Saw your ask at catboybiologist but id love to learn shrimp facts from you<3
(also transfemme here its just that i never got around to un-gimmicking my blog)
Well umm amano shrimp (caridina multidentata) are a freshwater shrimp but have some interesting breeding practices/early life stage behavior.
As far as I can tell fertilization of eggs happens after molting, but is also more frequent with high protein diets? (I feed my shrimp a combo of copepods, brine shrimp, and mysis shrimp)
The eggs tend to be fanned in the mother’s swimmerettes for about 1 month - 6 weeks before hatching and at that point the larvae separate from mom. They are very light attracted
In the wild the babies would then swim downstream to estuaries/brackish water for the first 4-6 weeks of their life cycle until they metamorphosize into adult shrimp, where they’ll swim upstream to fresh water again for the remainder of their life.
As adults they are also greedy lil bastards who steal the algae wafers from my corydora catfish despite the algae wafer being bigger than their head.
Here’s larva pic and a berried (egg laden) amano shrimp pic
The larva in the first pic is about the size of the tip of a sewing needle
