keeping shrimps

[aussieant32]

make sure you have a sponge on your filter inlet. I was forever finding heaps of baby shrimp in my canister

 

[SeanTrollope]

will do

 

[Baccus]

If you do start out with red cherry shrimp, please no matter the temptation do not mix other colour morphs of cherry shrimp with them. When I say other colour morphs I mean Yellow, Orange (Sunkist), Blue, Black, Chocolate or any of the Rilli varieties. Since mixing any of the colour morphs is pretty much just going to produce wild type cherry shrimp, which would be fine to use as feeders but nobody is really going to want them. Also once you have a bad mix it is incredibly hard to remove all of the undesired colours without stripping the tank down and even then I have had the odd shrimplet sneak through hiding in plants or gravel even if removed and re-emerging once the tank is put back together.
You could try mixing Cherry shrimp with Crystal Shrimp but generally because of different temperature requirements and water hardness one species will suffer while the other thrives.
With my small native shrimp species I have Spotted Blue Eyes which seem to leave the shrimp alone, and with my Black Cherry's I have Pacific Blue Eyes and Whiptail catfish. I used to keep my red cherry's with Corydoras catfish, Borneo Suckers, Bristle nose catfish, Dwarf chain Loaches and various other fish and only removed the shrimp because they where breeding too well and taking over the tank.

 

[SeanTrollope]

noted

 

[cynic]

This is great, I was going to ask pretty much the very question the op started with.

If I may step in rather than starting essentially the same thread.

My variation with the op is that I have a mature heavily planted (60x22x15)tank. 70watts of plant focused light, a tec 1200 and a powerhead, the powerhead is due to the length of the tank and keeping flow through the planting.

Ph of between 6 and 7 and 0Am, 0Ni and 40 as far as I can see with nitrate, its in the tap water, with ferts dosed twice a week, no co2.
The tank seems to be near self sustaining. (I actually went and tested some water I dosed with Am to check my test kit), as stock is a mature RTBS (6yrs old) an older BN plec (our first fish sniff) and 9 harlequin tetra and a snakeskin that seems quite happy living as a harlequin. Oh, and quite a few assasins, got to be high teens at a guess. Could easily be more. With all the plants the bioload hardly stresses the filter.

I fancy having some shrimp, we are planning on increasing the stock but shoaling fish only shoal when spooked for so adding to the harlequin stock is pointless unless I want to deliberately scare them and a rtbs is a nightmare to get tank mates for. I have always had a hankering for some shrimp though.

Would I have the right environment, I can lose the plec for days so I'm sure a shrimp can hide.