breeging ghost shrimp

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ctenpenny

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Hi I have a tank of horses,and have no luck freeding frozen food.Ive done fine feeding them live ghost,but the cost $50 to $100 dollars a month,and the trouble of driving for hrs,is something id like to get away from.What exactly would i need to breed a few hundred ghost shrimp a month?thanks Colin
 
Hey, I'm curious about this too, I've only seen ghost shrimp here for about 5.99 a piece. Expensive meal :X
 
Where are you from ctenpenny? (just noticed you said $ so not from UK then) I get them here in peterborough for £1.25 for 25 :p I am currently trying to breed them too, heard it is difficult though as they go through different stages b4 they actually become shrimp like. Have you googled it?

Jon
 
You guys are paying way too much for your ghost shrimp. I just got mine yesterday from petsmart for 30 cents a piece. I'm looking into breeding them too...so if I find anything I'll post it here.
 
wallmart super center sells them for $.12 a piece but i don't by any because if i wanted to with my dip net I can catch more than 30 a day in Bell Creek behind my house :D I've even caught a few holding eggs and let them hatch never tried breeding them in captive there was no need
 
It's not that hard as long as the tank conditions are constantly good. There are several different kinds of shrimp being called "ghost"--some will survive only in full saltwater, others can live in brackish, some are completely freshwater. They all look like each other so you can't really tell what your store may be selling (if you put saltwater ghosts in freshwater, they will live for a little while but will die within a few days, etc.). If you can get ahold of completely freshwater ghosts, you just keep them in clean conditions with lots of java moss and plants to hide in, run a sponge filter (so they can't get sucked into the filter), feed them fish food (like flakes or pellets) but don't overfeed or the tank will go foul. Don't use any chemicals not even the ones that dechlorinate tap water and make sure there's no copper in the water (lots of pipes are made of copper). If you've got tanks with fish in them, reserve the tank water (but not the gunk, don't use the water if you medicated the fish or if any fish was sick) to use in the shrimp tanks or use bottled spring water (use the same water every time, don't switch brands). Buy enough shrimp so you can most probably get males and females--mature females are usually bigger than the males, their tails are shaped a little differently from males (but it's slight and you'd have to knwo what to look for). Then just leave them alone, don't do a lot of rearranging, moving the tank, shaking up the shrimp because stress isn't a good thing. When a female is ready to breed she'll give off hormones that'll drive the males nuts--they go speeding around the tank trying to mate with everything. Once they locate the receptive female, he'll crawl on top of her and eventually, if she likes him, he'll crawl under her to deposit his sperm packet--it's done real quickly and usually at night so you may not see it. By the next day, the female will have some khaki-green stuff under her tail among her swimmerettes--thems the eggs. She'll carry them around, fanning them to keep them aerated and fungus free, for 4-5 weeks (keep tank temp in the low to mid-70sF). When the eggs are mature, if you take a good magnifying glass, you can see tiny eggs in the eggs under her tail--by then, they are ready to hatch. Mom will fan them loose (and they won't all be ready at the same time) and the newborns will be in a larval stage--they look kind of like mosquito larvae, hanging mid-water head down. They will grab at any food flaoting by. They'll be in this larvae state for about 2 weeks. Then they'll moult into mini-adults and most probably hide in the mulm and moss for a few weeks until they get big enough and brave enough to come out. We usually feed "artemia" size Golden Pearls so the larvae have high protein food to eat--but if you have a long established tank with a good supply of plants and mulm, there will probably a enough food for the babies. Oh, the female will carry anywhere from a dozen to 50 eggs (I've heard one person brag how his ghosts usually birth a couple hundred but I don't believe him), all eggs may hatch but sometimes not all will. Not all larva make it through the morph stage, not all mini-adults survive to adulthood.
 
I didnt find it hard for my ghost shrimp to breed but that could be me getting lucky with buying a male and female.Within a month I saw their little babies but non survived, most likely the guppy fry or the parents ate them. It didnt much depress me as the breeding was spontaneous and unplanned. The fry most likely ate the small bacteria that grew off the algae and live moss in the tank. Here's a parent with a baby down by the bottom(see the glowing eyes?) and one by the parents tail.
shrimpadultbabies.jpg


Just thought you guys would like to see pics of the fry. Oh and if you have any filter or current you will never see the fry, they stay practically still all day(my tank had no filter) and when they do move its veryyyyyyyy slow so any current would toss these guys around easily.
 
In rereading your post about your horses needing the shrimp for food, you'd probably be best off getting saltwater shrimp--maybe mysid shrimp (folks sometimes sell those by the hundred on Ebay (search for live shrimp) or saltwater ghost shrimp. The mysid would be smaller though. Both would produce larvae young en masse. But you'd have to start with several hundred breeders minimum to insure a steady production of larvae. There's a guy here in the San Francisco area who often has mysid shrimp for sale--he's a nice guy and also can help with how to keep saltwater shrimp and all that if you're interested in emailing him: Josh Gregory, [email protected]
 

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