Skunk cleaner shrimp

[yardboy]

About four weeks ago one of my cleaners spawned and there were what seemed like thousands of tiny fry in the water one night. Someone told me that they wouldn't survive for whatever reason, and since my mandarin's gotta eat, I accepted it.
Last night, the trusty red LED picked out glowing dots, dancing in the crevices of the lr. It was shrimp fry, now much bigger than 4 weeks ago! If they all survive, the darn tank will be overrun! Anyone ever have them survive to adulthood?

[Ray1214]

I dunno but you are lucky as crap to get a bunch to survive. I would put them in a 10 gal with a sponge filter and tank water and some live rock or two and start feeding them rotifers...That would be great to have some captive bred cleaners.

Ray

[salt creepette]

then you could sell them to your lfs for 10 bucks apiece (my lfs charges at least $20 retail) and be a millionaire!

im such a dreamer...

[manderson0805]

I still have things darting around the hollow parts of my live rock...I thought they were cleaner shrimp fry, but after 5 or 6 months I'm starting to think they're something else.

[yardboy]

Well, I wouldn't pin a label on these guys and submit them to my graduate prfessor either, but they are not amphipods, the cleaners definitely had big wads of eggs under their swimmerets, one night there was a blizzard of small fry in the tank looking like little shrimp, and their eyes glow in the light of the LED, just like the cleaners. Their body shape is even more like the shrimp now and they dart rapidly among the rocks, in a motion not like the amphipods. Short of dissecting one of them....and of course they'd be harder to catch and remove than that blasted blue damsel I've got.
If no one else has experienced them, I'll be suspicious of my i.d., but time will also tell.