Lysmata culture page

[FuEl]

A captive bred blood shrimp by a researcher before me. Has a "designer" pattern. Still waiting for settlement for my batch..sigh..

[FuEl]

Doubt will be able to get any skunk shrimps to settle..already at day 74 but they are staying at about 1cm plus and just not metamorphosizing. Real frustrating just seeing the largest ones die one after another.

Hope I get better luck with blood shrimp, currently at 52 days old.

[FuEl]

Amid deep depression from culturing skunk shrimp larvae..all over 80 days without any settling as yet..just growing to around 1cm and slowly dying off. But got a pleasant surprise today. My first settlement of blood shrimp at 61 days!

[FuEl]

2 babies so far.. with the latest one (right) settling today at 67 days.

[Terryz_]

Hope all of them are able to settle... lol..

[Till]

wow do you have any live rock / substrate in the raising tank? Do you think there is anything that induced the settlement?

[iantoh]

Hi bro Fuel!

thanks for sharing these lovely photos... and congrats on the debelius settlement!

cheers,

ian

[FuEl]

Thanks guys. I only had one liverock and some fish in the sump but I don't think any settlement cue was needed for debelius. Published papers on L. debelius say they will settle at 75 days and above. A research fellow before me got them to settle at 57 days (raised in tank) while the earliest I got was 61 days (raised in upwelling). Settlement duration might be genetically and nutritionally linked. I reared them together with L. amboinensis larvae 5-6X their size without any visible cannibalism observed..only the blood shrimps settled though.

The thing for L. amboinensis is that they can grow into giant larvae and just start dying. Probably some early nutritional stress. By mass they were probably 5-6X the size of the largest L. debelius larvae. The only reason I could think of on why the blood shrimps settled was initial diet. I fed them Tetraselmis chuii on the day of hatching, but not for L. amboinensis. Diet later included shrimp, prawns, mussels, crab eggs and adult Artemia. Oh well, guess will have to figure that out next semester.

[FuEl]

Placed in 500 mL glass beaker for photo taking..Looking a little like adults now.. only 1 yet to start coloring up.. Notice the patterns...look like they will have white stripes instead of spots? Perfect size for pico and nano tanks.

[Venezia]

congrats! they're so cute.

[FuEl]

Only 4 settled though..cause I did'nt really put them on priority for the first 1 week of life. Next time must put in more effort...get >100 to settle. Then I will see $$$$$$ rolling in...considering the price in Aussie.

[FuEl]

Armed with experience with both cleaner and blood shrimps, now attempting to get maximal survival with peppermint shrimp.

Sorry for poor pic but no microscope to help me with photos now. Now at zoea III with hardly any deaths.

[dkk08]

All I can say is U're darn GOOD!

[FuEl]

Slightly over 2 week old peppermints.

[FuEl]

The peppermints have landed! Now waiting for the rest to follow within these few days.

[hamannbmw]

The peppermints have landed! Now waiting for the rest to follow within these few days.

.. but bro u still got time for this meh

[FuEl]

.. but bro u still got time for this meh

Time management. Do this during daytime. Night time enjoy nightlife.

[FuEl]

38 baby peppermint shrimps as of tonight.

[cityofangels]

Wow! You can see that they are slowly starting to colour up already.

[FuEl]

Got news that the last surviving amboinensis larvae settled around 170 days+. More than 5 months to settle. If they do take that long to settle in nature, the aquarium trade should make them very endangered soon.

[FuEl]

Photo of the cleaner shrimp, 10 days after settlement.

[illusionist]

Hi, I'm a student about to embark on a research module on Marine Biology, and I must say that I'm really inspired by this thread! Hope you get to raise them well!

Btw, what is meant by the term settlement?

[FuEl]

Hi, I'm a student about to embark on a research module on Marine Biology, and I must say that I'm really inspired by this thread! Hope you get to raise them well!

Btw, what is meant by the term settlement?

Thanks for your interest~ Where will you be based at? Locally or overseas? Settlement means they metamorphose from larvae (pelagic) to postlarvae (benthic, resembling a miniature shrimp). The blood shrimps I raised all perished during vacation due to the person forgetting to change water, the cleaner shrimp is doing well (has moulted 3 times and exhibiting full adult coloration) and lastly the peppermint shrimps are growing up well (hitting 2cm soon).

[illusionist]

Hi, I'm based in Singapore yep! I see, so that's what settlement means. I never knew baby shrimps could be raised in captivity successfully, so it's an eye-opener for me

[FuEl]

Hi, I'm based in Singapore yep! I see, so that's what settlement means. I never knew baby shrimps could be raised in captivity successfully, so it's an eye-opener for me

It could be done. Just that you usually succeed only after you experience a few failures. Not to mention that most research is biased towards the commercial seafood industry. If more people took an interest to the culture of cleaner shrimps I'm sure there will be breakthroughs in future. Like the saying goes, "there is only so much one person can do". As such, I have decided to place a short write-up online on raising larvae of both the blood and the skunk cleaner shrimp. Just hope that it is of help to others who are interested in trying.

http://www.ifmn.net/nachzuchten/garnelen_l...s_debelius.html