Cherry shrimp

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

oliver moggridge

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Feb 6, 2009
Messages
120
Location
Surrey
hi im thinking of getting some cherry shrimp and im not sure if the other fish in my tank will attack them? and what sort of food do they eat and are they hard to look after?
i have 5 sword tails, 4 bandits, 8 ember tetras, 8 neon tetras, 1 large common pleco, 1 male siamese fighter a, two female siamese fighters and 6 or 7 coolie loach.

1990493811_c3f1a312e7.jpg
 
Any fish that can fit a shrimp into it's mouth will try to if given the opportunity. Some fish have smaller mouths and could only go after baby shrimp but some fish like swordtails would be able to eat an adult shrimp when it molts. I wouldn't recommend any shrimp for that tank because of the swordtails and bettas among others.

RCS are one of the easiest shrimp to keep and breed. Basically if you have a male and a female of proper maturity you should have babies in 4-5 weeks. They prefer water temps between low 60's-low 80's for breeding but can survive in slightly warmer than freezing water but they generally stop breeding when the water gets into the mid 50's or so.

They prefer an lakaline pH but can live in a slightly acidic environment, though breeding may cease. Also their lifespans may be drastically reduced if kept in too low of a pH. Harder water is preferred as well by these shrimp.

They will eat uneatern fish food, algae, and they will spend most of their lives picking at "biofilm" from surfaces of plants and sifting through debris on the bottom of the tank. You could feed the tank once every week and they'd do well.

If you decide to give them a try I highly recommend at least a 10g tank soley for them or other types of shrimp and inverts. You can keep as many as 300 in a 10g tank since their impact on the bioload of the tank is so minimal.
 
cool thanks for that. kind of enoyed that the fish would eat them so no go on the shrimp. thanx anyway.;)
 
It depends on what is available to you where you are located. Some ramshorn snails would eat algae and they are safe for plants too. You could try RCS and maybe your fish would leave them alone for the most part or at least maybe you'd be able to have an establilshed colony in the tank and the fish would only take a few of them every now and then. Lots of hiding spaces and plants would make this possible.
 
i just bought a bunch of rcs and i'm pretty sure my fish have eaten all of them:mad:
so i definitely recommend species only, at least until they're older. mystery/apple snails are great. one of my favorite things to look at. they don't take over your tank, don't destroy your plants and are very majestic creatures. otos stay pretty small i think.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
They don't, I was in my zone when I wrote that...Just disregard
sorry
What about Ottos?
 
Don't take my exact word for it because I haven't even gotten my first tank up but when I was looking at Ottos I didn't see anything negative about them. They do need a very stable tank though(Cycled, consistent levels). I've seen the common ones in pet stores all the time, but I've heard of another sub-species called a zebra oto. Haven't seen them yet but they are cool looking. Oh and they're a schooling fish =]

Check these sites out
Otocinclus Catfish, Otto Cat
and one on zebra's
www.otocinclus.com - Home of the Dwarf Suckermouth Catfishes
 
cool cheers mate nice one. ive got some coolie loach allready so i dont think that ill need to get any of them. thanx tho.
 

Attachments

  • DSCF1266.jpg
    DSCF1266.jpg
    68.4 KB · Views: 75
I have an otto and he doesn't bother anyone, just runs around eating algae all day.
I recently added a flying fox to work on some black hair algae and am looking for a couple more. They are peacefull as well. I also have 3 chinese algae eaters but they tend to get a bit aggressive.
As for the cherry shrimp. I bought 3 very small ones for my comunity tank. I thought they all got eaten when I couldn't find them after the first couple of days, after a couple of weeks I saw one in a clump of java moss and as it turns out all 3 have survived and doubled in size. They are very fast so unless they are molting (in which case they would try to hide) I don't think many would be eaten very easily.
 
i'm surprised your pleco doesn't take care of the algae. mine does a super job!
and imo i think sometimes when algae eaters get aggressive they just need supplemental food, like algae wafers, or shrimp pellets.
 
Back
Top Bottom