Ghost Shrimp babies? 10 Gallon Tank

[pinksprklmonkey]

Ok, so I put 10 ghost shrimp in my 10 gallon quarantine tank yesterday. They went to town chowing down on the algae in the tank and they seemed happy. Today, I noticed some microscopic (not really, but EXTREMELY tiny) white things on the glass of the aquarium. I got out a magnifying glass and they appear to have tails. Are these shrimp babies? Or are they some kind of parasite?

 

[FredBjammin]

Sounds like it, mine have never really made it to adulthood. The eggs take 3 - 4 week to hatch. Parent keeps them in ... I think it's called the swimsack (the underbelly flaps)?

There's some good videos of them on youtube releasing them, that I viewed a while back.


http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/inv/ghostshrimp.php

 

[Elodea]

Are you sure that those are ghost shrimp? From what I've heard, ghost shrimp are carnivores and rarely eat algae.

 

[pinksprklmonkey]

Are you sure that those are ghost shrimp? From what I've heard, ghost shrimp are carnivores and rarely eat algae.

That's what my LFS said. They also have been eating left over food that my betta misses.

 

[FredBjammin]

Are you sure that those are ghost shrimp? From what I've heard, ghost shrimp are carnivores and rarely eat algae.

They'll eat algae build up in/on gravel when they run out of other sources of food. I had a 5.5 gallon tank that became an algae farm (I have 3 other tanks) when I didn't have anymore use for it.

Started doing test on the algae farm.... long story short, when I got bored growing algae I threw 6 or 7 ghost shrimp in the tank, by the morning of the 4th day the algae build up was about 80% gone on the gravel. They didn't touch the glass. I threw my over population (30-35) of baby snails from my 40 gallon tank into the 5.5 gallon on the 5th day. At the 1 week point the tank (not counting filter) was void of algae build up.