Cherry Shrimp Going Crazy

[Ahmed]

one of my six cherry shrimps just started to swim all over the tank in circles. something seems bothering him. He is very stimulated. All the others are fine. I had them for almost 3 weeks now.
my water parameters are :
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate always high 40 due to london tap water
6 cherry shrimps - 3 penguin tetras - 8 neon tetras many baby pest snails. some adult crushed snails
Some plants - Fluval 3 and trickle filter with sponge filters.

 

[Liam]

As long as he is just swimming around and not dropping on his back he should be fine. If its a male they do that when the females are ready to mate, they look like minature supermen flying about. If the others are walking about as usual, everything should be fine. Even females ready to mate will start swimming about. If they were okay for three weeks and nothing has changed in the water they should do fine.

 

[GoldLenny]

You should add some easy to grow low-light plants to your tank to help suck up them nitrates. Shrimps do not do well in water with high nitrates. You can get some Java Moss and either let it lay on the bottom or you can anchor it with monofilament line to some wood or an ornament, which cherry shrimp love. Also some Guppy Grass and Anacharis which floats on the surface so it gets a lot more CO2 from the air and gets plenty of light because it's much closer to the light. This gives it the ability to become fast growing which lets it suck up the nitrates from your tank as a food source.

 

[Ahmed]

Thank you guys for the advices. That's reassures me. Will try to add more plants.
If hey breed will they baby be OK with my tetras.

 

[GoldLenny]

Do the penguin's and neon's school together? If not, you should probably fill out the school if your tank can handle the bioload. When schooling fish are not in a proper school, they often act aggressive and unsocial.

According to their profile on Mongabay and BadmansTropicalFish, they do eat brine shrimp and insect larvae so I would suspect they would eat the baby shrimps also.
http/fish.mongabay.com/species/Thayeria_boehlkei.html
http/badmanstropicalfish.com/profiles/profile36.html

You should also put in a molting cave like this to help protect the fish...
http/www.aquariumfish.net/catalog_pages/...hrimp_ghost.htm

Having plants like Java Moss and other dense plants will also give the shrimp some protection against predators.

 

[JDWolf]

Ahmed, one of my cherry shrimps did the the same thing after it had been in the tank a couple of week. It lasted a couple of day and then it went back to behaving normally. I wouldnt worry about it, would be very happy if they are mating, but i havent seen any eggs on any of my shrimp yet

 

[GoldLenny]

I've only had my cherry shrimp tank for about 2 months and I've had at least two hatchings and about 6 more females are carrying eggs. I'm in the middle of setting up a deal with my LFS to start selling them cherry shrimp.