# Pregnant Ghost Shrimp in Betta tank. What should I do?



## MissingMercury (Mar 27, 2018)

Ok so yesterday I went out to the pet store and bought four Ghost Shrimp to put in my Betta tank so my Betta would have some company. I was looking at them this morning and realized that all the shrimp have these little green balls hanging off of them, and I got confused. I did some research and found out that these are shrimp eggs, which I _do not_ want. I really don't know what to do. If I leave the shrimp in the tank, will my Betta eat the eggs/larvae? Should I put the shrimp in a different tank and figure out what to do with the babies? I really don't want or need more shrimp, so what should I do about this?


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## ryry2012 (Mar 31, 2015)

If I were you, I would return the shrimp to the store. A 3.5 gallon is too small to have a betta and four shrimp. Since it doens't have enough hiding places for the shrimp, it's very possible they will end up the betta's yummy snacks. Even if he doesn't attack the adults, he will snack the babies and then might decide to attack them. betta are carnivores...

Unless you have an established tank running, moving the shrimp to a new tank is a bad ides because unstable water quality/parameters can kill them easily.


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## NerdyCheshire (Mar 30, 2018)

Inevitably, some female shrimp will occasionally produce eggs which will look like green little spheres under their legs. It is my understanding that Ghost shrimp breeding and other freshwater shrimp can be very hard, not because they cannot produce young, but because feeding shrimp is very challenging due to size. Without copious amount of things like infusoria or green water culture, they are unlikely to survive, and some species require brackish water. The betta will likely eat any young that hatch, and make sure to keep your plants trimmed if you have any. Shrimp make good tank mates because they do not easily overpopulate a tank like some snails can and are preyed upon with more ease. You always consider returning the one female you have for now, and keep the other 3 "males" ( I say it in quotes because I am not sure how to sex shrimp aside from eggs production)


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## chocky (Mar 6, 2018)

Really? I actually Shrimp are super easy to keep and raise. (As long as we are talking about the hardy variety like ghost, red cherries etc)

The shrimps are carrying firtilised eggs, they may have babies but the betta will probably eat them, unless as someone noted - u have enough plants and Hiding spots. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## AccaliaJay (Feb 5, 2015)

Why don't you want them? Just curious? When I had ghost shrimp they didn't overpopulate. In fact it was always wavering on low but no extinction lol. I even once got rid of all but one older female shrimp which only had a few eggs and after that I got up to 4 ghost shrimp from her. Then it continued going from 2-5 before I added two female bettas and then one day there was 0 ghost shrimp. But I had a 10-30 gallons at that time. I switched from a 10 to a 30 when I got rid of all but the one shrimp. I never had more than 12 shrimp at one time. And reason being I had that many because i bought more intending to give some to my brothers gf but she decided she didn't want them. 

As for sexing ghost shrimp Its been a while since I had some but I believe the females got larger than the males? 

So my answer is "Leave them alone its highly unlikely you'll get that many babies to survive. Even if you do the population will only stay at the point of which the tank can provide for. If by some magical chance just ask your LPS or petstore if they would take the extras off your hands" 

Hope I helped XD


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