Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping => Invertebrates - Shrimps and Snails => Topic started by: Andy The Minion on November 11, 2016, 09:23:40 PM
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Its just a thought but do you think my overflow box would be suitable for a few shrimp?
You may be able to see in the picture that I have a deep sand bed filter in the bottom where some detritus is collecting and a few MTS truffling around. There is no algae growing in there but I can drop food in. I could also easily put an submersible light in there but there is a small amount of light from a nearby desk lamp.
Its freshwater, very soft and acidic, nitrates are below 20ppm and maintained at 24°C
The overflow pipe is protected so they wont get sucked in :)
If yes, what flavour of shrimp would you suggest.
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I'm not familiar with that type of filter, but you say the overflow pipe is protected so shrimps wouldn't be sucked in. How exactly is it protected? Adult shrimps may not get sucked in but if you had a shrimp species that can breed in fresh water, babies might depending on the 'protection'. Baby shrimps are tiny.
Amano shrimps are the largest of the 'ordinary' shrimps. Females are bigger than males, and with my last batch of amanos, one female was almost the same size as a dwarf chain loach. There are larger shrimps available but they are filter feeders which are hard to feed in an aquarium, so I would not advise filter feeders as a first shrimp.
Amanos can't breed in fresh water so there is no problem with babies getting sucked up. To be accurate, they can breed - the females carry fertilised eggs - but these shrimps hatch into larvae which need to be in salt water to develop. In the wild they are washed down to the sea where they grow and metamorphose into adults which then swim back up river.
The other shrimp suitable for a shrimp novice is the cherry shrimp. They now come in colours other than red - yellow, orange and even blue - but stick with red to start with. Cherry shrimps have been selectively bred from olive green brownish wild shrimps, and the non-red colours are even more selectively bred than red ones = more delicate.
Cherry shrimps are smaller than amanos and do reproduce in fresh water. I had problems keeping them alive at first, the eggs of my last adult hatched and my colony started with those babies. I moved 93, from babies to adults, into the main tank when I closed the 50 litre.
Another shrimp you could try is the ghost/glass shrimp. These are transparent so no colour and can reproduce in fresh water. Be careful if you get those as it is known for a different species to be mixed in with them, or even mislabelled as ghost shrimp. Macrobrachium shrimps are predators which grow long arms as they mature and they use these to catch fish with. And they look just like ghost shrimps as juveniles.
The very soft and acidic might be a problem. The best thing I can do is refer you to planet inverts (http://www.planetinverts.com/) which has lots of articles on shrimps as well as species profiles.