silly woman thought it was a seed shrimp. and debated adding a rasbora or a baby guppy

[Lainie]

hi, I have noticed little things in my gravel, i have no fish, just plenty of blue dream shrimp all born in my tank. i think they are seed shrimp and i read to get rid I could add a rasbora, but if i do I should add a few shouldn't i ? as they like to be in a little shoal. in one of my other tanks I have baby endlers. could i just move one or 2 of them into my tank to feast on seed shrimp instead? or would even small endlers eat my baby shrimp? any advice welcome x * edited title because they are NOT seed shrimp* and i now have loads of 'madge-the-cleaning-ladies' for free *

 

[Aqua67]

Seed shrimp aren’t usually seen down in the substrate, but amphipods are. I have one container in which I wanted to culture some green water. I added water and a piece of blanched zucchini and seed shrimp appeared out of apparently nowhere. That is the only thing I’ve got here at the moment with seed shrimp in it. They look like tiny black dots. I can try and take a picture of them for you with my new macro lens for my phone’s camera. I see them all over the glass, enjoying the green water. To the best of my knowledge though, I don’t have them in any of my aquariums. Anything that will hunt down amphipods or seed shrimp would be considered a micro predator and that would mean that baby shrimp could be eaten too. If your micro predator is small enough your adults should be fine unless they are hardening after a molt and therefore more vulnerable. I would drop in a hungry baby endler when I had a couple of free hours, grab a beverage and a snack, and then watch them for a while.

 

[Lainie]

thank you, it sounds like i need to research more, these are little white spots that move around on my black gravel . are amphipods and scuds the same thing?

 

[Aqua67]

White, huh? Probably harmless beneficial copepods. Yes, amphipods and scuds are the same thing, also called gammarus.

 

[Ichthys]

(Amphipods / scuds are not gammarus, but related to them).

Amphipods, Copepods, Decapods... why would you want to get rid of them? They’re a very useful clean-up crew, especially in a shrimp tank where there’s relatively little to clean up (compared to a fish tank), so they’ll do a good job. You can limit them to some extent by not giving them too much excess food.
Many fish will eat them, so if your store is recommending “a rasbora” I’d stop listening to that store.