Well, last night I saw again shrimps behaving strange...
Did not see any of them molt or "making baby shrimps" :-)
But I knew something strange is in the air... hmmm water :-)

They were agitated, jumped on each other, it was visible
that there is unusuall activity going on. Intensive touching
with antennas, red shrimp chased by the orange ones, etc...

It was 1:00am and I was not in the mood for waiting... very sleepy.

This morning I saw in the same spot an empty shrimp exoskeleton.
So as I expected, shrimp molted again that night and they had
fun again when I was not watching...

Oh well... maybe next time.

BTW - two recently acquired red shrimps still not go well
together. Stay in separate areas of the tank - I guess it
will take some time for the similar relationship like between
orange ones to develop...

"Pszemol" wrote in message ...
:-)

Two skunk shrimps (Lysmata amboinensis) having a quicky in my tank :-)
Last night, around 1:00am with lights off but ambient light from the
room light I noticed a fresh empty exoskeleton of one shrimp and two
shrimps hanging out next to it... One is niticable softer than the
other - you can tell it by the way how the antennas were moved by
the water currents...
When I was watching suddenly one shrimp grabbed the soft one hug it
belly to belly forming a two-shrimp-cross and hold it so strong that
I was afraid the soft one will crack in half...
Whole thing lasted maybe 2 full seconds and that was it - they
relaxed later with grooming their antennas with their pincers...
Like nothing happened a moment ago :-)

Looks like I was late for the molting show because soon after that
the empty exoskeleton flow with the water current away from the
scene. If I watched the tank couple of minutes earlier I would
have seen a shrimp molting with my own eyes...

Well, I have marine tanks for many years and I had always shrimps
there, but I have never seen before them having sex :-)