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Shrimp Safe Fish

Josh Beeston

Seedling
Joined
5 Jan 2014
Messages
9
I've seen this thread go up many times, but I'm hoping I can gain some suggestions..

I have CRS in a 91 litre long tank, I have always had neon tetra, endlers live bearers, corys, mosquito rasbora and samurai gourami in with them - The adult shrimp have never been harmed, but the babys I don't think all make it - I was up to around 150 shrimp 6 months ago (up from 30), but an incident with copper pesticides on a new plant bought me down to 25 shrimp in about 10 minutes flat. Since then nothing has bred, but for the last 6 weeks or so, I've started getting berried shrimp again!

My samurai gourami pair has now become a solitary female (the male died today, he had been brooding eggs in his mouth - necropsy I did quickly found the eggs smelt bad and were sticking together in a gooey way - I think the eggs went bad, he didn't release them and that ultimately killed him.. (a hazard of breeding, but none the less, sad..).

I would like to replace the gourami male, but it's near impossible to get hold of them, so my question is this: Are there any fish with a different body shape to the torpedo like shape of tetras, rasboras etc that wont hurt the adult shrimp, and will have limited effect on hatchling shrimp? A visiting colleague (from singapore) at work keeps checkerboard dwarf cichlids successfully with fire shrimp and CRS, but these are again, difficult to get hold of!

Any suggestions would be appreciated - I know not everyone likes keeping shrimp and fish together.. It's a ridiculously heavily planted tank with lots of fissidens and aerial roots to hide shrimplets, so far it seems to work well (running with both fish and shrimp around 24 months), so I don't want any new "centre piece" fish to disrupt the balance..

Best,

Josh
 
I think tiny shrimplet's are fair game for nearly all fish no ?
Might keep colony in another tank for insurance against fishes decimating them in community setting.
This way you don't loose too much/many.
 
Hi

Have you ever thought about Danio Margaritatus? We keep them for years together with the CRS shrimp.
Adult Shrimps wont be harmed but new born will be eaten if caught.

If you offer a lot of hiding space + mosses enough will survive.
 
To be honest the only fish that I could say is 100% shrimp safe is the dwarf Otto catfish, anything else, even small fish will likely, even if they dont eat the adults (or individuals of about 8mm or more) eat the babies.

Things like small tetras are fine with shrimp as long as they arent babies. If youre hoping for babies the best thing to do really is have a shrimp only tank, theyll be more likely to breed too because there wont be any potential predators around.

- Of course, you can keep and even breed shrimp in a tank with fish that will eat the adults as well as the babies - but this tank would need to be very densely and heavily planted, with lots of hiding spaces and areas that the predators cant find. An example of a fish you could keep in this situation would be something like a small rainbowfish. Saying this, its never a nice sight to watch a shrimp being eaten should the fish find one

In a shrimp tank id personally avoid keeping any fish that will grow larger than 5cm, and certainly nothing considered aggresive :)

Thanks :) - Jason
 
I've got a couple of ottos and around 5 cpd's in my ever expanding cherry colony. Plenty of moss and leaves give plenty of hiding and keep the cpds well fed.
 
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