If you have both males and female Cherry Shrimps (also known as Neocardinia Davidi Shrimps), then you may eventually find shrimp eggs in your tank. To see how you can hatch these eggs and increase the population of your colony, you can check out this guide from Aquarium Blueprints.
How to hatch Cherry Shrimp eggs
The normal way to hatch Cherry Shrimp eggs is to simply wait as the berried females will do most of the work. Your only job in this situation is to keep your water parameters consistent and make sure that your shrimps well fed.
To keep your water parameters consistent, we suggest that you avoid doing water changes unless you absolutely have to. If you do need to do a water change, then we recommend removing 10% of the water from the tank at most. When adding fresh water back into the aquarium, we also suggest drip feeding it.
These precautions are to prevent any wild swings in water parameters, which could cause your female shrimps to stress out. A stressed pregnant female may end up dropping her eggs or shedding them when she molts.
Keep in mind that it can take up to 30 days for the eggs held by a berried female to hatch.
How to hatch dropped Cherry Shrimp eggs
If you see that the Cherry Shrimp eggs have been dropped, then we recommend that you pick them up as soon as possible so that they won’t be eaten by the shrimps and/or other inhabitants in your tank.
You can then put the shrimp in a separate tank or put them in a netting inside of your current tank. In either case, you should make sure you have enough water movement in order to keep the eggs clean.
If you are placing the eggs in a net inside the same tank, then you can put the netting closer to a filter output or air stone. If you are placing the eggs in a new tank, then you can add an air stone.
If the Cherry Shrimp eggs don’t hatch after 30 days, then we suggest disposing them as it is likely that they either have gone bad or haven’t been fertilized in the first place.
How to hatch Cherry Shrimp eggs from a dead shrimp
If your berried female shrimp unfortunately died, then you can try using toothpicks to remove the eggs from the female’s saddle.
This process can be extremely difficult as the eggs will most likely be still sticking to the body. Not to mention that you also need to keep the eggs wet during the removal process as well.
Once you managed to remove the eggs from the body of the dead female shrimp, you can then follow the same processes as we mentioned above to hatch the orphaned eggs as you can either put them in a net inside the same tank or put them in a brand-new tank. Either way, make sure that you have a little bit of water movement in order to keep the eggs clean.
