you can try it out though, around here ghost shrimp go for $.20 each so $2
isn't really that big of an investment...

Heck, buy five or six and wait awhlie. You'll soon have more than you know
what to do with.

that said I can't really imagine a ghost shrimp being predatory except for
perhaps the smallest of fry possible...

They can kill livebearer fry. A fish as large as a neon tetra will probably be
safe...if it's healthy. And be careful, sometimes macrobrachium shrimp get
mixed in with ghost shrimp. They look similar, but have bigger claws, and are
much more predatory.

also, has anyone had success breeding ghost shrimp?

Try to keep them from breeding. They're worse than guppies. I bought five a
couple of years ago, and in a few months, I could've opened my own bait shop.

There are only a couple of "tricks." One is that both brackish and freshwater
shrimp are sold as ghost shrimp. For breeding, you want the freshwater kind.
Freshwater ghost shrimp carry their babies until they are miniature copies of
their parents, so you don't have to deal with weird larval stages or anything.
Unfortunately, it's not easy to tell freshwater from brackish ghost shrimp, so
you may be stuck with trial and error. (I have heard that if you see females
with eggs, they are likely freshwater, but I don't know how true that is.)

The second trick is iodine. Ghost shrimp tend to turn white and die after a
few weeks unless you put a little iodine in the water. Get the kind sold as a
supplement for marine tanks, and put in one drop with each water change.

Other than that, raising ghosties couldn't be easier. Put some java moss in
the tank, maybe, for the babies to hide in. And leave the detritus in the
tank; don't vaccum it out. Feed them ordinary flake fish food, and you'll soon
be up to your neck in shrimp.


Leigh

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/halloween/881/