Couple Of Newbie Shrimp Questions

[karuna]

I'm thinking of putting some amano and/or cherry shrimp in my tank once I move out these adolescent kribs and restock. A couple of things I'm unsure of are:

How do you calculate how many shrimp you can safely stock with your fish? e.g. Say I had 2 inch of fish left that I could safely stock in my tank then is there some sort of general formula to work out how many shrimp are equivalent to 2 inch of fish or is shrimp stocking completely irrelevant to the normal formula's you use to work out fish stock?

Sorry if that is a bit unclear, I don't think I did a good job of explaining it. Please feel free to quiz me about it if it is unclear.

Second question:

I plan on putting a 4 inch male krib into my 24x12x12 tank once I sell the juveniles. Is that gonna be a problem with the shrimp? Anyone had any experience of dwarf cichlids eating shrimp?

Thanks for any replies in advance.

 

[eschaton]

Most people I've talked with say shrimp don't really add inches of load to your tank. They produce far less waste than fish, and with how beneficial they are in keeping algae and detritus under control, they're more than worth it.

I'm not a ciclid keeper, but I would NOT put cichlids in with shrimp under any circmstances.

Cherries: My experience is even something as small as a glowlight tetra eats Cherry Shrimp, and Zebra Danios, while they do not eat them, scare them so they spend most of their time hiding and not eating algae. Seem to do fine with African Dwarf Frogs, Guppies, and Neons, though I'm pretty sure all of them are eating the Cherry offspring.

Amano Shrimp: Twice the size, seem to do well in my tank. Unlike cherries though, they hide all the time. You will almost never see these dudes. I only see my kuhli loach less. They eat a smaller range of algae than cherries, though they seem much more apt to pick algae off the tank walls.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

i wouldn't put a krib with cherry or amano shrimp

i've heard that shrimp don't count towards your stocking cos the make less waste, this just isn't true, i've got loads of ammano shrimps and they're poop machines!

count 1 shrimp as 1 inch of fish, that should do you. they do prefer to be in groups and will be much more sociable and visible if they are. the size of companions also makes a difference to how much you see them. Ian has some big ammano shrimp with his angels, they don't eat them but we never see them. In my community tank with no fish bigger than an inch and loads of shrimp they were out all the time.

 

[Bex]

I agree with Miss Wiggle. Amano's a poop monsters! However, I have 7 Amano's on my community whenre the biggest fish is a Harlequin Rasbora and we still never see them. We only see 4 (if we look real hard) and had given the 3 others up for fish food, until last night when for the first time since we got them I saw all 7. Hubby didn't believe me though because by the time he'd got to the tank, 3 had disappeared again!

 

[juwelfan]

Hey,
I was looking at adding shrimp to my tank, but now i'm starting to wonder. Poop machines, getting eaten by things the size of Glowlight Tetra. I was wishing they would be tank cleaners.

I must research more................

 

[three-fingers]

It's not that they don't make lots of waste, its just that they usually make up for it by cleaning up enough other waste in the tank.
So you have some old food or other detritus in your tank producing ammonia, the ammano shrimp will eat it and make turn in into poop that turns into slightly less ammonia than if the shrimp didn't eat it.
Thats why they don't really add much in terms of stocking to the tank .
If you have a perfectly clean tank then i would count them the same as fish.

 

[karuna]

Thanks for the replies guys and gals.

As I have both sides of the coin here I will have another search for stocking information and if I don't find anything conclusive I might try a calculated experiment and stock a group of them without regard to the normal stock formulae whilst keeping a close eye on the water conditions.

I'm not filled with hope after three-fingers' post though, my filter turns the tank over ~10 times every hour so the water is well filtered but with that said the detritus on the sand still needs siphoned off every couple weeks.

Sad to hear that I probably won't be able to keep them with my male Krib though as I'm quite attached to him. Looks like I will have to set up my 18x10x10 for the shrimp if I decide to keep some and add a small shoal of some galaxy microrasbora or neons.

But for arguments sake, say I do decide to find my male krib some alternative accomodation, would there still be a problem with keeping shrimp with a L104 Clown Pleco?

My original thought for the 24x12x12 was something along the lines of 8-10 galaxies, 1 L104 Clown Pleco and my male krib.

Thanks again.

 

[Liam]

Just a general point on shrimps and the bioload. They do poo a lot but I still think they are very light by comparison to a fish on the bioload. Its like comparing rabbit poo and cat poo, if you put the same amount of rabbit poo in one bucket of water and cat poo in another the cat poo is much more polluting. I have a five gallon shrimp tank, I use ro water, when I test for nitrate before water changes there isn’t any, the plants are using the little produced, if I had a similar bioload in inches of fish the nitrate would be much higher and the fish would starve with the little amount of food I give the shrimp, this isn’t scientific but its enough to confirm for me that shrimp are very light on the bioload.

I wouldn’t keep even bigger shrimp with a krib,

 

[karuna]

Thanks for the analogy Liam.

And I'll take the advice about not keeping them with the Krib from those of you that have all agreed it would be a bad idea also.

Guess I'm in two minds now:

Find a new home for my Krib and put in 3-4 dwarf otto's with the shrimp and galaxies. (Every reference I have found recommends the clown pleco would need 25-30 gallon minimum, so, gonna go with the otto's now as I think they are better suited to smaller tanks?)

or

Setup my 18x10x10 with a shoal of galaxies or neon's and try the shrimp there.

 

[three-fingers]

Setup 2 is alot like what I'm going to do so it gets my vote . I was going to stock with tiger shrimp instead though and use a 12x12x12. I take it your getting the galaxies from ultimate aquatics? Somehow i don't think theres going to be any left for me when i go after Christmas .

 

[karuna]

hehe, havn't decided where I'm gonna get them from yet, but yeah you're right. The only place around here I know that has them in stock right now is the one in Cupar. Only other way to get them is mail order from tri-mar or a similar company which I wouldn't want to do unless I had no other option. I'll try not to buy them all.

 

[cookiemistress]

Cherries: My experience is even something as small as a glowlight tetra eats Cherry Shrimp, and Zebra Danios, while they do not eat them, scare them so they spend most of their time hiding and not eating algae. Seem to do fine with African Dwarf Frogs, Guppies, and Neons, though I'm pretty sure all of them are eating the Cherry offspring.

I'm thinking about getting some cherry shrimp and im planning to get guppies, green neons, rummy nose tetras, golden white cloud and lamp eyes i think the rummy nose is the biggest im gathering that as they areall quite calm fish they would be ok.
I will look in the tank of shrimp to see what they stock with them but im just wondering about people's opinions.

I also have guppy fry will cherry shrimp eat them?

 

[mattlee]

i have 25 cherry shrimp and 2 amano in my tank with a gourami, blue rams, platties, b/a tetra and a polkadot loach and nothing touches them. the rams sometimes chase them but they are far too fast for the fish!!!!!!!!!!! they do a great job of cleaning my tank especially the plants but as stated before they do hide very well and the amano shrimp are pretty much transparent so this makes them harder to find. i would highly recomend them and when looking in on your fish then it adds a bit of fun trying to find them........