Mississippi grass shrimp
We collected a few of these shrimp, all berried females, on a darter-collecting trip on 2026-06-13 at Square Lake in Washington County, MN. Square lake is weird, much cooler and clearer than neighboring lakes and with unusual fauna; I have definitely not seen them in any other waterway in Minnesota, and iNaturalist shows them in only a few scattered spots in the far east of the state.
I took one of them home and kept it in a one-gallon box in a cool room with a variety of water fleas for food. The eggs hatched on July 2nd, about 20 days later.
Unfortunately I don’t have photos of the Palaemonetes paludosus I raised years ago, but to my best recollection the paludosus larvae were darker, less developed, and tended to dangle at the surface of the water like a mosquito larva. These kadiakensis larvae are transparent, well-developed, and tend to stick close to the bottom. They are not full minature versions of their parents — they have swimming legs rather than walking legs — but their body shape is similar to that of the adults.
I’m moving the adult out of the box and keeping the larvae in the water where they hatched. I will feed them sifted moina and freshwater rotifers, at least for starters. There’s a bit of riccia and sunshine which should help with water quality a bit.