Skunk and peppermint shrimp

[moretor1]

Hi all. I was wondering if anyone here has experience breeding cleaner shrimp or peppermint shrimp (as I hear their life cycles are very similar)



I would mostly like to know what your rearing setups look like and if specialized tanks like kreisel tanks are really necessary for raising the free floating stage. As well as what food was fed to them.

I am aware that skunk shrimp are cannibalistic, especially in high numbers. But my theory is that they may only be resorting to cannibalism as a form of dietary supplementation as I hear most people feed them brine shrimp eggs when young



Thanks for any and all info

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I would mostly like to know what your rearing setups look like and if specialized tanks like kreisel tanks are really necessary for raising the free floating stage.

Kreisel tanks are best, but not necessary - for a simple setup, see the link in the quote below:

If the larvae are in a normal reef tank, they'll die. Survivors in cases like this do happen occasionally, but the odds are ridiculously low - given that skunk cleaner larvae remain pelagic for 3-5 months, their odds are essentially nonexistent.

To rear these guys, you'll need a larval rearing tank and some live foods: Artemia (brine shrimp), rotifers, and phytoplankton together will give the best survival results, but only the Artemia (and phyto to culture them with) are necessary.

For a really simple larval rearing setup, see the thread below:

Breeding Palaemon Elegans (Mediterrane Rock Pool Shrimp) Guide

Hi, Im going to post a breeding guide of palaemon elegans shrimps here. Two females are preparing for spawning so if you are interested you may want to stick with me. This breeding guide will be interchangable for every kind of shrimps but i stick elegans because: - With cleaner shrimp we are...

www.reef2reef.com

For the complicated methods that might yield slightly better results (chapters 5 and 6 are the important ones for larval rearing purposes):

https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/40038/1/40038-tziouveli-2011-thesis.pdf

 

[SaltBabies]

I did peppermints in 5 gallon bucket with air on them the bucket had different micro algae, tisbe copepods and baby brine shrimp. They didn't all make it but enough did. After they were many stages when they were gangly I transferred them to shallow containers.

Honestly the 5 gallon bucket worked fairly well and even though the ammonia got high it didn't seem to bother them too much.

There was a light over the bucket and microalgae in the bucket. the bubbler kept everything moving.

 

[Brian W]

I tried my hand a raising my pepermint shrimp larvae last year. Pretty cool experience but very tedious. Basically I grew my own bbs daily and fed. Siphoned the bottom of my 10 gallon tank every few days or so. The book "How to train your peppermint shrimp" is a great one and easy read. You should read it to get a good understanding on breeding shrimp.

I gave up about a month in. I do want to try it ahain one day. Right now my clownfish are laying eggs, so im really focused on them for now.

I made a playlist of my videos to document my experience you can see here if you are interested.



If you have any questions let me know. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[moretor1]

I tried my hand a raising my pepermint shrimp larvae last year. Pretty cool experience but very tedious. Basically I grew my own bbs daily and fed. Siphoned the bottom of my 10 gallon tank every few days or so. The book "How to train your peppermint shrimp" is a great one and easy read. You should read it to get a good understanding on breeding shrimp.

I gave up about a month in. I do want to try it ahain one day. Right now my clownfish are laying eggs, so im really focused on them for now.

I made a playlist of my videos to document my experience you can see here if you are interested.



If you have any questions let me know. I wish you the best of luck.

Hey Brian.
I actually saw your video on this wayyyyy before I thought about doing it commercially and this was where I realized that it may be something I could do

I'll probably end up automating it using timed valves and culture tanks.
Take some of the tediousness out

Did you ever try feeding any other protein based food?
I've heard that the zoea(?) can only eat the discarded eggs shells of the bbs (this is supposedly why they're so tedious to raise, as the egg shells only last 12 hrs) and wondered if that could be part of the issue people have with raising shrimp of more "cannibalistic" tastes

 

[Brian W]

Hey Brian.
I actually saw your video on this wayyyyy before I thought about doing it commercially and this was where I realized that it may be something I could do

I'll probably end up automating it using timed valves and culture tanks.
Take some of the tediousness out

Did you ever try feeding any other protein based food?
I've heard that the zoea(?) can only eat the discarded eggs shells of the bbs (this is supposedly why they're so tedious to raise, as the egg shells only last 12 hrs) and wondered if that could be part of the issue people have with raising shrimp of more "cannibalistic" tastes

I only tried feeding freshly hatched bbs. I thought of automating to but you would still need to siphoned the bottom ofvtte tank, that's how I did my water changes. I'm interested to see what you come up with.

 

[strich]

There are some fairly decent papers on improving success rates of shrimp. I don't have the links handy sorry but one thing I remember offhand:

• They found that no light improved survival rates as it meant they didn't waste energy trying to get to light sources, and they can't see anyway.