real question. When will they be available to purchase and how much will they cost. Because I assume your not going to keep 1000 sexy shrimp lol. Oh and if you could figure this out with peppermint shrimp and cleaner shrimp I bet you could make millions
 
Well, keeping in mind that the survival rate to settling is about 10-15%, I should have about a dozen shrimp for sale 4 months from now. It's going to be hard to make my fortune this way.

Let's see...I don't want to undercut our local vendors who so kindly support our club, so check with Scott in May...or perhaps June? Ha ha. A lot can go wrong before then!
 
Just a quick update before the meeting. My out-of-town trip did lead to a significant number of deaths, and I feel certain that more will die tonight. Many of the larvae are too sluggish to feed because the salinity got quite high from evaporation, and of course, some brine shrimp died, fouling the water.

That's the bad news. The good news is that development continues. Some of the larvae now have their eyeballs on little stalks! Unfortunately, I just have a point-and-shoot camera, but I think you can see the changes.

02/19/2011
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02/16/2011
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I'm working on bringing water conditions back in line without shocking my brood. I'll update more after the meeting.
 
Can you tell me more about your setup? Are you using any kind of kresel/downweller? I see these come up in the liturature but can find very little information on them.
 
No kreisel. I've just got an air stone set to very lightly move a bit of water. The larvae are so tiny that it doesn't take much force to move them around. They often rest on the bottom, but it's imperative to keep the brine shrimp in suspension or they will all migrate toward the strongest light and be unavailable to the shrimp larvae. I've got about 100 larvae in a small "critter keeper" which is made for crickets. This is in a 5g tank which has about 1.5g of water, a heater and a mini-jet to circulate the water around the larvae tank. That's it.
 
I've read others have had inconsistent results without the kreisel. I was thinking of setting one up. Finally found a decent example here (about half way down the page): kreisel. But your way certainly looks a lot easier.

Forgive me if you've already said, but what are you doing for feeding? Also, are you using any filtration? Live rock, sand?
 
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