Readers,

Let me share with you my fun experience. On the Saturday night of 12/6/97 about 10:00 PM I looked into my 75 gallon reef tank using a flashlight (did a night dive) and saw something really cool! It was something I had seen before about a month ago but didn't look hard or close enough to really see what I was looking at.

I saw something small, very tiny, and a lot of them. They were about 1mm in size. I stared at the area in which these things were swarming around. Plankton? Of the most exciting kind no less. Imagine a swarm of gnats in the summertime at sunset. That may accurately describe what I saw - 50-75 in the swarm. It was, ready for this? cleaner shrimp babies! It took me several minutes of staring to convince myself this is what I was seeing. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was so exciting.

My head raced with ideas. I grabbed a 4 ounce clear plastic container which was a cover used by Dairy Queen for deserts and a turkey baster. Carefully I sucked some babies into the baster and deposited them into the container. I got a bunch of them - counted roughly forty. I examined the container for a long time to verify what I was seeing and enjoyed the rare experience of collecting newly hatched cleaner shrimp babies.

I thought to myself, this is Aqua News material, and wondered if I get points for this.

Now that I collected these 1mm creatures what do I do with them? How do I keep them alive? I figured that one out, at least for the short term. I found a quart sized clear plastic container. The kind powdered donut holes come in. I have a bunch of different sized clear plastic containers. Never know what one might need one for sometime. I transferred the contents into this bigger container and floated the container inside my reef tank. To keep the container stationary I kept it half empty and pushed it under the middle support of the top of the aquarium.

Now I needed to take care of them for the longer run. For help I contacted an acquaintance who has lots of experience in marine life. His reply received on December 9 follows:

Barry,
Raising cleaner shrimp takes a long time, and there has been very little success with it. They can be fed selco-enriched newly hatched brine shrimp or simply newly hatched brine shrimp. They sometimes cannibalize each other. Good luck!

Julian.

Well right away I went to my refrigerator and retrieved my brine shrimp eggs to whip up a batch. Now I was glad that I bought those brine eggs a year ago. It usually takes me about 3 days before they hatch.

They were still alive and looking good when I went to work on 12/10 four days after they were born. Now I had to wait for the baby brine to hatch. What will the outcome be? Remember Julian's letter and wait till the next Aqua News to find out if the baby cleaner shrimp are still alive.

Just a note here. During the first few days of life I had the opportunity to use my video camera and get a few moments worth of video recording of the little things. Very hard to focus on these babies. It's amazing to imagine these things staying alive in the wild.

Contact me about your salt water tanks. I want to hear from you.