Thanks for the suggestions on this thread, and the topic received far more attention than I expected.
I've kept Rams with cherry shrimp in the past, which cut the numbers of cherries down so much that I rarely saw them any more. So I couldn't appreciate them really, but they did recover with an explosion in numbers once the Rams were taken out.
I trialled a couple of keyhole Cichlids in the tank for a week, but had the same result, so I've taken them back to the shop.
The ethics of this scenario was mentioned in the thread, and I wont really go into it much as I think everything has been said. While agreeing on animals welfare and responsible animal husbandry, personally, I don't see any problem with keeping cherry shrimp with something that might eat them. Daphnia spp are commonly fed to fish, which is essentially the same as a cherry shrimp being eaten, as they have fundamentally the same nervous system. They don't feel 'pain' or 'fear', or any other anthropomorphic idea that may be suggested. Should cherry shrimp be spared purely because of their aesthetics? ..This reminds me of a major conservation issue to do with funding the sustainability of Panda populations on the planet, which costs hundreds of millions of US dollars, while more fundamental species, many ecosystem engineers and essential to the health of an ecosystem, even the planet, are left neglected, purely through what people prefer to look at.
The only problem with this type of issue would be if we were taking rare species out of the wild and having a detrimental effects on their natural populations, disturbing the innate balance of an ecosystem. Thankfully, the cherry shrimp we have in our tanks, breed sufficiently enough to keep a health population within the network of the aquascaping hobby. We could all question the ethics of the hobby, but I think this has all been mentioned.
With regard to Cichlids and cherry shrimp, I suppose its balancing what you want with what's compatible in a make-shift ecosystem. Cichlids are quite carnivorous, and they are one of the only fish I like to keep, as I'm not too enthusiastic about having fish in my tank, and prefer growing plants and aquascaping. I prefer to have the cherry shrimp over Cichlids too, if I had to choose, as they are good algae eaters in numbers, thus doing some good in the tank and appearing more like a natural ecosystem, breed like crazy which makes the whole 'ecosystem' appear more interesting to me, and give good scale to the tank, making the tank more interesting to look at.. I think if you want to mix Cichlids with cherry shrimp, you wont really appreciate the shrimp being in there, thus there isn't much point in having them together. Thanks for info on potential candidate Cichlids, but I think, through my now trailed experience, and the general response to their compatibility, the answer would be no.
