Shrimp / Blue Ram dilemna

[pwrflpills]

Ok, chalk it up to poor planning, but last week I bought both 2 Blue Rams (at LFS) and 10 Red Cherry Shrimp (at petshrimp.com). I have since been told the Rams will eat the unfortunately very small shrimp (.5" at best). I was not expecting the shrimp to be that small.

First, is this correct?

Second, what are anyone's suggestions?

I currently have the shrimp in my hanging breeder tank. What should I feed them? I've thrown a couple clumps of the black hair algae into their tank, which is what I bought them to eradicate, but I don't want them to starve...or be eaten.

Short of buying a species set up for shrimp, which I'm pretty uninterested in doing, what are my options?

 

[TCTFish]

The rams may end up picking on the shrimp. They might leave them alone if the shrimp were introduced first. That's iffy, but possible. They'd keep your little 5 gallon clean You could take a few of them and sneak them into the 20 while the lights are off and placed in the opposite side of the tank the rams are occupying. Then just observe to see what happens. Give it a while though before you're confident of any compatability. I know those little cherry shrimp aren't the cheapest around.

 

[SerLunchbox]

The rams will have a great snack ... infact most shrimp of that size would be a snack for most fish anyways given that cherry chrimp don't really have that hard of a carapace.

a nice vampire shrimp would do well against rams when it isn't molted ;P

 

[Ryehard]

Yeah I put some of those in with some small zebra danios expecting that there'd be no problem, and even a few of the zebras picked on them for a while. My gourami couldn't care less about them and pretty much just acts like he doesn't even see them. Now that they're bigger the zebras leave them alone but I'm sure the rams never would.

 

[TCTFish]

Flower shrimp are really cool and are well big enough not to get eaten. They get 4" (just as big as the rams...LOL) and instead of pincers, they have flowerette type appendages they catch tiny food particles with from the current of the water. They help maintain nitrates because of their ability to eat such small food debris. Without pincers, they are incapable of harming the fish.

 

[YuccaPatrol]

I think that small shrimp like cherries need to be kept in a shrimp-only tank if you want them to survive and reproduce. Otherwise they are just very expensive fish food.

Maybe you should consider some oto catfish for your algae cleaning needs.

Also, you can keep a shrimp tank and place algae covered decorations from your fish tanks in it from time to time to clean them and feed the shrimp.