hey guys. so i noticed yesterday at one of my LFSs that one of their ghost shrimp had what i assume would be eggs; small round green things in it's swimmerettes. and today i noticed that at least two of mine have these as well [only much less green]. but i was under the impression that ghost shrimp will really only breed in either brackish or marine conditions [i don't remember which, or could be both, i dunno]. so i'm assuming that they are just unfertilized eggs? just curious
ghost shrimp eggs?
- Thread starter sigaru
- Start date
i think its brackish water they breed in but i have tons of ghost shrimp in fresh water tanks and all my females have eggs all the time. they never hatch tho.
lol, thanks! yeah, so they just must not be fertilized then. like with chickens, or many other things :]
One of the LFS' up here always have GS with eggs, I'm surprised to hear you guys have never seen babies.. I used to get hatchlings on occasion, thing is I only noticed them in my previous smaller FW setup. They are incredibly small and look a lot like the adult form, but they are simply not worth the effort of raising. I usually just leave them in the aquarium and what ever happens, happens. So to answer the question yes they sometimes are fertilized, ones that aren't often go a foggy jade green colour which pretty much indicates infertility.
Think there might be a couple different species out there being sold as 'ghost shrimp' too. I've seen people say they never breed in freshwater (require brakish), and some that say they have them reproduce all the time in just freshwater.
The ghost shrimp I see in shops around here are Palaemonetes paludosus, which live and breed entirely in fresh water. They can be identified by the orange bands on the antennae and legs. Ghost shrimp complete their life cycle in either fresh water OR brackish/salt water, depending on species. They don't have the complex life cycle with eggs that must drift into estuaries like Amanos and most Macrobrachium species do.