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Aggressive red cherry shrimp?!


Penny
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Hi Everyone.. I've got a heavily planted nano tank with 6 red cherry shrimp.

Because they came from my other colony I picked one female and 5 male. They've been there a couple of months happily bumbling about doing their thing.

Today noticed the female is very berried... then one of the males 'attacked' her! he got her on her back and it looked like he 'bit' her eggs! she hid and he chased her and did it again.

Do you think I need to rescue her? or was he just in the mood and didn't realise she was already pregnant? I could put in another female that's almost ready

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Though I am not a shrimp expert, but I would take her out. My understanding that shrimp (as well as other aquatic critters) are best kept with 3to1 ratios of females to males because the males can be aggressive toward the females when they want to mate. Though again, I do not know this for a fact this is what is happening, many other male animal species will attempt to remove any offspring that are not their own. So he may very well be attempting to remove her current eggs to make his own. Or, he may just be introducing normal mating behavior (cannot say I have ever seen shrimp in the process. However, with so many males to one pregnant female, those are going to be some unhappy males attempting to all get at one female. So I would take her out and change up the ratio with 3 females to every 1 male. This cuts down on aggression in other aquatic species, so my guess is it will here too.

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On 6/25/2021 at 6:14 AM, Penny said:

Hi Everyone.. I've got a heavily planted nano tank with 6 red cherry shrimp.

Because they came from my other colony I picked one female and 5 male. They've been there a couple of months happily bumbling about doing their thing.

Today noticed the female is very berried... then one of the males 'attacked' her! he got her on her back and it looked like he 'bit' her eggs! she hid and he chased her and did it again.

Do you think I need to rescue her? or was he just in the mood and didn't realise she was already pregnant? I could put in another female that's almost ready

Can’t say I’ve ever seen mine doing this before. I do suspect that this sort of question explains why so many of us end up with tons of nano tanks 😂

If you had another very established tank, maybe move _her_ there...

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Thank you.. that was my instinct too. I was just hoping they were so peaceful it wouldn't be an issue. i was just worried about ending up with a million shrimplets in there super quickly.

It going to be fun trying to catch her in this tank!

I Have a lovely tank that would be perfect for her and the babies but its unheated... but its in the living room which is always around 21c 70f.. is this too cold?

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On 6/25/2021 at 8:55 AM, Penny said:

. . . I Have a lovely tank that would be perfect for her and the babies but its unheated... but its in the living room which is always around 21c 70f.. is this too cold?

While it might be a couple degrees cooler than ideal, it will be fine.  While I don't know that I'd be brave enough to try it, I've seen several reports of neocaridina shrimp surviving outside in winter with a thin layer of ice at the top of the water.

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I don’t see quite as much shrimp growth in my community tanks, but adult shrimp are not bothered by adult fish of the species that I run.

I moved my betta to my only tank with a lid, which is also in a different and slightly warmer room.

I will re-evaluate my temperature needs when winter looms.

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 I'm not toooo worried about shrimp population growth now, my six has become hundreds and I have little colonies in three tanks at the mo. However.. the tanks the Betta(s) were going to go in have no lids 😬 and are always filled as high as I can have em.  I can't decide if I got a Betta that ate them all if that's nature doing it's thing or if I did wrong by my shrimp 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Oh! That sucks! I've only had one shrimp jump/escape and that was sad enough. Would you think it would be risky if it was a male (more weighed down?🤷🏻‍♀️) The tank has floaters all over the top most of the time and Val all across the top too... Oh, and water wisteria. I was going to have a feeding ring.

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On 6/25/2021 at 5:04 PM, Penny said:

Oh! That sucks! I've only had one shrimp jump/escape and that was sad enough. Would you think it would be risky if it was a male (more weighed down?🤷🏻‍♀️) The tank has floaters all over the top most of the time and Val all across the top too... Oh, and water wisteria. I was going to have a feeding ring.

If shrimp feel threatened or are attacked they will jump. I tried a couple of shrimp with my Betta but had to come to the realization that I have a fish that will eat his roommates, so no more shrimp in that tank. I converted to all lids after finding little critters, but the reality is, even with lids if they want to jump they will. I think happy critters have no desire to leave the tank unless they are miserable or spooked by something.

Edited by eatyourpeas
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