Last Article I shared with you my unique experience collecting new born cleaner shrimp, Lysmata amboinensis, from my 75 gallon reef tank.

   About 40 were collected the first time and were put into a clear container that I floated in my tank. I needed to know how to keep them alive so I contacted Julian Sprung. He informed me I could use newborn brine shrimp to feed them. I hatched some baby brine and put them into the container. The next morning I woke to find every cleaner shrimp baby dead. Disappointment set in. I think they starved. Or maybe the salinity changed too much when I added the brine? I could only guess.

   It didn't take long to get past the downer. I was starting to get pumped up for the next batch of cleaner shrimp babies. I knew my 2 cleaner shrimp had eggs about once a month.

   Yes again, actually on Christmas eve, guess what I got? More babies. Santa was good to me. I again sucked out as many as I could find, about 50. I put them in a plastic 2 quart container and floated them in my reef tank as I did last time. This time I got the brine eggs started immediately. In case I starved them last time I didn't want that to happen again.

   Again things didn't go well. I wasn't surprised since Julian said there had not been much luck raising them. After about a week, one was left from this batch. I kept it alive until another batch was born. This time I moved the mother cleaner shrimp into a 10 gallon tank that had an air stone bubbling in it. This way I got a bigger batch of babies. I also thought that oxygen deprivation may have played a roll in the deaths of the baby cleaner shrimp. What a mess, I thought, when the 10 gallon tank was swarming full of babies one evening. I guessed there were around 500 in there. This was most impressive looking. I got out my video camera and recorded for a while.

   Again it took about a week for them to almost totally die out. I tried baby brine shrimp and pulverized flake food but that didn't appear to do the nutritional trick. My best achievement was one baby lasting for 56 days. It was neat comparing the size of the oldest one to all the newborns. It grew to about 4 times the original size.

   Let me share with you some information I got from The Breeders Registry that gives me more hope for the future. First some information about this organization. The address is The Breeder's Registry, PO box 255373, Sacramento, CA 95865-5373. The web addres is http://WWW.breeders-registry.gen.ca.us. This is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting captive propagation of marine organisms as a viable alternative to wild harvest. The organization is operated entirely by volunteers and all funding comes from membership support ($12.00 US address). The benefits of membership include receiving the quarterly publication The Journal of MaquaCulture, inclusion in the Breeder's Registry electronic newsgroup (requires an e-mail address), and access to the database. Electronic access is unlimited and hardcopy reports are available.

   From the Breeders Registry I learned again that there has been very little success with the Scarlet cleaner shrimp. Rotifers have been the main food people have tried feeding to the babies. I haven't tried rotifers. They need to be fed themselves and I'm not going to go about culturing some at this time.

   Rotifers are an excellent food source for all marine creatures. If you want some you can get some from http://WWW.rotifers.com. Let me know if you do this, as I would like to get some too. I'm just not inclined to foot the entire bill myself.

   How do Scarlet cleaner shrimp make babies? Cleaner shrimp are hermaphroditic spawners which mean they have both a male and a female sex organ. It just takes any mature two to tango. For years I've always owned one shrimp. One day when I had an extra 20 bucks I purchased a second. It only took a couple of weeks before I noticed eggs on the belly of one shrimp and later the other. I wasn't sure what to think about this. Did I have two females? Yes, I did. Question, how many shrimp does it take to have 4 genders? Punch line. "2."

   My actions and observations have been to return the adult cleaner shrimp back into my main tank after the eggs are let loose. Within a couple of days I notice the shrimp molt. It appears that soon after, the shrimp has eggs again. Then the other shrimp lets loose its eggs. And the same happens to it. I have become accustomed to observing the color of the eggs attached to the shrimp. They start out green. Then turn kind of yellow-orange. And finally about a day or two before detaching, the eggs turn to a kind of silvery color.

   I'm done transferring my cleaner shrimps from my main tank to my 10 gallon tank. It's stressful on the shrimp, and I'm not getting any long term success. Besides, you know who keeps asking when am I going to put that 10 gallon tank away.

   Hope you've all enjoyed hearing about my cleaner shrimp. If you want natural plankton in your reef tank be sure to have at least two cleaner shrimp, and your reef fish will have natural food from time to time.

References
1. http://www.breeders-registry.gen.ca.us/
Reprints/FAMA/v17_aug94/scarlet.htm