Interested In Setting Up A Multi-shrimp Tank

Hello all!

Still fairly new to a lot of this ...

I've been here before, helping a really good friend set up his aquarium.
Now that things with his tank have been going rather smoothly ...
Some of his more recent additions have fascinated me ... his shrimp.
He has 2 Amano shrimp, 1 Ghost shrimp, and 1 Red Cherry shrimp.

I'd be interested in setting up my own aquarium of just shrimp.

As I've been reading up on this online and in this forum ...
It always seems to go to the notion of breeding the shrimp and preserving color lines (if you get colored shrimp).

I'd just like to have a group of shrimp living together and enjoy them for themselves alone.

I'm NOT looking to breed.

How feasible is this?

Clearly - as in the example of my friend's tank - I can have those different types of shrimp cohabitating (Amano, ghost, and Red Cherry).

What about if I wanted to get some of the colored shrimp ... say, an orange sakura or a blue dream?

Please advise.

Thanks!

 

Bumping this up for you

 

Putting many different kinds of shrimp in one tank is safe.

- Shrimp will likely breed whether you like it or not, it's just what they do. If you have more than a few of any of these species, you're more likely to get a male and a female somewhere in there.

- Some shrimp are more hardy than others. Amanos, ghost, and red cherries are all very hardy. Many of the more colorful kinds, as least in my experience, are not nearly as hardy. If this is your first shrimp tank, I'd suggest you stick to amanos, ghost, and red cherry before investing in more sensitive shrimp.

- What size of tank do you plan on using? What filter? What lighting?

- If you only keep Amanos, ghost (assuming you actually get ghost shrimp and not just wild colored shrimp of a different genus), and red cherry shrimp, they won't crossbreed because they all have a different genus. If you decide to keep another colorful shrimp with the red cherry, they will likely cross breed and produce wild colors. Most colorful shrimp you see in fish stores these days, besides bee shrimp, are of the same genus and will crossbreed.

 

If you are looking for different colors you can go for caridina and neocaridina (this still restricts you to two types unless you hunt down some purple zebra shrimp, which will only produce babies in brackish water). Ghosts are easy to id once you learn their spots - they have red bands around their legs that look almost like red dots along their legs (one band a leg kind of thing). Amanos are chunkier and shaped different from ghosts, so they are easy to id. If you got cherry shrimp (or any of their color variants, like blue rili, orange, blue pearl anything in the neocaridina family they will cross and their offspring will be wild colors (which is normally clear or greenish)). You can get different colored caridina shrimp, they are a little more expensive and also have some interesting colors - I would avoid CRS or CBS as you are just starting out and they require very specific parameters to survive and thrive. Caridina and neocaridina will not cross.

 

Thanks for the info so far!

Would you say it's better to have just one of a certain type of shrimp or would they be lonely and stressed?
Or ...
Is it better to have two or more of a certain type of shrimp?

Thought ...
If it were two or more of a certain type ...
If I was somehow able to get just males ... would there be aggressive behavior or fighting?

What do you all do if there is unintended breeding? What do you do with the babies?

Looking at my local fish stores (the same places from which my friend got his shrimp) ...
All they seem to have is Ghost (a lot), the Amano /Japanese Algae Eater occasionally, and the little red cherry shrimp here and there.

The really colorful shrimp ... I've only seen online ... I guess I would have to get them online.

It sounds like, yes, it would be okay to have different kinds of shrimp together ...
And, yes, I could have an orange sakura and blue dream together ...
But that I just would need to be aware that they likely would breed (so prepare for babies).

 

Nope can't do orange sakura and blue dream together they are neocaridina (unless you managed to get males but shrimp live up to two years). They will produce wild colored babies pretty quickly if you have males and females.

They do not fight.

They might feel out of place but they are not schooling so it won't kill them. So you can do a single shrimp, but most females of the neo kind are pregnant/berried or soon to be pregnant/saddled when you get them. (unless you get babies)

Babies take care of themselves. Wait for them to get 1/4 inch in size and sell them.

Once you get enough posts you can post on here for colorful shrimp?

 

I have ordered from Aquatic Arts and been very happy with my shrimp. Just to clarify, wild colors = clear/brownish, not wild as in fun and exciting, so if you do blue dream and the sakura, after a while, you're probably going to have brownish babies.

You can sell the babies as previously mentioned, but unless you are doing a really small tank (and I mean really, really tiny), you shouldn't really end up being over-populated. Is there a specific reason that you don't want little ones? They're a ton of fun to watch