How your shrimp moults

[Sunfire]

I had a treat - witnessed the moulting of one of my green shrimp yesterday.

It first bends into a prawn shape..and then straightens out...and then bends again....several times, until you can see that the outer 'shell' is peeling off.

And then finally, when enough of the outer shell is dislodged, it flicks its tail, and 'jumps' literally, out of it's skin.

The new shell underneath is rubbery - could see it 'bend'. The shrimp then seems to sit still in the area, and wave it's spinnerets. I suspect it is passing water through it's shell to expand it.

After which, it then swims off.

[Talos]

interesting man.
never seen the whole process before.

[des]

so roughly how long did the whole process take?

[|squee|]

How come I've never come across a video showing it...

I think it stood still for a while to let the shell harden.

[kemp]

yah. A video clip will be nice. I always get to see the moulted shells only

[Sunfire]

The whole process took less than a minute.... in face it may have been possible that it was flexing off the old shell before that, but I didn't notice it....

Anyway it's incredibly hard to find shrimps in our tanks, let alone watch them moult.

I wanted to grab my digital camera, but it was in the other room, and it didn't have a macro function...

[Neon Shrimp]

Thanks for the great step by step discription of a molt

[retro1983]

Every now and then I would find shells of my cherries lying around,

How do I know are they shells or are they dead bodies of my cherries?

What I saw is a white full body shell, including the head and body in one piece.

Is a shrimps mould its shell, is it a good sign? Meaning that, its comforable in the tank?

[notebook]

Every now and then I would find shells of my cherries lying around,

How do I know are they shells or are they dead bodies of my cherries?

hmmm usually if its a dead body.. you won't see the details of the feets or there should be some *meat* left.

otherwise its usually a whitish shell.. and you can make out the details of the fins and legs..

after observing a few more times, you should be able to tell the difference.

[Neon Shrimp]

notebook is right, you should not see the fleshy meat left inside the white opaque empty shell.

[vinz]

I've seen a documentary where the molting of lobsters was presented. My memory of it is a little faded, but here goes anyway:

1. Lobster absorbs water to bloat themselves. The idea is to expand the existing shell using internal pressure.
2. Then it expels the water, thus shrinking it's flesh. After that, the lobster can extract itself from the shell.