# Missing shrimp mystery solved



## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I've been wondering lately where a number of my shrimp have been. Each time I looked at the tank, it seemed some were missing, but I thought they must just be hiding.

Today I cleaned the filter and found out where those shrimp were. I have never seen so many in a filter. Once in awhile I will find one shrimp, but today I could not believe how many were in there, all alive and apparently well. 

First I found a bunch of them in the sponge, a very coarse piece left over from another project, folded in half to fit. They were inside the fold, picking away at it. When I saw them, I lifted out the media basket and saw shrimp jumping every which way, fortunately all landed in the tank. I knew the prefilter had fallen off a few times, but I never imagined this many shrimp would get into the small AC. 

I have Fire Red cherries, Stone shrimp and miniature fan shrimp in this tank and all three were in the filter. Once the basket was out, I could see movement in the remaining water, so obviously more shrimp were in there. 

Tried to net them out, but they kept eluding me. Then one appeared to swim into the impeller well, and I figured he was sushi, yikes ! Shut off the power bar and lifted the filter off the tank, to pour the water out into a bowl, which produced at least ten more shrimp. I think there were at least twenty five living in that filter.. many of them very young, but no shrimp sushi, thankfully.

Lesson learned.. keep that prefilter in place !


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## Splak (May 1, 2013)

Wow lol. I'm shocked they were alive 0_o


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## bettaforu (Sep 6, 2009)

Haha....join the club of shrimp fishing in the filter! Nothing will stop them from getting into a HOB filter....Ive had them climb up over the sponge on the intake, up the tube and out of the water, over the top of the filter floss and disappear inside. 
Once they figure out there is nice yucky stuff in that place, they will head for it.

This is why I put a piece of floss (dirty) in my breeder boxes so the baby shrimps can eat off it once they are born and mamma in waiting has her own snack buffet table.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

As it happens, the AC is relatively new on this tank, before this, it had only a sponge filter. 

But the mini fan shrimp need a current to feed in and this was the easiest way to provide one. They have a rock they sit on to feed in the outflow current, sometimes I find a dozen or more lined up side by side on it. 

It is the first time I've cleaned the filter since I added it, and shock hardly covers the reaction I had when I saw shining little bodies flipping in all directions ! Next time I will make sure to remove the filter box before I take any media out of it, so if they are in there again, hopefully I won't lose any. This time I was just lucky that none hit the floor.

Those fan shrimp are quite pale and aside from the wet shine they are darn hard to see once they are out of water, so I'm glad they all ended up back in the tank. I might not have found them on the floor . 

Incidentally, I've also had a few kuhli loaches get into a larger AC, the 70, and also some CPDs, none have been damaged by the experience. I have come to the conclusion that the way these filters are constructed actually makes it nearly impossible for most critters to come in contact with the impeller. When they come up the tube, they don't have much space to escape at the other end, but there must be enough to avoid the impeller, or some of them would have had some damage, I'd think. 

Even the little shrimp that appeared to have ducked into the well was not harmed, and I thought for sure it would be all chopped up. Didn't happen. With so many shrimp surviving the experience as well as fish, I think it's more than luck. I've not used any brand other than AC so far, maybe some others leave space enough for tube crawlers to be sucked into the impeller ? Whatever the reason I'm glad they were ok.


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