Peppermint shrimp

[kintle]

Um what are the odds peppermint shrimp babies live long in a reef tank with no fish. I noticed some bug looking things on my live rock, I know one of my peppermint shrimps was pregnant but it looked like she gave birth a week ago. I thought the babies wouldn't make it being so fragile and I haven't been feeding anything special for them. As I was looking at the rock work I noticed about 50 of them and they have a red stripe down their back, are about the size of a grain of rice, lots of little legs but dont seem to be swimming just running around my rocks and corals.

 

[kintle]

Not good pics but I finally got a few

 

[mort]

What you are seeing are amphipods. There is pretty much no chance of peppermints reproducing in one of our tanks without a dedicated effort unfortunately.

 

[kintle]

What you are seeing are amphipods. There is pretty much no chance of peppermints reproducing in one of our tanks without a dedicated effort unfortunately.

Didnt realize they got that big. Well I guess my fallow period doesnt need delayed longer then to save some shrimp. My fish will have some good snacks when I get them.

 

[jda]

I have had peppermints carrying eggs for years in tanks without fish or other predators and I have never had any live.

 

[mort]

Didnt realize they got that big. Well I guess my fallow period doesnt need delayed longer then to save some shrimp. My fish will have some good snacks when I get them.

Amphipods range in size from a millimetre or so all the way to a foot. Believe a deep water species gets to 13" and it would probably give you nightmares. In our tanks they tend to top out at about 2 cm ime but that's rarer, a normal big one is just over a cm.
They are a sign of a healthy ecosystem and I bet you have a large array of other life as well like copepods and isopods (people are scared of isopods but very few are problematic and most are nice additions to your natural food web).

 

[kintle]

Ive had copepods for a long time. Isopods no idea. Im always amazed at the stuff that survives coral dips that I have to look up to see if I need to hunt down or just leave alone.