# Cherry Shrimp in my community tank?



## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

Hi everyone, I'd like to find out if my 48 gallon long tank is suitable for cherry shrimp survival against my fishys, do you think there is enough hiding spots? my ph is 7.4-7.6, ammonia nitrite nitrate all reading zero, dgh is at 7 and dkh is at 5. my tank is moderately planted and was wondering if i have enough hiding spots for them to survive. I have 9 glowlight rasboras, ten gold wcmm and 17 cardinal tetras. I however will be grabbing 9-12 more serpaes and possibly 12-20 more green neon tetras if possible. I am also running a eheim 2217 and temp is at constant 76-77 degrees


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

I would say no, if there was double I would say probably not a good idea as they will be picked off slowly most likely. Very little chance of successful breeding if any at all


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

do you think amano shrimp would survive?


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

pyrrolin said:


> I would say no, if there was double I would say probably not a good idea as they will be picked off slowly most likely. Very little chance of successful breeding if any at all


Did you mean if i had double the plants it would probably still be a bad idea to add shrimp?


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

exactly, but that is just my opinion.


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## djtbster (Nov 29, 2006)

id say its 50/50 with more plants in your tank, ive introduced 100+ cherry shrimp in a heavily planted tank, the smaller once got eaten, but mostly after 1 year id say there are atleast 50, no chance of reproducing tho as the fry are great live food , at my current location i have a tank with 20+ amano shrimp and they get the job done as my cleaning crew, im gonna try the 100+ cherry shrimp idea again soon lol


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

You should be fine. The fish you have right now are small and peaceful, they will not bother the shrimps too much.

For best chances of success, start with at least 50 shrimps.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

what if i get a branch drift wood that can sit in the front of my tank and cover it with xmas moss. do you think that would help loads or still 50/50 chance


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

xriddler said:


> what if i get a branch drift wood that can sit in the front of my tank and cover it with xmas moss. do you think that would help loads or still 50/50 chance


It's not 50/50. As is, cherry shrimps will do just fine in your tank.

The only issue is how many baby shrimps survive. If you start with only 5 adult shrimps, you won't get many baby shrimps, and those will get eaten, so your population will not grow much.

On the other hand, if you start with 50 adults, you'll get a lot more baby shrimps, which results in more babies surviving to adulthood and in turn give birth to more baby shrimps.

Mosses are excellent hiding places for baby shrimps. You will get a much better survival rate if you have big fluffy patches of moss in your tank.

However, even without mosses, you can add 50 shrimps to your tank and they will quickly thrive. If you add 20, they will still do well, but will increase in numbers more slowly. If you add only 5, then you might not see any increase at all.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

i think i read from the persons sale that his shrimp are 1/2". Is that size too small even if i get 50 of them. what would be the ideal size


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## colio (Dec 8, 2012)

I can't speck from personal experience, but the only fish on that list that seem to be risky (based on my research) is the serpaes. I think the suggested idea of driftwood and moss is excellent. My 10 gallon has around 14 fire reds (some very small juveniles), and they seem to love grazing in the java moss. I have a fair amount, but it is not very tightly planted (as in, a clump is fair sized but with some space between moss tendrils), and it seems to be shrimp paradise. 

Having babies is of course a different issue, but moss should help a few baby shrimp survive to. 

Also, you can get some river rocks (I get them at the dollar store, or all places) and make little "shrimp houses" which will give them somewhere safe to hide and rest. This may be especially important when they are first added to the tank, if they are shy. 

My shrimpies are some of the favorite livestock in my tanks.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

so i have tried 50 cherry shrimp for my tank and it failed. i have had 3 deaths probably from bad acclimation but even with 47 of them i cant count 10 of them in my tank now. its been one month exactly. I had 7 pregnant shrimp 1.5 weeks after i dropped them in and now for some odd reason recently all have gone missing. I dont know if my shrimps are dead or not as i have not found their bodies. my water conditions are fine i just dont know where they have gone, id at least like to find the carcasses. As for Hit and Miss for my tank its a big Miss


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## futurezach (Jun 11, 2012)

I had the same thing happen in my tank. Turns out my shrimp were expensive snacks for my diamond tetras and dwarf gourami. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened in yours


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

My shrimps were too big for my fishes mouth though that's the weird thing


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

Not when they're dead... The fish can tear it to pieces and you'd never find a thing.


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## tankies (Feb 1, 2012)

xriddler said:


> so i have tried 50 cherry shrimp for my tank and it failed. i have had 3 deaths probably from bad acclimation but even with 47 of them i cant count 10 of them in my tank now. its been one month exactly. I had 7 pregnant shrimp 1.5 weeks after i dropped them in and now for some odd reason recently all have gone missing. I dont know if my shrimps are dead or not as i have not found their bodies. my water conditions are fine i just dont know where they have gone, id at least like to find the carcasses. As for Hit and Miss for my tank its a big Miss


what fish you have in there now? if it fits in their mouth, they are lunch. Even if it doesnt, some will just torment and harrass the adult ones till they stress out and die. I had a CPD tank of abt a dozen and 200+ shrimps....vanished in a few weeks...and this tank has ample hiding spots. Didnt see dead bodies!!! My CPD developed the hunting skills when they tasted the little ones.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

Could just be that the shrimp are hiding and you just can't see them. But I am sure the fish are at least taking out a few of them over time.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

16 cardinals 1/2-3/4 inches each
9 gold white clouds 1-1.5 inches
9 glowlight rasboras - 3/4-1 inches each
5-6 ruby tetras - 1/4-3/4 inches each

all housed in a 4 foot 45-48 gallan tank.

I havent seen the 1 inch shrimps for at least 2-3 days i just don't know where thay have gone. these shrimps are way to big for those fish to eat whole and even if they rip the shrimp apart i should have some sorta carcass which i cant find its really weird


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## solarz (Aug 31, 2010)

xriddler said:


> 16 cardinals 1/2-3/4 inches each
> 9 gold white clouds 1-1.5 inches
> 9 glowlight rasboras - 3/4-1 inches each
> 5-6 ruby tetras - 1/4-3/4 inches each
> ...


The shrimps are probably just hiding. 50 shrimps in a 4-foot tank is nothing.

Also, check your canister. Some might have gotten sucked into the intake.


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## xriddler (Feb 16, 2012)

i meshed up my canister intake since day one of setup and i use a flashlight to shine the back of my eheim everynight (i have pretty bad OCD) but im a messy kind >.> maybe i should buy 50 more lol


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

Hopefully the shrimp are just hiding. It can be surprising how many shrimp can hide in a very, very small space, and you won't see them at all.

And if any of the fish have been hunting them, then they are not going to come out in the open nearly as much as they would if they were not being hunted. They are pretty much programmed to hide from any potential predators.

I had Snowballs in a 30 G with Danios, Ghost, Whisker and Bamboo shrimps. The Danios, though they don't spend much time on the bottom, certainly ate some of them. So did the Ghost and Whisker shrimp. So for awhile, it looked like the Snowballs had mostly been eaten and I thought I would not see them any more. 

They were nearly all very, very young, not much past newborns, so much smaller than the ones you mentioned. But after a couple of months, I started seeing Snowballs in the tank, flitting about, from plant to plant, all over the place. When I moved them to another tank several months later, I had about 40 of them, and kept finding more I had missed in the main tank for months after that too. I'm quite sure many of the babies were eaten, but by no means all of them. Certainly the ones I kept finding later on were not adults, so they were babies too small to see in all the stuff around them when I moved out the main group.

So give it a bit of time before you assume they're gone for good.


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