fishheadNJ

Hello! We just picked up four ghost shrimp for our 12 gallon eclipse (tankmates are 7 harlequin rasboras & a couple ramshorn snails & assorted small pond snails). Just some random thoughts...

These guys provide a lot of bang for the buck, they started eating right away! They were probably starving.

I could've sworn I saw one eating a teensy pond snail. That'd be a bonus.

One was perched on a plant, and I guess I startled it when approaching the tank because he leaped up near the surface, tried to hang on to the filter box, jumped again and flat disappeared. Next thing I see is him reappearing at the front of the aquarium. There's a support bar that runs the width of the tank, and I bet he walked across it. I didn't know they were such good jumpers; good thing the lid is secure.

I've never had shrimp before; they're pretty entertaining!

Lucy

They're fun little critters aren't they? They're great jumpers and will splat themselves on the hood and such. Not much you can do about that. I lost a one that way.
Be careful when you vacuum, they're kind of hard to see sometimes.
I've fed mine freeze dried blood worms they'll go to the top and swim upside for them, pretty funny. lol

haedra

OMG yea.. they can move very fast. My bamboo shrimp startled the heck out of me when he almost jumped in my face.

I stand by the theory that it is an adaptation because shrimp taste so darn good.

fishheadNJ

That jumping I'll definitely have to keep any eye on.....and I can imagine vacuuming one up would be pretty easy....

I've got algae & bottom feeder wafers I'll drop in for them.

namehater

my ghost shrimp wont touch algae wafers, i drop some shrimp pellets in daily, its fun to watch them eat on those once they have softened up

fishheadNJ

Yeah, don't know how well the algae wafers would work, they like the bottom feeder wafers though. Funny, I dropped one in and just happened to land right in front of a shrimp.

haedra

I'm convinced that all these aquatic creatures have their own definite tastes just like we do. Different bettas seem to like different things; and my corys aren't near as finicky as some others I've heard about. They will eat practically anything.

fishheadNJ

My dwarf puffer refused anything but live snails once he had one. Prior to that he ate thawed frozen bloodworms. Post snail, he pointedly ignored them.

Man, ghost shrimp look really alien, with those long antenna. If my wife saw something like that crawling on the floor she'd tell me to step on it. In the tank though, it's different. They fit the bill for what we wanted - something different. The razzys (harliquin Rasboras) are pretty 'normal' fish, and we've always wanted to balance them out with something a bit different.

Previously we had a hillstream loach in there, and he did pretty well considering the enviornement wasn't perfect for him (first lesson learned by me is not to take LFS advice, being 0-2 in that department). It's only a 12 gallon tank so that limits us.

One of the shrimp seems to have a tendency to fold its tail underneath itself; though it moves back to normal and he seems okay. What's that all about?

I'm going to thin out the pond snails as much as possible; I'm sure the shrimp will help just by being quicker to the food. I'm keeping the two ramshorns. With them and the 7 rasboras, how many shrimp could I keep in this tank? I know their bioload is small, they'd probably run out of 'crawling room' before being an issue for the biofilter. I'd just like to know my options.

Depending on how the shrimp do I'm still considering an ADF, but I don't know that I want my shrimp to be frog food. So, I may just stick with the shrimp and call it good, in which case I'd love to add more if possible, if the four are perfect that's good too.

I think I want to add a short bushy plant as they love hiding in the one I have. We also have a sunken ship decoration that the biggest shrimp seems to have claimed. That's largely it for hiding places so I might want to add another especially if I get more shrimp.

cg49me

In a 12gal, you could easily have 15 shrimp - even more if it's well decorated, and if it's planted, you can have a TON.

You might want to look into amano shrimp - sometimes they're labelled as "algae eating shrimp". They're about twice as big as ghosties, and not as see-through, but their activity level is higher, and they seem to process a bit more food than the ghosties (and will help out with several types of algae, as well). They're on the expensive side, about $3 a pop, but I've got ghosties, cherries, and amanos, and though I've had casualties with both the ghosties and cherries, I haven't lost a single amano!

As far as the cherries go (in case you're curious), they're about as pricey as the amanos, but they have a nice red color to them (go figure). They'll deal with some algae as well, though not as much as the amanos, but mine seem to be pretty reclusive.

My cherries breed like crazy, even in a tank with fish. I've heard ghosties are just as prolific, but mine haven't done anything yet.

agabr123

yeah, unfortunately i can believe that your LFS told you a hillstream loach would be fine in your tank. they really need lots and lots of current so the best environment for them is a "river tank" which i dont think you can effectively create in a 12 gallon tank.

as far as how many you could keep, i'm with cg49me, 15 would be fine in your tank.

my ghost shrimp love the sinking wafers i feed my cories, the biggest one (who is FAT) will take an entire half of a wafer and run off to hide with it! i have to break them up more and feed two wafers now

fishheadNJ

Cool, I'll get some more then and look into the different varieties. One shed his skin; that was pretty wild. Thanks!!

Sarkazmo

I have 2 ghosties in my 1.5gallon in front of my mouse pad. I LOVE to watch them! When I turn off the HOB filter to feed them, they know what's coming! They'll squable over a bit of fish flake and go to the surface and grab flakes, eating as they slowly float back to the bottom.

I just put in a big wad of Java Moss and they're just in love with it.

Sark