Adding shrimp, but I made a big mistake...

[sepuku]

Hi all,

I got over-excited when seeing shrimp for sale online, and bought a selection.
I (very stupidly) assumed that they'd be fine to put in the tank with my mollies, penguin tetras, golden barbs, platy, and siamese flying fox (there's also some oto's in there too, but I've read they are good tank mates).
The fish are fairly small at present:
Platy: 4cm
Penguin tetras: 2.5cm to 3.5cm
Mollies: 2.5cm to 4cm
Oto's: 2.5cm to 3.5cm
Siamese flying fox: 3cm
Golden barbs: ~2.5cm

I put in some brine shrimp a while back for the assassin snails to eat, but the fish had a feast.
Its a fairly well planted aquarium, and I've bought some more plants to provide some extra cover... The tank is 160L (~40USG).
Tank can be seen on my other journal thread: https://www.fishforums.net/threads/my-first-aquarium-in-a-long-time.469797/page-2

I'm not really sure why I didn't do the research first, but I'm most likely going to struggle to send them back now, so my questions are:
- Am I going to watch the fish have a very expensive dinner? I don't really care about the money side of it. I just don't want to lose the shrimp!
- If there is hope that they can live in the same tank, how can I go about introducing them without having them get eaten immediately...

I was considering trying to distract the fish with food to give the shrimp a chance to find cover in the tank.

Any guidance would be much appreciated (other than "you idiot. Do research first")

 

[Slaphppy7]

Don't risk overfeeding the tank to distract the fish, it can cause water param issues.
Some fish will feast on shrimp, other will ignore them, you just have to try and see what happens.

I'd consider setting up a 5.5G tank for the shrimp...

 

[sepuku]

I'm also considering when I'm ready to release, squeeze the top of the net closed, and release them down in amongst the plants, so they dont have to make a frantic dash for cover.
I'd love to set up another tank, but my "spare parts" are in use by a friend! I wish I'd got them back off him before getting the shrimp through.

 

[Yohance1130]

The best option is to make a separate tank for them.


But If you're going to keep them in the tank with those fish your best bet is to get as much cover as possible in the aquarium for the shrimp so they have a fighting chance to survive if one of your fish starts to chase them. Some of them will get eaten but it well not be the whole colony. You should also try to provide crevices or places were your shrimp can only enter but your fish can not enter if possible. The more cover there is the more the survival rate of the shrimp rises.

when you add your shrimp you can catch them in a net and directly add them inside any of your plants or decorations the fish should stay at the top of the aquarium distracted by the lid opening and your hand in the aquarium. Good-luck!

 

[sepuku]

I actually buried a bag full of lava rock in the aquarium, behind teh bunker entrance to raise up the level of the soil. I was initially annoyed by this suggestion, as the soil collapsed and now the top of the bag is on show, but luckily hidden away behind the plants (on the left of the tank). I'm now wondering if its going to be a literal life saver...
I'm thinking I could cut a hole in the bag about 10cm in diameter giving the shrimp full access to the buried lava rock below, and as the rock is piled up, the fish shouldn't be able to fit down in between the gaps. The chunks of rock are of a similar size to those seen in the picture on the other thread... The only entrance into that bag would be the hole I cut in it. The rest is covered over by soil.
I think that could be good enough cover for them...

 

[Yohance1130]

I actually buried a bag full of lava rock in the aquarium, behind teh bunker entrance to raise up the level of the soil. I was initially annoyed by this suggestion, as the soil collapsed and now the top of the bag is on show, but luckily hidden away behind the plants (on the left of the tank). I'm now wondering if its going to be a literal life saver...
I'm thinking I could cut a hole in the bag about 10cm in diameter giving the shrimp full access to the buried lava rock below, and as the rock is piled up, the fish shouldn't be able to fit down in between the gaps. The chunks of rock are of a similar size to those seen in the picture on the other thread... The only entrance into that bag would be the hole I cut in it. The rest is covered over by soil.
I think that could be good enough cover for them...

It is worth a try. My only concern is the rocks potentially crushing the shrimp, Like if the shrimp are inside the bag and there is some sort of vibration that causes the rocks to move and potentially fall on the shrimp.

I do not believe it well happen but it is a possibility. Other than that it could work and could be a good hiding spot for the shrimp.

 

[ArmchairAquariest]

The shrimp probably need a new tank, a 5 g will do and won't break the bank and can be found everywhere or ordered overnight from your favorite supplier.

If, however, you want to try and keep them in the tank they are in currently (no promises this will work) they are going to need a spacious refugium that only they can access or a ton of relatively contiguous adjacent hidey spaces beyond what you currently have (I followed your link to the picture of your tank, it looks very nice! ... but if you want to keep shrimp in there as well its going to need some non-trivial mods.)

First the term "well planted" is relative. Relative to what you are going for in looks, ecosystem, and with the fish you have it is "well planted" but to provide enough hides for shrimp in a tank with your fish stock it really is not that well planted relative to shrimp hiding needs. One or two really good cover-providing floaters like a water lettuce would really help provide more shrimp hide space. A bit of dense java moss or equivalent on a rock would help as well. Maybe finish it off with a bunch of hornwort wedged as a free floater in a corner ideally tangled into the roots of the water lettuce would then probably help the shrimp a lot.

After the plant additions you can get a bunch of little ceramic shrimp tubes and the like along with some more rocks and mix them together. If you stack things correctly with your rocks only your rocks plus some larger looking gaps between them will really be visible but your shrimp will know the difference and have a large protective rock-fort to call home. If you get the shrimp tubes and little ceramic shrimp geometries to "hollow-out" your rock piles, be sure you get the smallest of these that can still fit dwarf shrimp. A lot of aquarists have found out the hard way that the majority of the shrimp tubes, geometries, and hides that are for sale are unfortunately still large enough that really determined fish can squeeze into them and have an all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet thus making said items a bit useless. The sizes that worked best for me have been:

this for shrimp tubes,

this for shrimp geometries.

Be aware on the shrimp geometries, the little cubes on their own are so small that while fish can't really squeeze into them they can still usually get their mouth far enough into them to be devastating -- i.e. these little cubes don't work in isolation on their own, but can be glued together (use acrylic super-glue gel, its aquarium safe) or stacked into the centers of your rock-piles (carefully, a couple of them together can support some rock weight but they are still fragile) to turn said rock piles into shrimp forts with spacious interiors (spacious by shrimp standards, and ideally not-spacious or even accessible by fish standards.) As shrimp like to scrape and eat bio-film the shrimp rock-forts also double as shrimp food farms, which is nice, but it can be disappointing if they are spending all their time fortified and/or eating in there.

 

[ArmchairAquariest]

I am noting people in this thread are concerned about shrimp rock-piles and the like shifting and crushing shrimp -- a reasonable concern.

To fix this you can treat the rock piles (with or without shrimp tubes and shrimp geometries) the way marine aquarists treat live rock and cement them together. The marine aquarists I have talked to recommended: Polymorph thermoset plastic for the job. Its fish safe (and shrimp safe) and I have used it to cement together weird otherwise unstable rock configurations for freshwater as well with good results so it isn't just a marine tank thing. The key word there is "cement" -- this stuff does not work like glue but behaves more like mortar for bricks and masonry. I didn't really understand the difference and was initially treating it like I could glue rocks together as much as one can glue wood together with wood glue -- the results were disasterous.

Instead, outside of the tank, plop down your first layer of rocks and whatever for your pile on a flat surface. Then melt a wad of the thermoset plastic and apply it to the bottom of the rocks and such that you start to stick down on top of the first layer -- squish 'em down really good. Repeat until done. The result is very stable once left to cool for a couple of hours, but unlike glue the tensile strength is bad -- i.e. you can't safely do things like pick up your creation by the top and let all the cemented bits dangle from it; dangling is bad and things may pop out and drop off easily from that (this is the key way in which it is "not like glue.") But all other forms of stress: compression, torque, shaking, etc... are shrugged off pretty well by this cement, just no dangling. As long as the weight is supported on the bottom of your creation and things have some gravity in their favor as far as hanging together you can build some pretty unnatural and precarious looking rock piles that still hold together very well. ... be sure you manipulate the molten polymorph with tools that you don't mind getting covered in the stuff, I thought it would be easier to remove than it is and I ruined some things I didn't mean to due to this error.

The one thing you might not like with the polymorph is seeing the "mortar" in certain places which does look really unnatural. The marine tanks don't have to worry about this because the coraline algae happily grows on it just like the live rocks and covers it up making it look contiguous with the live rock around it. In fresh water you have to hide it yourself as nothing will hide it for you. From my experience there are three ways to go about that:

1. design and plan correctly from the beginning so that most of your mortar is only in hidden spaces and you aren't using too much of it.

2. glue a plant on it. No seriously this works great. Get a plant with a rhizome (like an anubias) or cut a strip of moss, put some acrylimide superglue gel on the rhizome or moss-bit it and then glue it right to the exposed mortar even if it is currently underwater -- PRESTO! hidden forever.

3. pile stuff on top of it. The rockpiles made with the polymorph plastic mortar tend to handle compression well, so once you have the core of your pile mortared together properly you can freely pile loose unmortared stuff on top of it (more rocks, some driftwood bits, etc...) to hide exposed mortar that you find unsightly.

 

[starzfish]

May I recommend you put them in a plastic tub/bin? Maybe put some plants and rocks in there. Then later when you get a tank you can transfer your shrimp. Kinda like a quarantine/holding tank for the shrimp.