These guys are progressing faster than what I see documented in the German breeding video. I included a pic of my phone held up in front of their day 30 clip.

We have little pleopods on these babes now! 😍 There’s also blue and brown ones now and they’re grazing on all surfaces and are not so instantly drawn to the light. I have to leave it on for 5 minutes or so before feeding to get the group of them to come forward.

My tank is definitely pea soup so I can’t even see the back of my tank, but it’s super cool seeing them grow so fast in such a short time.

We’re at Day 35 with the vampire shrimp (Atya gabonensis) larvae, and overall I’m still really encouraged by what I’m seeing.

The biggest change right now is just how much more substantial some of them look. A few are noticeably larger and thicker-bodied than others, with much stronger orange/gold pigmentation through the abdomen and much more visible internal structure than they had in the first few weeks.

Their movement also looks more developed. They’re still very clearly larvae and still doing that curved, suspended swimming posture, so I don’t think I’m looking at metamorphosed juveniles yet. But some are holding position and changing direction much more deliberately than they did earlier in the run.

There’s also a pretty obvious size difference within the group now. Some still look smaller and more delicate, while a few look significantly farther along. I’m watching those larger individuals especially closely for any shift toward a straighter body posture, more developed walking behavior, landing and staying on surfaces, or anything else that starts looking less planktonic and more like a tiny shrimp.

The tank is also still very green despite the fact that I haven’t needed to add much phytoplankton lately. It seems like I’ve developed a pretty persistent suspended algae/phyto population in the tank itself. At the same time, the larvae have gotten noticeably larger and more pigmented, so I’m hoping that means they’re essentially surrounded by food throughout the day instead of only getting discrete feedings.

And then I nearly screwed that up today. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Critical error. 🫣 I was experimenting with Shrimp King Atyopsis because I wanted to see whether the larger larvae might actually grab and hold onto a very tiny piece of the food.
I thought I had added an extremely small amount.

I had not. 😂

Once it dispersed, I realized I had put way too much powdered food into the tank. So I immediately siphoned the tank to remove as much of the excess as I could and added a small amount of Prime as an extra precaution.

Ammonia immediately before this happened was only barely showing green on the test, so approximately 0.25 ppm or less, with nitrite still at zero. Obviously the biggest concern now is all that excess organic material breaking down and creating an ammonia or bacterial spike, so I’ll be watching the tank closely over the next day or two and will siphon/water-change again if needed.

So… lesson learned: “Tiny amount” means considerably tinier when you’re feeding microscopic shrimp larvae. 🤏😬 Despite today’s mistake, the larvae themselves still looked active afterward, and some of these guys are getting genuinely big compared with where they started.

At this point I’m somewhere between “look how far they’ve come!” and “please nobody die because I got excited and dumped dinner on your heads.”🪭🦐🧪🤏

I explain in my video but I’m nervous that my tank is so green. This is from yesterday, day 31 of my vampire shrimp larva tank. I know it’s not amanos but this is the closest group that can help with this since there’s only one older documented case of vampire shrimp breeding that I can find.

On day 30 I dumped about 1.5 ozs of a mixed phytoplankton that was about 4 weeks in the fridge and starting to be a little more broccoli smelling. It wasn’t enough to make the water green across the board though as most lands on bottom. The tank was super cloudy the next day and green.

I did a 15% water change and increased oxygen in case it’s a bacterial bloom yesterday day 31. I also barely fed anything and what I did feed was a light sprinkle of powdered foods.

This morning the 32nd day it’s pretty darn green. I’ll drop a pic in comments.

I have had lights on 24 hours a day as I’ve heard manother fan filter shrimp that’s been bred more often tends to have die offs when lights were off. Is this maybe an algae bloom?

Should I keep reducing feedings because of this?

One month ago today, on September 3, I woke up to hundreds of microscopic Vampire Shrimp larvae floating around the tank after DJ VampEZ released her brood overnight.
By about 9:30 that morning, I had them moved into saltwater and had officially committed myself to a project I had researched a lot but had absolutely no real-life experience doing. 😂
And now here we are.
Day 30.
I still have roughly 40–50 larvae active in Baby Rave Cave 2, and they are very obviously not the same tiny little specks I collected that first morning.
They’re larger. Faster. Their bodies are more developed. I can see much more structure in the abdomen and tail, more complex appendages, and that bright yellow/orange digestive tract running through their translucent bodies after they’ve been eating.
Some are spending more time grazing along the bottom and occasionally on the glass now too, which seems much more deliberate than what I saw in the early days. They’re still spending plenty of time swimming in the water column, so I’m watching all of those behavior changes closely.
Feeding right now is mostly live phytoplankton throughout the day, with very tiny amounts of powdered shrimp food once or twice daily. I’ve also started culturing my own Tetraselmis, which I’m really excited about because I want live phyto to be the foundation of their diet going forward.
The tank is still around 1.020 specific gravity and 79°F, with aeration and no traditional filter.
Have I done everything perfectly?
Absolutely not. 😂
I had ammonia issues early on in the smaller 3.5-gallon tank. I didn’t even have live phytoplankton until around Day 5. I’ve made adjustments as I’ve learned. We survived the Great Air Freshener Incident. And I’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time staring into this tank with a flashlight trying to figure out whether microscopic shrimp are eating, molting, stuck, resting, dying, or just being microscopic shrimp.
But somehow, a month later, they’re still here.
The only successful captive-rearing account I’ve been able to find for Atya gabonensis took roughly 3.5–4 months to get larvae through the full larval period and into juvenile shrimp, so I know we are still very early in this.
Day 30 is nowhere near the finish line.
But it feels like a pretty big checkpoint.
Since my vamps have bred so many times, I’d talked about attempting to raise previous releases. I researched it, asked questions in groups, and got plenty of “that’s impossible” responses 😂 but also a lot of encouragement from the more adventurous shrimp keepers.
I got more serious about trying with the brood before this one. A local fish friend had even brought me saltwater to help with my mission, so I’d been staring at that unused 5-gallon jug for a few months like, okay… eventually I’m actually going to do this.
PS: Amy Chiu, you’re a freakin’ amazing human and fish/shrimp keeper. 🤩🙌
But thinking about it and actually waking up to hundreds of microscopic floating shrimp and saying,
“F-it. I’m gonna do THIS.”
…are two completely different things. 😂
And today I’m looking at 40–50 growing little Vampire Shrimp larvae thinking… we’Rev actually still doing this. 😂
Happy one month, Baby Rave Cave. 🦐🖤

This is DJ FantastiK my male Vampire Shrimp (Atya gabonensis), caught in the act of absolutely shoveling all the dinner into his mouth.

Those fluffy “hands” are his feeding fans. He holds them out in the current to catch tiny suspended food particles, then pulls them in and scrapes the food off toward his mouth. Which is already cool enough. But apparently I have never looked closely enough at the REST of this man because…

WHY ARE HIS LEGS SO HAIRY. 😭😂💀

All those little hairs are setae, and up close he looks less like a shrimp and more like some bizarre aquatic creature assembled out of feather dusters, armor, and eyebrows.

The funniest part is that Vampire Shrimp sound terrifying, can get huge, and have those little fang-looking spines on their legs… but they’re incredibly peaceful filter feeders. I’m a bit obsessed with them and have 6 between my two rave caves and…. 🫣 Possibly more to come… 🤓

My OG vampire shrimp, DJ VampEZ, and this giant baby daddy, DJ FantastiK had their 4th or 5th round of larva in the past year and this time on 9/3 I decided to ignore everyone who says it’s impossible to raise them and give it a try.

And I’ve made it to day 26 so far and the baby vamps are going strong!!! They have a 3-4 month larval period so we are only a fraction of the way through, but I’ve been documenting the whole thing for everyone who might want to give this a try in the future. There’s not out there about them, but one German couple bred them successfully and documented it back in 2013 so it definitely is possible.

Anyways, I have officially reached the stage of this hobby where I’m filming shrimp mouth holes in macro and filling my camera up with thousands of photos and videos of tiny vampire shrimp larva thinking, “People need to see this.”

Enjoy. 🪭🦐😎

Big vampire shrimp news over here. DJ MiniBeatZ is berried again. 🦐🥚

Normally that would be exciting enough on its own, except there’s one tiny problem with the obvious explanation:
DJ FantastiK, my confirmed male, hasn’t lived in Rave Cave 1 since August 1.

Which leaves DJ MicroFanz.

MicroFanz is the smallest vampire shrimp I own, spends approximately 99.9% of his life fanning from the hide-est of hidey holes, and is the only vampire currently in Rave Cave 1 that I have never knowingly seen berried.

So unless these girls are storing sperm for a very long time, I’m starting to think my elusive little MicroFanz is actually a male. 😂

I also have to make a correction from some of my older posts because apparently giving two almost-identical tiny vampire shrimp similar DJ names was a terrible system.
When I first got MiniBeatZ and MicroFanz, they were both so small that I constantly switched their names in my head. I went back through my old posts in the Filter Feeders and Shrimp Keeper Facebook groups and realized that last spring I actually called MicroFanz the one who was berried.
But since then, as they’ve grown and their names have finally solidified in my brain, the female I’ve consistently been referring to as MiniBeatZ is the one I believe carried that clutch.

So for the sake of not making my breeding records completely impossible to follow from here on out:
MiniBeatZ = the female who has been berried before.
MicroFanz = the tiny elusive one who I now strongly suspect is male.

I also went back through my posts and pulled together the breeding dates I actually have documented:

9/29/25: VampEZ molted and became berried
10/30/25: released larvae
31 days

12/15/25: I posted that VampEZ was berried. I believe it was within about a week of her molt.
1/16/26: released larvae
32 days from when I first documented the eggs, but likely closer to 4–5 weeks total.

3/29/26: noticed VampEZ berried
4/9/26: noticed MiniBeatZ berried
4/24/26: both released larvae
VampEZ had been visibly berried for 26 days.
MiniBeatZ had only been visibly berried for 15 days.
That spring release is still one I wonder about. MiniBeatZ’s larvae were noticeably smaller than VampEZ’s when they released on the same day. My best guess is that Mini was carrying her first brood and may have released early when VampEZ released, but I obviously can’t prove that. It was just a very obvious size difference between the two groups of larvae.

8/1/26: I documented that VampEZ had molted and became berried
9/3/26: released larvae
33 days

So the clutches where I have the clearest timing keep landing right around 31–33 days, which is making me pay very close attention to MiniBeatZ now.

And of course, my current September 3 VampEZ larvae are still going strong while Mini is apparently preparing the next generation. Because apparently the Rave Cave breeding program does not believe in downtime. 😂

Current Rave Cave cast:
Rave Cave 1
DJ VampEZ — female, OG breeder, multiple broods
DJ MiniBeatZ — female, currently berried
DJ MicroFanz — suspected male and apparently much sneakier than I gave him credit for

Rave Cave 2
DJ FantastiK — confirmed male, officially kicked out of Rave Cave 1 on 8/1
DJ NightShift — pretty sure she’s female, and she may actually be carrying too. FantastiK had her completely on lockdown in his bachelor-pad cave on 9/11, the same day I saw that she had molted. She stayed in that cave with him for another two days before finally going back about her business. I still cannot get a good enough look underneath her to confirm eggs because apparently she values privacy. 😂 She’s small like MiniBeatZ was, and I couldn’t clearly see Mini’s eggs until she was much farther along either.
DJ ShadowFanZ — sex still TBD

So now I may have MiniBeatZ definitely berried, NightShift possibly berried, a newly suspected male MicroFanz, and my current larval batch still growing in Baby Rave Cave 2.

Things are getting very crowded on the Strange Aquatics maternity ward. 😂🦐

My last update was Day 17, and somehow these microscopic little weirdos are still hanging in there. I’m estimating I have around 50–55 larvae left between my two Baby Rave Caves.
They’re getting noticeably more developed now. Their eyes are obvious, their bodies are longer and more defined, and their little tail fans are much easier to see. They’re still definitely zoeae and nowhere near tiny vampire shrimp yet, so we have a LONG way to go.
I’ve been watching them actively catch and eat suspended food for a while now, but I’ve also noticed some starting to land on the glass more often. I finally got close enough to watch one moving along the glass and actually grazing the biofilm. 🙌

🦐 Where we’re at
I split the original batch between two tanks:
Baby Rave Cave 1: 3.5-gallon tank with about 3 gallons of actual water and ~35 - 40 larvae.
Baby Rave Cave 2: 10-gallon tank with roughly ~15–20 larvae.
Counting them is nearly impossible, so those are definitely estimates. I’ve also realized that counting only the ones actively swimming probably underestimates how many are actually alive since some are hanging out on the glass now.

🏠 Tank setup
Both tanks are kept pretty simple:
Salinity: SG 1.020, roughly 24–25 ppt
Temperature: 79°F
Bare bottom
No filter
Gentle air stone
Light is on 24 hours, however I turn it to lowest setting at night.
Waterline marked so I can monitor evaporation
Evaporation replaced with distilled water to prevent salinity creep
I decided against a sponge or Matten filter because these larvae are ridiculously tiny, and I’ve seen too many Amano breeders talk about larvae getting caught against/in sponge. So right now I’m relying on aeration, water volume and water changes. I am using a tiny amount of Prime a few times a week, mostly adding to the new water I’m putting in to disperse it better.

🍽️ Feeding
They’re getting a combination of live phytoplankton and tiny amounts of powdered food, including Baby Envy, Shrimp King Atyopsis and spirulina.
The live phyto blend contains Nannochloropsis, Tetraselmis, Isochrysis, Thalassiosira, Rhodomonas and Phaeodactylum.
I also use a flashlight to gather them into one area before feeding so I can concentrate food around the larvae rather than just dumping a ton into the entire tank.
That’s become especially interesting with the two different tank sizes.
Baby Rave Cave 1 has ~35 larvae in only about 3 gallons, so food encounters are probably pretty easy, but water quality is harder to maintain.
Baby Rave Cave 2 has only ~15–20 larvae spread throughout 10 gallons. Water quality has more buffer, but now I’m worried the food is too diluted, so I’ve been adding more phyto and concentrating them with the flashlight at feeding time.
I honestly don’t know yet which approach is going to work better.

💩 Water quality is still my biggest challenge
The original nursery was set up the same morning I discovered the larvae, so it was completely uncycled.
My latest test on Baby Rave Cave 1 showed:
Ammonia: ~1 ppm 😬
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: barely detectable
So water changes have become a bigger priority.
I use a reusable K-cup filter as a little larvae screen while removing water, and I carefully spot-clean obvious piles from the bare bottom with a turkey baster.
And if I suck up anything that even might be alive, it gets dumped into Baby Rave Cave 2. 😂 I refuse to accidentally turkey-baster a three-week-old survivor down the drain.

🔬 What I’m learning
There’s frustratingly little information available on successfully raising Atya gabonensis larvae, and I haven’t found a complete stage-by-stage guide specifically for this species. I’ve been comparing their development with published research on other Atya species while trying not to assume their timing is identical.
They’ve gone from microscopic free-swimming commas, to actively catching suspended food, to having much more developed bodies and tail structures, and now some are deliberately spending time on surfaces and grazing.
There has definitely been a lot of attrition, but Day 21 with roughly 50-ish survivors feels pretty freaking good. 🥹
Still zoeae. Still eating. Still growing.
Now we keep going. 🦐🪭

If you’ve raised Amano, Atya, Atyopsis or other amphidromous shrimp larvae, PLEASE keep sharing what worked for you. There’s so little information on these guys that comparing notes with other shrimp weirdos has been one of the most helpful parts of this whole experiment.

Since you all are the lot that actually get it, I’m gonna drop some more epic pics of my filter feeders for your browsing pleasure. 🪭👀
This is my DJ Vamp Crew, spread out across Rave Cave 1, my original 10-gallon long, and Rave Cave 2, my 20-gallon long.
I seriously love these weird shrimp. Vampire shrimp (Atya gabonensis) have so much more personality than I ever expected when I got my first one. They each have their favorite perches, favorite caves, different levels of bravery, and they’ve even learned my feeding routine. When the pumps turn off, the Vamps know it’s powdered-food time and start coming out to take their places.
And before somebody spots one of these pictures and panics because there’s a Vamp on the ground eating: vampire shrimp aren’t quite the same as bamboo shrimp in this department. Vamps have been documented sifting substrate in the wild, with substrate material found in their digestive tracts. With bamboo shrimp, spending time picking at the substrate is generally treated as a warning that they aren’t getting enough suspended food.
That doesn’t mean I want my Vamps living on the bottom searching for food all day either. I use how often I see them doing it as one of my feeding cues. Most of their time should still be spent planted in the current with those ridiculous fans open.
But give these guys an algae wafer and all dignity disappears. 😂 They frickin LOVE them, and watching a giant vampire shrimp attempt to eat a wafer with four enormous feather dusters for hands is one of the most awkward things I’ve ever seen.
Anyway, meet the crew:
DJ VampEZ is my OG girl and reigning matriarch. She’s been berried four times now and is the momma of the vampire shrimp larvae I’m currently attempting to raise through their saltwater larval stage.
Then there’s DJ MiniBeatZ, DJ MicroFanz, DJ FantastiK, and DJ NightShift. FantastiK has apparently appointed himself official Rave Cave baby maker and takes his job VERY seriously. NightShift may now be berried too after spending some quality post-molt time with him. 👀😂
And I can’t leave out my two Bamboo Shrimp (Atyopsis moluccensis), Panic and Disco. They absolutely belong in the filter-feeder family photo dump, except they found a feeding spot where I literally cannot get a decent camera angle. So I own two beautiful bamboo shrimp and have approximately zero respectable photos to prove it.
Meanwhile the Vamps are apparently available for full photoshoots.
I started with one tank because I fell in love with these giant, ridiculous fan-waving shrimp. Somehow that turned into two Rave Caves, five vampire shrimp, two bamboo shrimp, multiple pregnancies, and me currently raising microscopic Atya gabonensis zoeae in saltwater and documenting their development because there is so little information out there about breeding vampire shrimp successfully in captivity.
Things escalated. 😂
Anyway, enjoy the DJ Vamp Fam photo dump. 🪭🦐
And if you keep vampire shrimp, bamboo shrimp, or other filter-feeding shrimp, drop yours too. I can apparently never have enough pictures of these weirdos.

I’ve basically trained my DJ Vamps (my vampire shrimp) that when the filters and pumps shut off, it’s time to round up. 😂 They start coming out of their caves because they know I’m about to drop powdered food throughout the tank.

The bamboo shrimp, meanwhile, never get the memo.
I usually do this at least 3 times a week, sometimes more, which is also probably why I have approximately 47 million snails. 😂

For me, seeing one of my vampires spending time down on the substrate is one of my cues that it’s probably time to feed. Unlike bamboo shrimp, where substrate picking is generally a sign they aren’t getting enough suspended food, vampire shrimp do naturally sift material from riverbeds and substrate material has been found in their digestive tracts. So seeing them do it occasionally isn’t automatically a starvation sign. I just don’t want to see them doing it very often.

There’s not some scientific “10% rule,” but that’s roughly the gauge I use. If they’re spending more than a small fraction of their time crawling around and sifting instead of posted up filter feeding, I start looking at whether they’re getting enough suspended food or enough flow.

So far that system seems to be working pretty well. I’ve got five healthy vampires in this tank who have now bred five times between them, with what I’m hoping is number six underway. DJ VampEZ, my OG and the momma of the current babies I’m raising, has been berried four times. DJ MicroFanz has been berried once. And now I’m stalking DJ Nightshift after her molt and her suspicious THREE-NIGHT stay in DJ FantastiK’s cave. 👀😂

FantastiK himself is usually parked directly in front of his little personal pump. But if he’s hungry, my big guy will actually come out and look at me like I’m late with room service.

And apparently he was also very interested in the Nightshift pregnancy investigation.

I was trying to get a look underneath her to see if she’s berries when FantastiK decided to photobomb and stick his nose exactly where it did not belong in public. 🫠

So apparently we are BOTH waiting to find out if DJ Nightshift is berried.

Sir. Give the woman some privacy. 😂🦐🥚

We made it to Day 17! 🥹
There are definitely fewer than we started with, which I expected, but I still have a little group hanging in there. Counting these microscopic chaos noodles is basically impossible. 😂 Some are actively swimming through the water column while others spend quite a bit of time down near the bottom.
I’m still learning as I go because there is SO little information out there about successfully raising vampire shrimp (Atya gabonensis) larvae.
A few things I’ve changed/learned along the way:
I’m keeping them around 79°F and SG 1.020, topping off evaporation with distilled water so the salinity doesn’t creep up. I’m running just gentle aeration with no filter because these guys are so ridiculously tiny that I’m concerned even a sponge filter could trap them.
Food right now is a combination of live phytoplankton and tiny amounts of powdered foods. I’m also looking into live rotifers as another food source as they develop.
Water quality has probably been my biggest learning curve. This tank wasn’t cycled when I started because, well… I woke up to vampire shrimp larvae and suddenly became the owner of a microscopic shrimp nursery. 😂 I did find ammonia around 0.5 ppm, so I’ve become much more aggressive about small water changes and keeping the bottom clean without accidentally removing babies.
I also set up a larger 10-gallon system matched to their salinity so I have more water volume to work with. Dilution is definitely our friend here.
One thing I’m really curious about right now is their behavior near the bottom. Some seem to spend time down there and then take off swimming again, while others seem to stay down much longer. I’m trying to figure out what’s normal developmental behavior versus a larva that’s struggling.
And photographing them continues to be ridiculous. They’re transparent, microscopic, and the healthy ones apparently have absolutely no interest in sitting still for their portrait. 😂 But I finally got a couple pictures where you can actually see the little shrimp shape!
Still a LONG way to go. Everything I’ve found suggests A. gabonensis may have a larval period lasting several months, so we’re very much still in the beginning.
But 17 days ago these guys were released into freshwater, and they’re still here. I’ll take that win. 🥹🦐
If anyone has successfully raised amphidromous shrimp larvae, especially Atya/Atyopsis, I still want to hear EVERYTHING you’ve learned. This really does feel like one giant experiment at this point.

I finally made a Reddit account after connecting with the creator of this group in a Facebook Amano shrimp breeding group. He mentioned there was a much bigger filter feeder community here, so I figured this was probably the right place to start documenting what I’m doing. 🙂

My female vampire shrimp (Atya gabonensis) released larvae overnight Sept. 2–3. I found them the morning of Sept. 3 and moved them into saltwater within a couple of hours.

Today is Day 16, and somehow I still have zoeae alive. 😂
I started with what looked like an absolutely ridiculous number of larvae. I’ve definitely had losses along the way, and at this point I honestly couldn’t give you an accurate count, but I still have survivors in both larval tanks.

Right now I’m using bare-bottom setups with aeration, heat around 79°F, and roughly 1.020 SG. I’ve been feeding very fine powdered foods along with live phytoplankton and basically learning as I go.

There’s so little detailed information out there about breeding vampire shrimp that I decided I’m going to document the whole attempt. What I try, what works, what doesn’t, and probably plenty of mistakes too.

Even if none of them make it through metamorphosis, hopefully having the process documented gives the next person a little more information than I had starting out.

I’d really love to hear from anyone who has successfully raised vampire shrimp or another amphidromous shrimp through metamorphosis, especially what worked for you with feeding, salinity, and water quality.