Jump to content

Zebra Plecos with Shrimp?


Rufus 2112
 Share

Recommended Posts

I have started a nice planted bookcase 23 gallon 12"x 36" tank with a walstad sand bed over dirt currently with cherry shrimp and Thai microcrabs.  Would 3 zebra plecos take any noticeable toll on shrimp population?  I am redoing a few cube tanks and my zebras are about a year old.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Plecos are usually not hunters. If a baby shrimp ends up in its mouth, it will be eaten. Otherwise, a zebra pleco is very unlikely go and hunt a baby shrimp down and eat it that way. They are just opportunistic and feed on whatever they find the easy way tbh.

I kept my orange sakuras with my L199/yellow zebra pleco, and even they are more on the carnivorous side, he was letting shrimp play around his home while he is taking a nap.

The negative side is, their water temp choices are different. Lowest temp zebra plecos require is higher than the desired top level of shrimp. Zebra plecos like it hot with the range of 79 - 86 °F (26 - 30 °C), while shrimp ideally likes it colder. 

Edited by Lennie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn’t probably keep zebras in a walstead. They require a very high flow rate and the temperature upwards of 80°. They are messy fish and they require pristine water.

So that being said, I wouldn’t put them in a small tank. They also don’t really want a heavily planted tank that’s not their natural environment they want a tank that is more sparse in plants, and very full of rocks and driftwood lots of places for them to crawl into and hide. They also require a very protein heavy diet hence me saying that they’re messy fish, even more so than most plecos because if you don’t have filtration, that’s turning your water over 10 times an hour. The flow isn’t fast enough for them and it’s not keeping the tank clean enough

Edited by Phoenixfishroom
Typos
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...