# First time with shrimp, yellow eggs..?



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

I have 6 ghost shrimp in my 10 gallon with 9 neon tetras. I found one of my females (the largest) carrying around and fanning her eggs. I thought ghost shrimp eggs are green, though? Is there something wrong with her eggs? They're straw-colored yellow. How long do they take to hatch once she starts to carry them around?

On a side note, is there anything I can go to improve the chances of the babies surviving? I'm assuming with the tetras they'll all be gobbled up in no time... I put pantyhose material around the filter intake (HOB) and tore up my marimo ball and let them carpet into a few areas. I have hornwort, too. I'm going to the store tonight to return two guppies, is there anything i can buy to increase the babies' chances of survival (if the eggs are even good?) The big tan stone in there has a small hole on the side near the tank floor, the shrimps have been using that as a shelter because the fish won't go in it. 

I saw a smaller female with eggs still in her.  I think this is called being saddled? 
I've been saving serious trouble finding ghost shrimp lately (all 4 shops i went to in the last 3 weeks haven't had them - even walmart!) and I've been wanting more, so I hope at lease one or two lives.. 

I assume it's too late to move her to a tank with no fish? :icon_redf

This is the tank she is in.


----------



## shrimpzoo (Sep 27, 2011)

~30 days for hatching

colour of eggs is nothing to be concerned about (yellow/green usually means wild strain or something like that)

get moss if you want to increase shrimplet survival, and you can get (or DIY) a coconut cave or cut a clay plant pot in half and put it in there. Or you can invest in driftwood with holes in it. (AKA some sort of hiding place for security)


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Great!  

I haven't ever found any kind of moss at the fish stores local here and all the sellers online are outside the us mostly...I'm going to see if anyone here is willing to ship in cold weather. It's 35F here right now. :icon_cry: I wish it was 65F like it was two days ago.

I've got some holey driftwood but it hasn't been waterlogged or boiled yet, so I'm going to estimate the water'll be getting awfully tannin-y. :icon_roll 

The rock is hollow inside (it's fake) but I'll do the coconut cave too, I've got two of those I think. I'll see what else I have that might be good, too. I'll buy more hornwort tomorrow too.


----------



## shrimpzoo (Sep 27, 2011)

Good luck 

I really like the look of your tank. I'm sure your shrimp will be happy grazing over all that neat stuff inside it.

HF with scaping lol


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Thanks! It's my first planted tank (and actually my first tank in general..)


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Little update..! I bought 15 more ghost shrimp (I only wanted 5 more, but ended up with 15..long story lol.)

Two of them came berried, one with deep green eggs and the other with deep brown. I have a feeling one of them is Macrobrachium. How do I tell? I do know she is very large 2" at minimum, maybe larger. Do they carry their eggs in the swimmerettes the same way?

Also, a liquid fert i got with a c02 set says it contains 0.0002 copper (from copper sulfate). Is this safe for the shrimps or skip it?


----------



## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

All shrimp will carry eggs the same way.

Are her claws noticeably larger than the other ghost shrimp? Anything about her look different besides the size?

And copper in ferts is in safe amounts for shrimp. Just don't over dose like 1000x the amount.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Okay, good to know! I was actually going to underdose anyways. 

She is darker, quite a bit so. A brownish mottled color rather than the clear/white/red specks on the others. Her eggs are a dark brown instead of the green/yellow of the other two. 

Kind of like this, but with more clear space. I haven't checked if she has blue eyes yet, but I'll go do that right now.










I'll get a picture if I can manage to get a clear one.


----------



## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

So generally egg color doesn't seem to mean a whole lot as shrimp seem to be able to hold many weird colors :O!

Not sure about others but that picture isn't showing up for me. If she does look really different and you don't want to risk it I would just take it out.


----------



## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

Well picture just showed up and that's definitely a macrobrachium. So if your is somewhat similar to that i would take it out. Stores often mislabel young macros as ghost shrimp.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Alrighty, going to take her out then. 

They are predatory, think I can stick her in my mosquito larva container outside? Would she be able to survive off of them? I think she looks pretty neat so...

It does get cold outside though . I bring the container into the garage at night where it's regularly 45-65F this time of year.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Can ghost shrimp have blue eyes, or only Macrobrachium? I found another in the tank that has blue eyes. She's a lot more clear but has a lot of brown splotting. A smidge of yellow-orange just above the claws.


----------



## jasonpatterson (Apr 15, 2011)

There is a wide range of color variation in ghost shrimp, but I've only had them with black eyes, personally. 

Telling them apart from aggressive species of shrimp: If they have claws that are anything other than the little bitty feeder claws (the shrimp in your picture above definitely has big claws), they are not ghost shrimp, or at least not the reasonably peaceful variety. Pictures are worth a thousand words here though, if you're able to take even a crappy shot of your suspect shrimp it's likely we'll be able to ID it for you.

Cold weather generally doesn't bother ghost shrimp, they live as far north as Minnesota, though they definitely prefer warmer weather. It's hard telling whether there will be sufficient food for your shrimp in your outdoor container, but it's fairly likely if the container is reasonably large.

Getting the babies to live is a challenge in a new tank, but once the tank is established and mature, they tend to do just fine living on whatever they happen to find floating about. Ghost shrimp hatch into a larval form that your fish will definitely eat up. You may not have any offspring survive from these batches of eggs because of the fish and newness of the tank, but if you keep them for 6 months or so and/or remove them to a new tank, it will fill with all sorts of microflora and fauna that the larvae will gobble up.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

I found six shrimp dead last night, one of them is the female with eggs. I put her eggs in a net and fixed it near the filter. I'm not expecting them to live. I did a 50% water change right away but found two more dead this morning. I did another 50% water change. 

I under dosed the ferts I added. Instructions said 5ml per 10g and since this tank is 10g I only added just over 1ml. I'm quite sad. What else besides the water changes should I do to get rid of those ferts?


----------



## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

Ferts shouldn't be concentrate enough to kill off shrimp. Unless you overdosed with excel, some people have noticed that kills shrimp.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Nope, it wasn't excel. It was a bottle of "Plant-Gro" that came with my Hagen Nutrafin CO2 Natural Plant System. It was this, but a small bottle http://www.freshmarine.com/hg-plant-gro-npk-8oz.html

It's the only thing I've changed or added in the last two weeks so it's the only thin I can think of that would be killing the shrimp. I found two more dead since I posted. Most of them are small ones, other than the large one with eggs that died. I did another 50% water change and am considering just trying to move them all out if I can catch them.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

More dead this morning, a small one and the other with eggs. I don't know how many I have left now. I have a feeling most have died but are lost in the tank. 

Only the shrimps are dying so it must have been the ferts. I don't know what went wrong here. I was sure to underdose...


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

There are nine left that I can count. A few some them have actually become saddled since then and one female is left with eggs. I noticed her eggs went from green to white-ish-greenish-clear. She is also hanging around the hornwort mostly. Will she be releasing them soon or do you think the eggs expired during whatever happened?


----------



## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

If the eggs go bad she will drop them and not continue holding onto them.


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

Okay, that is good to know! I was afraid they went bad and she just did not notice yet.


----------



## diwu13 (Sep 20, 2011)

Oh.. she'll notice it and eat the eggs haha.


----------



## Bananariot (Feb 28, 2012)

Ghost shrimp are normally born and raised in terrible conditions since they are raised like feeder gups/rosies. So usually many of them die when introduced into the aquarium. Milky ones usually are a sign of near death. 

The second set of deaths may have been a result from the first set dying off. Chemical spikes x_X


----------



## Bunfoo (Jan 14, 2012)

I CANNOT seem to catch a break with these shrimp.

I found the female with eggs a few inches from the tank this morning, bone dry. the tank has a lid s the only way she could have gotten out is when I took out anachris trimmings last night. she just have been in the anachris and jumped when i took them out.


----------

