banded coral shrimp

[mattgeezer]

hey i got home from work to notice that the smaller of my pair of shrimp have eggs .. does anyone know what i should do , make a little solitary tank in corner for the egg carrier (male?)

[inwall75]

For just about any shrimp in this hobby, fertilized eggs become nothing more than coral food. Once they hit the planktonic stage, it's fair game for predation.

However, this shrimp is a little different. When the eggs hatch, the babies hang onto mommy for a while. If you get the pair into a small nano rearing tank, you actually have a chance at getting a bunch of babies you can sell. However, to do this successfully, you pretty much need the tank set up and cycled immediately with a sponge filter only and bubblestones (no powerheads or protein skimmers). You also need to set up a phyto farm and a rotifer farm.

This is why most people don't breed them....it's an awful lot of work.

[BlackWhiteYellow]

when my one was about to lay eggs i put them into a makeshift container with live sand from my main tank, 2 days later my girlfriend yelled at me to come see them making out, well i found the smaller one had all but half a leg pulled off and the larger one was eating what was left. gave up there and then with trying to keep the babies i couldn't even see. i tried hand feeding what remained of the little guy and it was working for a while but the he died 3 days on.

[mattgeezer]

i think i should let nature take its course they sound like savage little critters when they have eggs , ive noticed that when you go close up to the glass in front of them the bigger of the two guards the egg carrier she snapps at me its quite funny too watch a tiny shrimp trying to get at you.

ill just leave them and see what happens its a quite tank with plenty of room who knows shrimp army.lol

[inwall75]

There's a couple of things to always remember....

1) Never get between a male and his female, and
2) Never get between a female and her babies

[mattgeezer]

fully understand, dont want to do anything really just watch and learn