Well hopefully someone with more experience will chime in, but - aside from various pods, BBS, etc. - there are a few relatively easy to breed shrimp species (
Palaemonetes pugio, Palaemonetes vulgaris, Palaemon elegans, and even a few peppermint shrimp species -
Lysmata spp. - to name a few) and - if you can get them spawning - red-ridged clinging crabs/ruby red crabs,
Mithraculus forceps are easy too (green emerald crabs,
Mithraculus sculptus, are just as easy to breed/rear, but they have much lower larval survival rates). Arrow crabs,
Stenorhynchus seticornis, are similarly easy as well, but I don’t remember their survival rates at the moment.
As far as snails go, they range from a bit to a lot more intensive to raise, but stomatella snails, as I understand it, reproduce readily enough in our tanks (most people get them as hitchhikers, but there is a place that sells them - I can’t vouch for them being reputable as I haven’t purchased anything from them and don’t know anyone who has, but they say they offer them*). If you’re willing to spend a bit more, you could try raising
Nassarius reticulatus using SHG’s “Snow Reef” suspension feed or
Cerith spp. using
Oocystis spp. phyto. If you’re up for a bit more effort you could try Florida Fighting Conch,
Strombus alatus, too.
Fair warning, however, to my knowledge, all of these species (except the stomatella snails) produce pelagic/planktonic larvae, so you need to make sure your setup is pelagic larvae safe, or these guys will all die off.
* The stomatella shop:
These little snails are interesting little clean up crew (CUC) critters that can multiply in your tank. They are often between 1/4" to 1/2" long, but can get as long as 1" in some situations. You will sometimes see them spawning after a water change or other chemical change to the water in your...
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Some relevant links:
Hi, Im going to post a breeding guide of palaemon elegans shrimps here. Two females are preparing for spawning so if you are interested you may want to stick with me. This breeding guide will be interchangable for every kind of shrimps but i stick elegans because: - With cleaner shrimp we are...
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Hey everyone! TLDR summary at bottom. I've seen a few people on here ask about how to culture marine ghost/grass shrimp species in their tanks, and the responses I've seen have ranged from it's not possible, to use Google Scholar, to you just add them and they breed. Knowing that Ghost/Grass...
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I have a nano tank of just snails no hermits, crabs,fish or shrimp and the nassarius snails laid eggs 3 weeks ago but I don’t see any snails what happened
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It suddenly appeared while I was taking a nap. I’ve never seen it before. Is it just normal calcium/ salt precipitation? Or is it something else? It’s inside the tank so I doubt it’s salt crystals.
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I made this account to ask if anyone has bred Arrow Crabs before? We had brittle stars, fire worms, tube worms, bristle worms as hitchhikers in the live rock but now there is hundreds of tiny things running all over. The arrow crabs had babies twice and is pregnant again. The tadpoles were...
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I have a naughty emerald crab. It was picking at my corals, so I decided to move it to my QT tank for now (it's an observation tank only, no copper) as that tank has no corals, and plenty of algae. I caught it this evening and I've been drip acclimating it for about half an hour and as I went to...
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