Lysmata shrimp in the wild and the aquarium

This variety of shrimp is quite common here in the south east and are a very interesting for particular reasons.

*The first being that lysmatas are normally hard working cleaners for fishes damaged flesh and larger parasite removal. They will frequently swim into open aquarium water when there is any movement and try to clean whatever is moving and even try to clean your skin when placing your hand in the aquarium.

*Than the hermaphrodite aspect of these inverts meaning both female and male genitalia exists in each lysmata and like the nudibranch family they need another of the same species to reproduce.

*The time between moults of the lysmata group can range from three to eight weeks depending on the environment and foods. For these shrimp to have success in moulting there has to be some available iodine for this to happen to be used within the mucus that develops between the new and old shells or they can actually get trapped in the shell like many other crustaceans suffer with once the shell is ready to be discarded and die within the moult.
When they moult, as with crayfish, prawns and other shrimps, the softer tissue between the carapace and tail section of the old shell will split at that point and sometimes the shrimp will not survive the extreme amounts of energy used when they try to wriggle out of the old shell taking in extra fluids expanding its body while the new shell now appearing like skin in texture hardens using most of its stored calcium.
If food is abundant and conditions are suitable a pair will produce a new batch of shrimp each week at best.

*These types of shrimp are found normally within a short distance of an eel that the shrimp will regularly clean and returns the favour by protecting the shrimp from predators to some degree.
This gives one of its nick names that in days gone by was the name used by collectors, eel cleaner shrimp.

In the aquarium they are susceptible to salinity changes, low salinity can be a death sentence as with many inverts, plus heat and predation, but over all a very good tank addition, though they can be a bit of a problem to sick or weak fish as they will try to access the fish’s insides for food via its anal area.