raising peppermint shrimp

[Chad Vossen]

im at round one, and messed up horribly within the first 5 minutes... i forgot to compare salinity of parent tank to larva tank... lost most of the baby shrimp within a minute. about 10-15 came back to life and are doing relatively good almost 40 hours later.
i was a little late on feeding them their brine shrimp, but i offered many other foods in hopes of keeping some of them fed.

i have done a ton of reading, and feel im ready to make some attempts.

my larva tank is a 10 gal tank, im doing water changes every 2-3 days (cleaning bottom and sucking out the detritus). air stone in the back corner provides water circulation. light is right over head for 12 hours of the day. i am feeding newly hatched brine shrimp.

i dont expect success from this batch, but im going to try anyways. this is mostly my "trial and error" batch.

here are some fuzzy pictures i took of the shrimp today. and another picture of my "closet" (aka "fishroom").
the specs are the brine shrimp. these pictures only give a general body shape of the newborn shrimp.
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g291/armagedon48/shrimpmacro.jpg

this is my setup. the 10 gal tank thats half filled on the top row on the far left is the larva tank.
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g291/armagedon48/shrimp33.jpg

im posting this thread because im bored and want to share my little project. i have seen a few post lately related to raising shrimp, so i figured someone would be interested in this. enjoy!

[spectrum]

How did you get them to lay the eggs? I have 2 and ones always got eggs?

[Chad Vossen]

take a look at the eggs each night. you will see the black eyespots when they are 2-3 days from hatching, and if you look careful enough, silver color in the eyes the night they are going to hatch. the eggs also swell the night of the hatch.

they release the babies really late at night. some people suggest 1am give or take. if you have the adults in a tank with filteration, the babies wont last long. the parents will also eat up their babies. my 10 gal shrimp tank is designed for starfish and shrimp. i can turn off my filters, leave the air bubbler going to run the larva snagger, and wait till the next morning to see if i catch anything. every night i catch hermit crab larva.

[spectrum]

Whats a larva snagger? is it a DIY? thanks for the information

[PLNelson]

Whats a larva snagger? is it a DIY? thanks for the information

Ditto.

[Chad Vossen]

here is a thread related to the cleaner shrimp. the pictures used look exactly like my little shrimps at the first stage. only differences would be color markings.

as for the larva snagger, i made my own. here is what mine looks like. i have revised my prototype and have come up with a much easier to make design.

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g291/armagedon48/104_8046.jpg

i will be making a small batch to sell in the future. im just now finishing one up for another member here.

[coralreefer]

You may even want to do water changes daily. I have had a really busy week but now that I am done I can look around for that article for you. I'll let you know if I can find it.

[Chad Vossen]

instead of doing water changes daily, i have been adding fresh salt water. "solution to pollution is dilution". when i syphon the detritus from the bottom of the tank, this is my water change.

[PLNelson]

Could you post a link to the build thread for that contraption?

[Chad Vossen]

there is no build thread yet.

[Chad Vossen]

today, i counted 7 little baby shrimp, all of them now have stocked eyes. they look even more like aliens now! i watched one grab a brine shrimp and eat it, the BBS basically ran right into the peppermint shrimp larva.

i bought a tiny acrylic box to hold the shrimp in so i can take pictures. hopefully i will have survivors tomorrow to photograph!

todays task was remove the 7 shrimp from the larva tank, and syphon it all out, filtering all the 2-3 day old brine shrimp out. the brine shrimp were fed to the reef tank. i scrubbed the 10 gal tank and washed it out then filled back up with old water and added baby shrimp back to it. i had to do this because with so few shrimp, and the density of baby brine shrimp, i had to remove the 2 or 3 day old brine shrimp because they are to big for the peppermints to eat. after the peppermint larva went back into the tank, i added a batch of 6 hour old brine shrimp.

i have another peppermint shrimp adult with eggs, batch two is coming fast!

[Chad Vossen]

this morning, found 4 dead, and one still swimming. the one thats swimming looks weak and is probably dieing. i blame the lack of food for the first day to their death. im reading a book "how to raise and train your peppermint shrimp" by April Kirkendoll and she mentions how feeding on the first day is critical to the survival of the shrimp.

this "between time" before my next batch will allow me to fine tune my setup. i need to paint or at least cover the sides of the tank with something black. my metal halide is about 2 feet to the left of the larva tank and they keep trying to go towards it. and when the light above the shrimp tank is off, and i turn on my room light, they all go to the front of the tank and bang their heads against the glass. this wastes their energy A LOT and could be cause for them getting weak and dieing.
also a big problem i have had this first try, food density. i have no problem adding baby brine shrimp. however, those brine shrimp are to big to be used as food by their 2nd day when they molt. i dont have enough predators to eat up the prey before the prey becomes useless. i was stuck manually seperating the brine shrimp from the peppermint shrimp larva before adding newly hatched brine. April says that if there are to many brine shrimp, the larva will "scream and run" and not eat.