Profile Guide to be inserted here





Please 'detach' signature when submitting a Species Profile.

Ghost Shrimp

Palaeomonetes


Ghost Shrimp Factoids

Origin: Southern ditches
Maximum Size: 1 ½ inches
Life Span: Couple of years
Uses: Good scavengers. Tasty food.
Temperature: Very flexible
Threats: Overcrowding
Foods: Any fish food
Containers: Good in small community tanks

More than Food. We sell more ghost shrimps as fish food than we sell as aquarium residents. Small and medium cichlids enjoy eating ghost shrimps as much as we enjoy eating shrimp cocktails. Fish don’t like that shrimp sauce. We’ve seen a few references to these guys as “bait,” but they’re so small all you’d catch on one is a slightly larger bait. However, these diminutive arthropods are intriguing in their own right – not just as food.

Appearance. Ghost shrimps are sometimes called glass shrimps because you can see right through them. Their near invisibility no doubt helps them survive in the wild. Most predators cannot eat what they cannot see. You need to watch your aquarium very carefully to see these guys.

Little Threat. Their small size (adults about an inch and a half) makes them ideal community tank mates. But don’t mix ghost shrimps with baby fishes. They reach out and snag small fry as they swim past. Once your fish attain one inch in length, they need not fear these mighty mites.

Excellent Scavengers. Ghost shrimps spend most of their day scrounging about on the bottom in search of edible morsels. They also climb up the plant leaves where they are next to impossible to see. Oddly enough, they can climb up the glass walls of their aquarium if the glass grows even a modicum of algae to give them a footing. They make a great clean up crew in young discus tanks.

Good Swimmers. You think of shrimps and lobsters (crayfish) as backward “spurt swimmers” via their muscular tails. But ghost shrimps also swim very well in a forward direction – particularly when food hits the surface of the water. Their beady little eyes must be more than adequate because these little rascals push their way into the front of any food fight at the surface of the water. Perhaps they detect food by smell or via their delicate antennae. In any event, they let very little food escape. If you want to see a real wrassling match, feed a bunch of them a few live California blackworms.

Good Feeders. With their long (relatively), skinny arms, they reach out and grab onto food flakes many times their size. They will not relinquish their claim on that flake to another equally greedy ghost shrimp. However, they will yield to any fish the size of an adult guppy. If any fish grabs their food, they just let it go. If you plan to feed them to your larger fishes, feed your shrimps whatever food you want your larger fish to eat.

Strange Mouths. Unlike fishes with mouths at the front of their faces, ghost shrimps cram food into an opening in what appears to be their chest. From this strange mouth, their food moves up behind their eyes where you can watch it curve back around and down into their stomachs. These food storage areas turn the same color as the food they eat. You can easily see thru their bodies during this process.

Lotsa and Lotsa Feet. Underneath their abdomen, you’ll see several pairs of legs. They use these swimmerettes to walk on the bottom, swim thru the water, or hover in mid-water as they grab passing food.

Algae Eaters, NOT. I've seen references to ghost shrimps as algae eaters. Perhaps. Maybe if you starve them they’ll eat algae. But in an aquarium where you feed the fishes, they’ll get their share of the food and ignore the algae -- just like the fabled Chinese algae eater.

Intriguing Activity. These guys like to stay active. Lots of crustaceans prefer to hide out during the day and boogie at night. Ghost shrimps scurry all over your tank all day long.

Breeding. Females grow larger than the males. They carry their greenish-grey eggs attached to their swimmerets (just like crayfish). The eggs look as if they’re inside their bellies because their legs look like part of their abdomens. If you want babies, you’d be ahead to isolate egg-bearing females in their own maternity tank. The babies cling to the swimmerets once they hatch out. Nearly all fishes love baby ghost shrimps.

Summary. Put lots of these economical little guys in your community tank. (You need lots because they’re so hard to see.) You’ll get a kick out of the extra activity they add as well as the way they spruce up your aquarium.


Special Thanks to LA for the profile.

LOBSTERS & CRAYFISH



Crayfish Factoids

Origin_ Wetlands, pond, streams
Size_ Three to six inches
Temperature_ Very flexible
Lifespan_ Two to three years
Breeding_ Usually in the spring but varies

Tasty and Fun. Crayfish (crawfish, crawdads, crabs, freshwater lobsters, baby lobsters, yabbies, catfish bait, mud bugs or whatever you want to call them) fascinate people -- particularly little people.

Few observers can resist the way these armored arthropods clamber about on the bottom searching for adventure and scavenging for food.

Tasty Morsels In the wild, crayfish ARE the food. Raccoons, larger fishes, larger crayfish, lizards, Louisianans, and turtles all consider them tasty (if somewhat crunchy) treats.

Freshly shed (soft shell crayfish) is especially tasty and vulnerable.Well Armored. A crayfish backed into its burrow presents a wall of defense too difficult for most predators to overpower. When dropped into an Oscar tank, however, their shells and claws offer a futile defense. Oscars snap them right up. Oscars like the taste. Oscars like the crunch. And Oscars like the fight. Not Rare. Crayfish grow wild in Iowa. You can catch them in creeks and ponds containing no large fishes. Toss out a line with a piece of bacon on it. You need no hook. The stubborn crayfish gloms onto the bacon and refuses to release it as you pull him (sometimes them) to shore. You’ll know how well those big pincers work, unless you pick them up correctly.

Several Uses. Commercially, crayfish fall into the food (for people) and bait categories. And then there’s the fun category. It's fun to watch bait store workers count these out. Ask for a dozen the next time you're in a bait store. It's cheap entertainment. Our use of them as pets is not sufficient to register on the national sales meter.

Catch Your Own? If you want large quantities of crayfish, use a minnow seine. The 15-foot long ones will collect scads of these pincered scavengers. If you need only small quantities, they’re more practical to buy. They’re an inexpensive pet – initial cost and maintenance.

Educational. However, they also fall into an educational category. All third grade teachers in our DSM biotope teach a “Crayfish Unit.” Most kids have to share their crayfish. The lucky ones get to take theirs home after the unit ends. Lucky for the kids. Maybe not so lucky for the crayfish. But their chances of survival are not great in the wild either. Survivors live about three years. Most get eaten young -- very young. Some 500 species of crayfish exist worldwide. About 150 species live here in the U.S. Most are about the size you find locally. One crayfish in Tasmania grows as large as an eating-size lobster. Technically, lobsters are probably saltwater critters. Crayfish live in freshwater. Lots of those rock lobsters from South Africa are really crayfish.

Red Lobsters are really crayfish. You can’t seine these out of our local creeks. You probably knew that. But you could find them in a local creek somewhere. The same easy-to-follow upkeep rules apply. They are more likely to de-pincer each other than our smaller local crayfish.

Blue Lobsters originally from Australia are not as numerous, so they cost a lot more. They’re just as easy to keep. If someone tells you these guys will not eat fish ...

Yucatan Crayfish. Supposedly, these guys do not eat fish. We gave ours a half-dozen dead goldfish. They ignored them. Yucatan’s do pinch people (your photographer, for example) and they hold onto a net as hard as any other crayfish. Beware mixing any crayfish or lobster with fish. The parents of the first Yucatan had pincers covered with a net-like filtering material that limited their fish-catching abilities. Perhaps they adapted to their Iowa environment? These smaller than average crayfish love to crawl out of their tank. You cannot keep them in without a lid.

Yucatan Info. We just call them Yucatan crayfish because two of our German customers captured them and brought them back from Yucatan. We haven’t seen these strange crawdads on any price lists and probably won’t. They are way pricier than our Iowa crawdads. For more info go to Yucatan crayfish.

Decapods. Crayfish belong to the Decapods order. This means they have 10 legs – their two well functioning pincers, plus the eight legs they use for locomotion, hugging each other, and food gathering.

Pincers. Crayfish use their pincers for protection and to gather food. They are omnivores. That means they eat everything – your fish, your plants, your snails. Nothing organic on the aquarium bottom is safe from your crayfish -- not even other crayfish. Never take a nap in a pond full of crayfish.

Scavengers. Since they eat anything they find, crawdads make good scavengers. You can mix crayfish with large fish. They make good scavengers in Oscar tanks (until the Oscar gets big enough to eat them).

Night Shift. Their long sensitive antennae enable crayfish to find food in low light periods. They get more active in the evenings, work all night, and work thru dawn. In the wild, they scurry back to the protection of their burrows when the sun shines. In our tanks, they start marching whenever you add food to their water.

Disarmament Procedures. You can snap off (or super glue or rubber band) their pincers and make crayfish more practical for community tanks. They re-grow missing appendages (Although we’ve heard and read this more than we’ve seen it.) when they molt – shed their shells. New owners sometimes panic when they find these empty shells. They look just like a dead crayfish. You can smell the difference

Breeding. Most crayfish lay eggs in the spring. Females lay dozens of eggs and attach them to their swimmeret’s (their tiny back legs). These “in berry” females protect their eggs and young. Her busy little legs move the eggs around and thus aerate them constantly. Egg hatching time depends upon temperature. The young stay under her tail until their first molt. If you pester them and knock them loose, most will quickly return to mom. In a week or so, they go out on their own.


Special thanks to LA for the profile

Once again thanks for this post Cichlid Commander