Krewetki w akwarium słodkowodnym

BREEDING SHRIMPS

Shrimps can breed in two different forms, but form of breed is not a trait saying about differences between kinds. Breeding of shrimps is highly connected with moulting - until young shrimps are born female can't change her shell, that's why copulation takes places just after moultation.

LARWAE STADIUM (holometabolics) it is characteristic to almost all big arms shrimps, for filtrating and some caridinas. Young ones after coming out of eggs go through few larvae stadiums before they become small shrimps. They get out of eggs as nauplitus which have 3 pairs of legs and swim in open water eating plankton. Next segments come after next moultations - young ones during that time go through stadiums: protozoea, zoea and postlarva.

Coming out of eggs and evolving through first weeks of life they have to stay in salty water or sea water. Because most of them won't survive first stages of life because of extremely small sizes (what makes them easy to be eaten), female just in case lies up to couple of thousand microscopic eggs. These kinds of shrimps are hard to breed. In case of species being kept for consuming reasons (like Microbrachium rosenbergi) some methods of breeding were created to get maximum number of offspring. Unfortunately these methods are not possible to be used in our tanks. The best described shrimp, which breeds this way and is kept in aquariums is Caridina Japonica. As far as we know nobody successes to do it in Poland, but its worth to try.

NO LARVAE STADIUM (hemimetabolics) - characteristic for most Caridinas and some big arms shrimps (like Macrobrachium assamensis). Youngsters go through all larvae stadiums in eggs and come out of them as small shrimps. From mature ones tells them apart lack of sex organs, which will be formed in next moultations. Because they are fully formed and quite big (what makes that higher percentage survive), number of eggs carried by female is not higher than several tens. Young ones eat the same food as parents from the beginning.
These shrimps are easy to breed and grow up in tank conditions. The most important stage its first moultation, that's first 24 hours of life. Some offspring might not survive it, especially when there are fish in tank. With caridinas we don't have to worry about consuming offspring by parents, but we have to when we have big arms shrimps (we have to prepare lots of hideouts or take them away from general tank otherwise they might be eaten). In some species offspring has same pigmentations straight ahead, others are firs transparent in the beginning and need time to become color.

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