What Shrimp Can I Get, How Many And When!?

Great minds, Steve 

To be honest, I don't know   
I would use dechlorinated water, certainly for the last soak before going in the tank - a bucket doesn't hold that much water so you won't use all your dechlorinator and with the last one it's beter to make sure no chlorine goes in the tank with the plants.
The MA I use usually has cherry shrimps. I got some from there. Though they didn't today. I have to look at the fish whenever we go to that garden centre, and husband wanted some veg seeds........

Right! Today I went to MA after my shift.... and got myself 6 cherry red shrimps! They are so cute and settling in well. They were surprisingly easy to catch and release into the aquarium and acclimatising was easier than I thought, and they've been happily chomping their way around my tank since. Everyone seems happy so far! The most interaction I've seen is one of my endlers doing their little dance next to the shrimp. Otherwise they seem to be happily ignoring each others existence! I also bought two plants which are sitting in buckets waiting to be ready for the tank.

It looks like I've either got 1 female and 5 males, or 2 females. One is completely clear so I'm assuming it's female, the other has some colour but is mostly clear so I'm not sure?

They really are! They're just so cute, I love how they look like they're doing doggy paddle when they swim and the little cleaning actions they do. Fingers crossed my new little additions will be OK!

Ooh I didn't realise that! So the clear one is more likely to be a male? I've read they often 'redden up' once they've settled in anyway so I guess it's harder to tell males from females anyway? Confusing!

Ha thanks for the warnings Sue, I'll try not to be horrified when I see the first 'dead' shrimp! Sounds like it could be quite entertaining to watch! I thought I'd already lost one earlier but I found him / her sitting on one of my fake plants. Looks like that's their 'spot' as they're still there now! The MA had the red cherries, orange, green and some huge shrimps. I was tempted by the orange ones but the red ones won me over in the end! They were refitting their marine section though so I didn't get to have a nose at those.

The LFS with the beautiful coloured endlers.... I'm hoping to go get another one on Thursday morning to bring my numbers up to 8. Would that be a bad idea after adding shrimp already this week? I just really can't resist getting one when they're so pretty and it sounds like they're selling out fast! The shop owner said they have a lot of very pretty males in so I'm keen to go and try and get one as like the one in the picture as possible!

I also bought some shrimp food just in case there isn't enough for them to chomp on. Hopefully they'll be OK though but I'll feed them a little just in case. My endlers are getting increasingly frustrated as I keep staring in at the shrimp without feeding them ha.

Sorry for the essay, as you can probably tell I'm a little excited about my new additions!

One shrimp related question - when it comes to doing the water changes, I'm hoping these guys are more shy than my endlers!? Is it tricky to gravel clean with them in the tank?

I can't wait to get my plants in too!

Today in the MA they had some of the 'green' endlers I have, but it also looked like they had some other endlers which weren't labelled. There were some really tiny babies, some of the grey / whiteish females and a couple of males which were a really nice aquamarine colour on their tales. Perhaps they were just baby guppies, but they definitely seemed more endler like to me... Still, none of them were as pretty as the one at the other shop so I'm holding out hope of getting one like him!

It's a challenge if you take the guard off the end (if you have one).  I was hoovering up some poo from the surface of the sand once and an Amano swam right up the tube, taking a into the waste bucket.  Little chap was not happy one bit and it took me a few minutes to catch him as he was racing around the bucket.   

Oh dear! I'm clumsy enough as it is so I'm hoping for not too many siphon-shrimp related disasters! I already panicked enough when I first added the shrimp and couldn't see them in the tank and thought that they'd leapt to their deaths somewhere... oh and don't get my started on when I first put the bag into the tank....

I took the brown paper bag out and to my panic it was dripping and suddenly the fish bag fell the whole way through. In a blind panic I shoved the bag into the tank since the bag was dripping too and I thought somehow there was a leak... which resulted in some soggy brown paper bag floating around my tank, so I had to turn everything off and retrieve that before I could sort my shrimp out properly. Oddly once I'd acclimatised them and took the bag out it didn't seem to be leaking at all so I'm really not sure what happened there!? It was probably just some water left from the bag floating in the tank whilst the lady caught the shrimps for me!

Shrimps don't react the same way as fish to the siphon tube. Fish either run for cover or try to eat it. Shrimps just sit there and carry on regardless. If you carefully touch the shrimp with the side of the tube, they do get the hint and move off that piece of gravel that you want to clean but pinch the tube first so you don't accidentally suck it up. They do cling to the underside of decor, so be careful when getting close - or move it out of the way.


I've never seen shrimps in my nearest MA (the smallest one); the one a bit further away only has red ones (when they have any!) and the one at York had several types of shrimp last time I was there but we don't get there very often. I got my ammanos from there 4 years ago.
If you ever get a bigger tank, be careful with the larger shrimps. Look at their arms - if they only just reach their mouths, they are OK (ghost or amanos) but if they have long arms, don't buy as they can and will catch small fish (though there are reports of amanos doing the same). And filter feeders (the one with fans instead of hands) are tricky to keep alive as they are specialised feeders.

Shrimps add very little to the bioload. You got the shrimps on Monday so it should be OK to get another endler on Thursday. Just test your water to be safe.

If you can't find a corpse or even a dried up shrimp on the floor, it should still be alive. They are masters at hiding. Shrimps can escape through small holes and go for a walk across your floor. They can get a surprisingly long way.

Thanks guys! That's a relief.

Yeah they really are entertaining little things and so cute! my friends seemed to like them too, though there were a lot of jokes along the lines of 'mm tasty'!

I saw a shrimp shell the other day so I suspect he has now gone into hiding. New fish is settling in well too happily swimming with the others. Will try and get a photo of his true colours on my days off :-)

I'm still concerned about shrimp number 6...

My shrimp spend a lot of time on their own, but equally they love flocking together every now and then which they were doing this morning. I could only count 5 again. And yesterday during the water change / planting escapades I moved all the wood and rocks they could have been hiding under and couldn't see any signs of shrimp. No signs outside of the tank of a dead shrimp either though... so where has it gone!? My tank is only small so surely they can't be that good at hiding!?

I saw a shrimp climbing up the heater and suddenly thought maybe 'Shrimp 6' could have climbed up along the wire out of the tank... but my tank has that black grated lid so I don't know where it could have gone if that were the case.

I've spotted the clearish shrimp, so it's one of the more colourful ones that has gone missing. Very odd...

Also, whilst I was doing the water change and fiddling about in the tank one of the shrimp decided to crawl onto my hand! It was very cute but I was wondering whether that's bad for them?? I always wash my hands thoroughly before putting them in the tank and then rinse the again to get off any soap so I'm hoping it's fine!

My new fish 'Ace' is super speedy and always dashing about in the tank so I'm still yet to get a good shot of him that show all his colours properly. It's even more difficult as his colours are better in certain lights too

I'm afraid I can't help you with this one, Jesnon. I've lost all six of the bright red ones, and in the last few days, I've found two dead adults of the not-quite-so-bright red ones, and half a juvenile. I dread looking in the tank in a morning 
I have no idea what is happening. Since I only found half a juvenile, the head end had obviously been eaten by either the pygmy cories or the endlers. And one of the adults was inside a piece of decor - I've started doing a daily check. Since you haven't found any bodies, maybe your endlers are capable of eating dead shrimp before you find them.