# Anyone breed ghost shrimp?



## Geniusdudekiran (Dec 6, 2010)

Hmmm. I know that there are many species of ghost shrimp, or at least, clear shrimp which are sold as ghost shrimp. Furthermore, I know that there is at least one species of "ghost shrimp" which requires salt/brackish water for the larvae to survive. Do you live near the ocean? This is pretty cool, because if not, you may have a species that will breed in fresh... Were they totally clear, or were they brownish?


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## A.M. Aquatics (Apr 9, 2011)

Geniusdudekiran said:


> Hmmm. I know that there are many species of ghost shrimp, or at least, clear shrimp which are sold as ghost shrimp. Furthermore, I know that there is at least one species of "ghost shrimp" which requires salt/brackish water for the larvae to survive. Do you live near the ocean? This is pretty cool, because if not, you may have a species that will breed in fresh... Were they totally clear, or were they brownish?


The pond where we found them was way out in the country, no where near the bay or the gulf. It was right next to a freshwater river. I know these were freshwater because there was a good population in the pond, and the pond did not even connect to the river, which was again, also freshwater. Many of them were berried, or had saddles. They looked like this, but a little more clear:


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## A.M. Aquatics (Apr 9, 2011)

Actually, I found an almost exact match pic. Looks more like this:

http://greentigrate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ghost_shrimp-300x199.jpg


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## Geniusdudekiran (Dec 6, 2010)

Hmmm. That's very interesting. You could try to breed them as they definitely breed in fw... There's not much interest in ghost shrimp here on the forums, but I have to admit that they are cool in a different way... Good luck. It would be cool if you make a biotope with plants and shrimp, maybe even substrate and rocks, from this pond. Whatever you do, please keep me posted!


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## A.M. Aquatics (Apr 9, 2011)

yeah, and since they're native, I had an idea of keeping them in an outdoor rubbermaid tub with native aquatic plants and probably that same kind of gunk substrate from the pond. If I do come through with this, I'll keep trak of everything and keep you all updated.


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## yellowsno (May 15, 2011)

i was under the impression that ghost shrimps are one of those that require salt water at the larval stages


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## A.M. Aquatics (Apr 9, 2011)

yellowsno said:


> i was under the impression that ghost shrimps are one of those that require salt water at the larval stages


They do have a larval stage, but a large misconception about them is that they need salt water to develop just because of their larval stage. They can be bred in freshwater, but raising the larva is said a little more difficult, mainly de to the fact that not mny people provide suitable food.


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## yellowsno (May 15, 2011)

i see so unlike amano shrimps that need that salt water these were thought to need salt cuz they have a larval stage in which people were having trouble getting past that stage?


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## A Hill (Jul 25, 2005)

I did in the past. They are harder than RCS and CRS species because of the low order breeding. Very rewarding to get them breeding though. I did it with LOTS of plant cover in the tank (almost all moss) and it was a mature tank so I didn't feed anything.

Pretty simple to breed, but just not as prolific as the others. The baby shrimp look really cool too. 

-Andrew


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## mordalphus (Jun 23, 2010)

It's easy to breed them in a barebottom tank with just a sponge filter, the fry are planktonic, so breeding them outdoors in a rubbermaid would certainly work great. There's also many phyto products you can use to feed them indoors in an aquarium (or you can culture some green water in 2 liters).

I bred a few batches for gourami food, but found a local source for very cheap, and I changed the ghost shrimp tank into a cherry shrimp tank.

Are you going to breed them for food?


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## smannell (Jan 10, 2009)

I currently have two batches of baby ghost shrimp. The first just appeared in my sump tank, already past the larval stage. I put a light above the sump tank, and added some water sprite and java fern. At first I wasn't feeding them anything extra, but as they started to grow a couple died. I realized they had gotten big enough to require extra food. Once I started feeding them some crushed flake food I haven't had any other deaths that I'm aware of.

The second batch came from I berried female I removed from the tank. I had prepared a goldfish bowl with sand, rocks, java fern & water sprite for the first batch; but I couldn't catch the little buggers so I decided to leave them in place. Just after getting the fish bowl prepared I was pruning the plants and a pregnant female came up to investigate. I caught her and put her in the goldfish bowl. I fed her crushed flake food and algae flakes. Two weeks later she released her eggs and I had 15-20 larvae floating in the fish bowl. Since the fish bowl had been setting near a window for two weeks there were lots of really tiny critters swimming around, so I figured there was plenty of plankton for the larvae to eat. They have just changed from the free floating larval stage to miniature adults. Unfortunately they can now hide so well that I have no idea how many survived the transition. It appears as if they molt after about 4-5 days, but I can't be sure. I'll just have to wait and watch to see how many survived.

I've had them breed in my 50 gallon community tank on several occasions, and at least twice the breeding seemed to be triggered by the addition of a water sprite to the tank. I guess that gives them places to hide at all levels of the tank. 

Based on my limited experience the hardest part is getting the little ones to survive the first week, and then not get eaten as they grow. You might try fencing off a small area with some fine netting and filling it with lots of plants. That might give the baby shrimp a good hiding place. The larvae are going to be easy prey in an outdoor pond, but I'm not sure what to do about that.

Keep us posted on how it goes, I like watching the larvae float around and trying to grab food.


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## jasonpatterson (Apr 15, 2011)

I find it somewhat shameful that we don't tend to keep many native species here in the US, and have just recently (in the past month) begun a project to try to make ghost shrimp more interesting specimens. 

They already express a bit of color (mostly a white bar across the back, red stripes on antennae, and black dots around the head,) and I've been picking out the most darkly colored shrimp I can find from the hundreds in feeder tanks and keeping them together. My intent is to get them breeding and start selecting for darker shrimp. (You can really tick off a fish store employee by asking them to catch a particular feeder shrimp that costs $0.20, I usually ask them to get a particular one and that I'll take any extras they happen to catch on the way.)

I've currently got shrimp that look like they're filled with weak tea, but if you look at wild versions of many of the shrimp we keep, they started as similar critters. Given time, who knows what will turn up? Odds are good that my patience will run out before I have something truly cool, but you never know.


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## jdm68 (Jun 2, 2011)

Any updates on your ghost shrimp breeding jason?

I too want to breed the ghosts for color, which would be really cool. I have a couple that have some very dark, nearly black, coloration going through their bodies, with quite distinct red stripes on the antennae and elbows of the front legs, and also red dots on the tail fin with white dots surrounding them. They are very cool looking. I just need to get a tank set up for them so that I can start with the breeding.


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## jasonpatterson (Apr 15, 2011)

Not really. I've managed to get them to breed but it's slow going. The juveniles' color is far paler than the adults, which are already fairly pale. I'm trying to get a whole bunch of them before I cull the first time. I'm keeping them in a species tank that is planted and not kept too terribly neat so that there is a lot of algae/microscopic food for the larvae. That said, I've had at least half a dozen berried females and only have perhaps half a dozen juvenile shrimp at this point. I don't pretend to be the ghost shrimp whisperer though, so hopefully that rate will improve substantially over time.


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## jdm68 (Jun 2, 2011)

Well hey, it seems like you're one of the few trying it, so for that, I thank you. 

I would think the juvies' color should darken as they age. When I bought my ghosts, they were all very transparent, and only after a few weeks some of them began to darken.

What is your process for salinating/desalinating the water for the larvae?

Good luck with everything!


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## psalm18.2 (Oct 16, 2010)

It's hard to find ghost shrimp here in New England.


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## GDP (Mar 12, 2011)

Ive actually setup my 10g for ghost shrimp only. Since I moved my CRS into my 20g my 10g was empty anyway. Have one berried female so far.


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## radioman (Oct 29, 2007)

I never new it was hard to breed ghost shrimp. When I had a 36g setup I had hundreds of them (or what seemed like hundreds). That number started from probably less than 12. I bought some for a 2.5g that were berried and got a few babies that I believe probably got sucked up into my filter after floating in the water column. I got them to breed again and some of the babies survived since I had installed a prefilter over my intake and removed the other ghosts to make room for the rcs since I wanted to start breeding rcs but have had no luck yet with the rcs.
Here is a bad pic of one of the offspring








Here is an adult that was in my tank.


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## jasonpatterson (Apr 15, 2011)

jdm68 said:


> Well hey, it seems like you're one of the few trying it, so for that, I thank you.
> 
> I would think the juvies' color should darken as they age. When I bought my ghosts, they were all very transparent, and only after a few weeks some of them began to darken.
> 
> ...


Hopefully something comes of it in the long run, but we'll have to see. There are apparently some species of ghost shrimp that do require salt water, but many (most?) do not. Heck, there are ghost shrimp that are native to MN, though they are protected there. They live in much of the US east of the Rockies.


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## Freshwaterkeeper (Aug 12, 2015)

*Preggo ghost shrimp*

I bought 5 ghost shrimp as bait for my baby turtles but no luck, they haven't even touched one of them, then somehow I ended up with 6 ghost shrimp.
I decided to put the 3 small ones with my betta fish and the betta fish ate 2.
I save the other poor little guy from the fish so i put him back with the rest in the 10 gallon tank.
Now I noticed that I have a pregnant female ghost shrimp in a ten gallon tank.
Bought a 2.5 gallon all for herself, but have no idea what to do next.
Can someone tell me what to do with the pregnant ghost shrimp and what to feed the babies once they are born?


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