Cherry Shrimp Per Gallon?

[Don Trinko]

I'm wondering how many shrimp can I keep per g of water. It is a small tank with an undergravel filter. Thanks; Don t.

 

[5teady_2012]

I dont know the recomended amount, but i can tell you might shrimp stock, i have a 20G and there is over 250 in it.

 

[Wolfenrook]

Personally I wouldn't keep shrimp in a tank with an undergravel filter, odds are a lot of shrimplets will get sucked underneath it, and also I doubt you can get the water quality you need with a UG.

Ade

 

[three-fingers]

Undergravel filters should be great for shrimp as long as they aren't powered using a powerhead, though IME they are only good for growing things like Anubias and java fern, nothing like swords or crypts.

But for shrimp, think of them as a giant sponge filter .

There's no exact number of shrimp you can keep per gallon I'm afraid, it just depends on how the water conditions in the tank are doing and how densely stocked you like it to look.

Presuming it's a 3-5gal tank, then around 30 would be fine IMO, but don't start off with that many, and after the population gets much higher than that you'll have to start moving shrimp.

 

[Wolfenrook]

We will have to agree to disagree three-fingers. Mainly because of the difficulty with cleaning a UG. An air driven sponge you can just gently squeeze out in old tank water to remove any excess mulm. With a UG however the most that you can do is vacuum the substrate bed, which is bad if you are breeding shrimp as you will suck young shrimp up at the same time. Plus quite a lot of the detritus will end up under the plate. Also unless you are using quite a fine volcanic gravel the surface area to volume ratio is going to be pretty low really, even a synthetic sponge having more surface area. It also means that your substrate is your only filter, where in a well set up tank your substrate acts as a biological filter in ADDITION to your other filtration, giving even more biological surface area.

Then there is the simple fact that even with an air driven you will lose shrimp underneath the filter plate, shrimp climbing down the airlift tubes. If one gets down there and dies you are looking at an ammonia spike that will do the tank no favours at all.

Having said all this I don't use air driven sponges either in shrimp tanks, preferring to use modified internal filters packed with sintered glass media. They're quieter running, easier to maintain and do an excellent job of maintaining very high water quality.

Ade

 

[three-fingers]

Most UGF's I've seen have a little grid on the outflow part, and even on ones that don't, the shrimp would have to swim down all those bubbles (not easy), and then squeeze past the airstone. I've never once seen shrimp go down underneath the plate, I've striped down a couple of UGF tanks that had tiny amano/C.babaulti shrimp in them for weeks .

I wasn't at all arguing for the use of UGF's btw, I know modern filters are better for the vast majority of people, I'm just saying they are OK to use with shrimp! .

That is, as I say, as long as they aren't powered with a powerhead, but even then it depends on the entire setup, sometimes that can be fine too.

 

[Bebobb]

Well, for the bioLoad, I'd suggest 2inches of shrimp per gallon, which translates into 2 cherry shrimp for gallon.If it's a 2.5 or 1.7 gallon or what ever, I'd go with 2 Cherry Shrimp. What will be the other inhabitents? If there will be a Betta, make sure it has a good personality, so it won't eat the actual older shrimp. It might eat the babies. If you are using it for a breeding tank, then I would put in any other fish.

EDIT: About the underground filter. I have one with my Betta, and it doesn't seen to be a threat to anything elese in th tank. Maybe you could form a sponge to go into the tube with a hole in it for the air line. OR you could put a piece of a sponge in the tube and diaganaloly drilla hole in the tube for the air line, it wouldn't be as strong, but you could get a double socet aireator and find a fitting so that it would chane the 2 sockets into one, you could find one of theese at a hard ware store, then put the tubing in the hole you previously drilled. I hope this made some sence, but it is sort of hard to explain.