Breeding Lysmata ankeri

[Luis A M]

At first,imported peppermint shrimps were L.wurdemanni.Colorful,with a saddle mark and lime green eggs,same as amboinensis or debelius.
But one day they were replaced by the drab L.boggessi,pale,no saddle mark and eggs either olive green or tan.Years passed and peppermints were always boggessi,never again a single wurdemanni showed in the local market.In several visits to Miami LFS I also failed to find wurdemanni,Peppers were invariably boggessi.
Then captive bred shrimps from ORA came,again boggessi!.And lastly stocks were imported from different sources in Asia. viewtopic.php?f=201&t=10878
I imagined they had to be something different,but no,they ended being boggessi,obviously captive bred in Asia
That was beyond any logic to me;why should anybody,like ORA or Asian breeders choose for their captive breeding program a nondescript species like boggessi instead of the much nicer wurdemanni?
Somebody suggested (I think it was Kathy) that may be boggessi were easier to culture. Our local importer had the same explanation.
I disagreed.I had raised several shrimp species and was quite sure that all peppermints had to be about the same,fairly easy to raise.

And yet I was wrong .Recently a batch of small,nice and colourful peppermint shrimps showed and for the first time in many years they were not boggessi.They came from USA and looked CB (all small,about the same size),so I guessed ORA had finally moved their shrimp hatchery to wurdemanni broodstock.
I got a couple of them and had them grow and they began spawning.Surprisingly the eggs were not green but pink!So they were not wurdemanni.A closer examination proved that they are L.ankeri,based in the number of rostral spines and pereiopod segments.I checked with the importer and no,the shrimp were not CB from ORA but wild stock from Haiti.

And another surprise was to come;L.ankeri larvae are not easy to raise like boggessi.I lost many batches exactly like past experiences with debelius or amboinensis.These zoea show long larval time with mortality taking its toll until all are lost.Only with extreme care I managed to raise some few.The first post larva settled at 49 dah.With boggessi more than a hundred settle by 30 dph.
So all peppermint shrimps are not the same and this explains the exclusive presence of boggessi in the market.

[Luis A M]

And the last larva of this small group settled at 60 days,i.e. twice as long as boggessi.We´ll take more reliable data from next batch which remains plentiful.

[Luis A M]

And a second group of 50 dah remain larvae;one Z10 and two Z11 (last stage).

[chris melb]

Luis, are you decaping brine? I've heard studies have found conflicting results with bacterial counts in artemia - making me query the necessity of decaping brine.

[Luis A M]

I always decap.See here why and how: viewtopic.php?f=144&t=3900
Second batch,all 3 Z11 reached 60 days and keep growing.Interestingly L.ankeri unlike other peppermints,show a long larval phase with larger zoea like L.amboinensis and L.debelius.

[Amie]

Pictures?

I have a friend that owns a LFS. He purchases peppermint shrimp from a group of fishermen that go out to sea with nets to catch fish. There are so many shrimp that get caught in the nets, but the fisherman don't want them, so they typically throw them away (let them die). He buys 100-200 at a time, and the cost is almost nothing. I've looked at the new shipment of shrimp when they arrive, and there are several different species in the mix. I would assume that the type of peppermint shrimp they catch would depend on several different factors (where they are throwing the nets, the time of year, etc.) I don't know how many of the LFS purchase shrimp this way, but it could explain some of the differences in the market that you are seeing?

[Luis A M]

Quite possibly,Amie.L.boggessi dwells in the grass flats in the bays and could probably be collected by seining in large numbers.I collected L.wurdemanni in the Gulf Coast (Port Aransas,TX),but they were only found on piers or jetties and only 10-20 could be collected with a hand net.
Could you take pics of those at your LFS?.Are they peppermints?.
My pics will follow

[Luis A M]

This is how L.ankeri looks.See the saddle mark and the pink ovarian mass.

DSC02228.JPG

[Luis A M]

Update-Thanks to some improvements in larval care,I could rear this last batch uneventfully and they meta into 48 post larvae.First one settled at 37 days and last one at 74 days.

[Luis A M]

Some pics of the last larval stage,:

DSC02217.JPG

Size is about 1 cm this time,typical of peppermint last zoea.

DSC02215.JPG

Close side view of the front end:

DSC02224.JPG

and the rear end.Pleopods are well developed and show the appendix interna (AI) which define Z11,the last zoeal stage.

DSC02225.JPG

[Amie]

Pictures look great, thanks for posting. I am jealous of your ability to raise shrimp so easily.

[Luis A M]

Thanks Amie,but I find the last two very dark.
Well you know how many years I have worked with them.Now I will try L.debelius and then more L.amboinensis and finally Stenopus!
PS.Seems you could stop the spam rain