Glass Shrimp - Non Urgent But Wth....

[dgwebster]

I bought 3 glass shrimp a whlie back.

Nicely, both females have produced and offspring, the most recent a short time ago and I now have 2 adolescent ones in the tank as well now.

However one of the females has been displaying a strange property over the last 3 weeks. I finally found her again today and got a good look (but no good photos) and well - its distrubing.

Her skin is no longer "ghost" or "glass" - its like a huge thick section from the swimmerretttetetestests (you know what I mean) on both sides are splitting apart and gone a dark colour, the rest if her is equally bizarre. Her pincer forearm thingys which were previously a see-through-reddish colour has become thicker and banded by dark red and black. Similarly, the "feelers" have banded into a lighter and darker colour.

At first I just thought she was shedding skin, but this is taking way too long and looks way too weird. any suggestions?

 

[demonmagus]

sounds like it isn't a ghost shrimp, I'm not an expert though

 

[Yetti]

Maybe it's molting into a queen ( Alien trilogy)? Heheh, that does sound weird. Does it act strange? Is it having any other problems at all?

 

[dgwebster]

she was definitely a ghost to start... very see through.

she has been hiding for around a week and only reappeared recently.

I lured her out of her hidy-hole for a minute after starting this post and got a better look at the bit at her swimerrrrettteteteteteteetes. its almost like it is inside her, this big, dark lump. and her colour is not right at all.

apart from that she is her normal self

 

[three-fingers]

TBH it sounds like you have the juveniles of some macrobrachium species, they do look like ghost shrimp when they are young.
There are many threads on the forum from people who were sold these not knowing what they were, here is one http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showto...ing+tetra+again.