Tank mates for shrimp

[jasper5150]

Looking to add shrimp to my tank. It’s a 20 gallon, newly planted tank heated at 76 degrees with a sponge filter. Water ph is around 7.6.  Current fish are (1) albino catfish, (1) cory, (2) cherry barbs and a betta.  Any recommendations for an economical yet beneficial addition or are my current residents going to have them as snacks?

[Mydonkeyfish]

I would add plants like pearlweed and  other stem plants for cover. Just get them cover! Love your scape!😁

I would also add more cherry barbs. They look soooo much better in big schools.😁

Idk why the pic is upside down 🙃

[jwcarlson]

I'd say that first you should get proper schools of the barbs and the cory.

 

As far as shrimp, not super experienced.  But I've got cherry shrimp in a heavily stocked tank (moving to a bigger tank tomorrow) in kind of a group quarantine with plants, corys, a dwarf gourami, cardinals, and rummynose and the shrimp are fine.  Even found a baby the other day and with all the extra plants there's probably more than one baby that I just can't see.  I'm sure the babies take a hit, but the adult ones aren't getting bothered as best I can tell.

[H.K.Luterman]

I agree with @jwcarlson that if you're interested in still keeping cory catfish, definitely get your little guy some friends; at least two more but a little school of 6 would be great. Same with the barbs. But if you're looking to phase them out for new fish that's fine.

The betta may hunt the baby shrimp, and the cory most likely will. The best way to give the shrimp the best odd for reproducing and growing in number is to give them a rock pile to hide in. Something like small lava rocks in a few piles around the tank. It gives the shrimp small crevices to hide in where the fish can't get them. 

[Gumbo99]

The shrimp definitely need as much cover as possible. I have found that smaller, denser plants are helpful. Pearlweed and moss for example. Bigger plants don't really provide any cover. The idea is to give shrimplets and juveniles places to hide that the fish can't enter. I have no experience with cherry barbs but I have kept and bred shrimp with Bettas and cories. They will pick off some but once the colony is going it won't make too much of a dent. Especially with a male Betta, their plumage makes it hard for them to hunt effectively. The rockwork the poster above me mentioned would be helpful as well.

[KaitieG]

On 2/3/2022 at 11:00 AM, H.K.Luterman said:

The betta may hunt the baby shrimp, and the cory most likely will. The best way to give the shrimp the best odd for reproducing and growing in number is to give them a rock pile to hide in. Something like small lava rocks in a few piles around the tank. It gives the shrimp small crevices to hide in where the fish can't get them. 

FWIW, I have panda and habrosus corys with my shrimp colony, and it's continuing to explode.  I do have a lot of plants in that tank like pogostemmon stelatus octopus and hygrophila agustifolia, but the bottom isn't particularly well-planted.  

I agree with others about filling out the numbers of the fish you have first though.

[Guppysnail]

Shrimp most often do not do well in new tanks. They need the yummy yucky biofilm etc that grows in a seasoned tank that simply are not present in new tanks. For a new colony of shrimp to start your inhabitants are not optimal as they will all snack on shrimpletes. I agree with others. Your Cory need friends. They are very social fish. So I’m sorry to say shrimp are not ideal at this time. Get a small 2-3 gallon tank plant it run it until it hits the ugly stage with biofilm diatoms etc. put your shrimp in it. Once they are in mass population you can put the whole heard of them in the big tank and the snacking will not cause extinction. 

[jasper5150]

On 2/3/2022 at 6:21 AM, Mydonkeyfish said:

I would add plants like pearlweed and  other stem plants for cover. Just get them cover! Love your scape!😁

I would also add more cherry barbs. They look soooo much better in big schools.😁

Idk why the pic is upside down 🙃

Funny it’s upside down. Think I’ll let the plants grow in before I attempt shrimp. 

[jasper5150]

On 2/3/2022 at 9:00 AM, H.K.Luterman said:

I agree with @jwcarlson that if you're interested in still keeping cory catfish, definitely get your little guy some friends; at least two more but a little school of 6 would be great. Same with the barbs. But if you're looking to phase them out for new fish that's fine.

The betta may hunt the baby shrimp, and the cory most likely will. The best way to give the shrimp the best odd for reproducing and growing in number is to give them a rock pile to hide in. Something like small lava rocks in a few piles around the tank. It gives the shrimp small crevices to hide in where the fish can't get them. 

Going to let the plants grow in and get some carpeting plants, like micro sword. Also, I’ll get my Cory some companions. Do the additions need to be the same or can they be different species of Cory? 

[Odd Duck]

On 2/4/2022 at 8:09 AM, jasper5150 said:

Going to let the plants grow in and get some carpeting plants, like micro sword. Also, I’ll get my Cory some companions. Do the additions need to be the same or can they be different species of Cory? 

Same species is best.  If they are closely related species they will often school together, but you risk hybrids which is not considered a good thing with cories, it just muddies the genetics.  Less closely species may not buddy up as much but you greatly reduce the risk of hybrids.  They seem to be happiest in a group of at least 5-6 of the same species.

Any dwarf shrimp would be at risk for ending up as snacks, even with cories and those are the least likely to eat shrimp out of your current species list.  Any baby shrimplets would be very high risk to be snacks.  Amanos get a bit bigger and might do OK if you can start with larger ones, but they would still be at risk from your current fish.  Some Bettas love nothing more than hunting shrimp.  So the odds of shrimp doing well in your current tank are low.  The odds of them reproducing successfully is extremely low.

[jasper5150]

That’s great information!  Really helps me out. Might make a small shrimp tank out of one of my old, small betta tanks

[Greg Stewart]

On 2/3/2022 at 1:27 PM, Guppysnail said:

Shrimp most often do not do well in new tanks. They need the yummy yucky biofilm etc that grows in a seasoned tank that simply are not present in new tanks.

This ^^^

Also, since your betta is already acclimated to a populated tank, it will more than likely ignore the shrimp. It may take some interest in them as newcomers, but it shouldn't be territorial with them. Also comes down to what you feed your betta. If he's picky and lazy like mine, shrimp are just too much effort to eat 😉

Corys get along fine with adult shrimp. As everyone else has mentioned, shrimp fry are always at risk in a community tank--even from their own parents, sometimes. And, all the previous advice on hiding spots for the fry can't be repeated enough.

Last, shrimp are extremely light on the bioload. So, even if you've maxed the occupants with proper schools of corys and cherry barbs, you should be fine adding shrimp.

Go with any colour variety of neocaridina shrimp. they're pretty much the hardiest of the options.

 

[jwcarlson]

I had a bunch of fish and plants in a 10 gallon QT than just moved to a 37.  6 cory sterbai, 8 cardinal tetras, 8 rummy nose, and a dwarf gourami.  The six adult cherry shrimp are still kicking.  Moved the fish and adult shrimp yesterday and just netted out about 30 baby shrimp.  Granted, there were a lot of plants in this 10 gallon, but it was a new tank (started a bit before Christmas).  Additionally, it had Fluval Stratum as substrate, so that may have helped.  As far as cover goes, they were packed into the Aquarium Co-Op course sponge filter like it was a condo.  So if you plopped a 4" square of the course sponge material in somewhere hidden, I'd imagine they'd have a lot of cover in the interim.  In the new tank I set up a nice sized rock pile and they seem to be liking that setup already on day one.

Not a huge sample size, I know.  And I only had six adult shrimp, so it's not like I dropped 100 into a new tank on sterile gravel.

[jasper5150]

On 2/5/2022 at 12:58 PM, jwcarlson said:

I had a bunch of fish and plants in a 10 gallon QT than just moved to a 37.  6 cory sterbai, 8 cardinal tetras, 8 rummy nose, and a dwarf gourami.  The six adult cherry shrimp are still kicking.  Moved the fish and adult shrimp yesterday and just netted out about 30 baby shrimp.  Granted, there were a lot of plants in this 10 gallon, but it was a new tank (started a bit before Christmas).  Additionally, it had Fluval Stratum as substrate, so that may have helped.  As far as cover goes, they were packed into the Aquarium Co-Op course sponge filter like it was a condo.  So if you plopped a 4" square of the course sponge material in somewhere hidden, I'd imagine they'd have a lot of cover in the interim.  In the new tank I set up a nice sized rock pile and they seem to be liking that setup already on day one.

Not a huge sample size, I know.  And I only had six adult shrimp, so it's not like I dropped 100 into a new tank on sterile gravel.

This gives me an idea about the sponge filter. I have an old HOB inlet sponge filter. Think I will “clean” it when I do the next water change and set it in a corner of the tank, let it season a bit

[jasper5150]

I must make an admission. Prior to posting this, I did purchase 4 Amano shrimp from my LFS.  After slowly acclimating them to the tank, they did their thing. The barbs were curious along with the betta. The catfish weren’t interested at all. Next morning,  nowhere to be seen. Not even a hint of an empty shell, opaque body, nothing. Figured I just gave my fish an expensive treat. 
Took a peak in the tank this morning, as I usually do with the flashlight on my phone, and front and center on an Anubia leaf was a lone shrimp!  Now, these guys are maybe half to three quarters of an inch in size, so small enough to fit in any crevices they can find. Maybe even down the tube of the sponge filter🤷‍♂️.  One out of four seen gives me hope that maybe another is in there?  Will wait and see. 

[jwcarlson]

Shrimp are real good at hiding.  Even the bright red ones sometimes I'd see one or two for days on end.  I hadn't seen more than three for two or three weeks.  Then tore it down and all six were still alive and they'd made about 30 babies.  Amanos would be even more difficult to spot. 

[Crash_2011]

with my experience in the wife's heavy planted shrimp tank (20L)  we had carpeted dwarf sag and heavy crypts there was over 200 cherry shrimp in there and she decided she wanted cherry barbs to go with the theme well got 6 cherry barbs  that tank went good for bout a year she wanted a change so I pulled out all the plants a noticed that we only had around 20 shrimp so I guess for that year the barbs Wass having a feast on shrimp so in my experience even in well planted tank barbs still had a feast on shrimp 

[jasper5150]

Days go by and I don’t see any sign of the shrimp. Then, I spot one out of the corner of my eye. I have added some Java moss to make some additional hideouts. Assuming they have found a comfortable spot to hang out. Did find a molting the other day.