Mixing Shrimp Species For Beginners?

I am starting up a shrimp tank. I have never kept shrimp before and although I have always wanted to, I have always feared the unknown!

I have an empty 25 Gallon tank I am considering setting up as a shrimp only tank but I don't really know where to start with stocking. Obviously, it's my first time with shrimp so I would like easy shrimp!

I can get cherry shrimp, crystal shrimp, sakura shrimp and pearl shrimp locally.

What are good starting numbers? Can I mix species? which species can I mix? Can I mix colours within the species ie. RCS and YCS?

I am particularly interested in the Sakura shrimp as the ones I have seen are wonderful colours. Are they suited to beginners? Or could I add them later on once I have the hang of the shrimp thing?

Thanks for any advice xx

 

You do not want to mix neocaridina species together. Ex. no RCS with YCS. All shrimp are hard to keep except for RCS species. Most shrimp need high pHs but the RCS can tolerate better.
Here is a graph showing which shrimp can be kept together:

 

The few things I know about shrimp is some will breed with each other and give you undesirable colors with the offspring. Hopefully someone with more shrimp knowledge can advise you on which ones not to mix.

The red cherries and crystal reds are easy to keep. Good beginner shrimp from what I hear. I'm not sure about the other 2.

Looks like Anders247 posted the same time as I did and has better info than I offered.

 

I disagree @ Crystal Red Shrimp need acidic water and are delicate. Dirty water must be avoided and extremes in pH must be also be avoided.

 

I keep crystal black shrimp & haven't found them to be that delicate though I do have soft water.
They are harder to breed than cherry shrimp so for a complete beginner I'd start out with cherries, then once you're more confident give them a try if your water's suitable

 

Thanks all.

What is the difference between red cherry shrimp and yellow cherry shrimp then? I need to understand why they can't be kept together.

I plan to at least start with the easiest shrimp and hope to add a couple more species so there is a little variety. Can you do that? I like to have a bit of variety in my tanks.

My pH is 6.8 if that makes any difference? And although I get them mixed up, I think our water is soft (we don't sell any Calgon around here!!)xx

 

Red Cherry Shrimp and Yellow Shrimp are both Neocaridina species, and if they are kept together they will interbreed, turning your whole shrimp collection into small gray shrimp. Unless you want that to happen, then stay with one or the other.
Yes you can keep different species together.

 

Yellow shrimp are basically just a colour variation of red cherry shrimp & as Anders says they will interbreed & you'll get drab coloured shrimp.
You can keep crystal reds or blacks with cherry shrimp & others if you check out that compatibilty chart, it doesn't have every species on it but it's a good guide

 

Cheers guys! I'll start on the RCS and see how I get on.xx

 

try cherries, then you can add tiger shrimps. they're both easy

 

Tiger shrimp are a great second step, as they are slightly more difficult to breed and slightly less hardy. You showed what types you have available and it is not one of them. If you want them then get them on the internet from a trustworthy site.

 

hollie1505, you have chosen wisely. Red cherry shrimp are a great place to start with shrimp. They are easy to breed, easy to find, and relatively cheap. Figure out everything with them before moving on to the more expensive and tricky shrimp. Try to start with a good stock of brightly colored, deep red shrimp. This way your future generations will look good too. Here is a link to an article I wrote on fishlore about getting started with shrimp....

Freshwater Shrimp Keeping

Planetinverts.com is another good source of info, as well as shrimp now forums. Good luck on your shrimpy adventure.

 

wonderful! Thank you everyone.

How many should I start with for a 25G? And how many should I add at a time? Do they need Quarantining like fish? It will be shrimp only so no worries about fish feasting on them x
Dolfan your article talks about cherry shrimp being graded on their colour with sakura being a more intense colour. Would I be okay starting with sakura shrimp then? Or if I started with "red cherry shrimp" would I not be able to mix with Sakuras?Just trying to get my head around all this new information! Thanks.x

 

You could start with 10-20 shrimp. They don't need quarantining as far as I know but you could. You can mix rcs with red sakura, it would just produce lower grade than sakura. i.e. Fire Red.

 

You could start with 10-20 shrimp. They don't need quarantining as far as I know but you could. You can mix rcs with red sakura, it would just produce lower grade than sakura. i.e. Fire Red.

Fire red cherries are actually a higher grade then sakura. Sakura's are one grade above regular cherries. They are a little bit darker. There are actually a million different "named" variations I have come across, and the name isn't really that important.

The most common names and grading scale I have seen goes something like this....

regular red cherry shrimp < sakura/Taiwan < fire red/supreme red < painted fire red shrimp

What is important is that you get good bright red colored shrimp to start with. If you mixed regular cherries with sakura cherries, you would end up with something in between, a little bit better then regular cherries but a little worse then sakura. You want your shrimp to be opaque if possible with very little clear or white spots on them. The more red the better. After time you may need to cull out some random clearish, or less colored shrimp that end up happening every now again due to mutation and slowly reverting back to their wild form (brownish, mottled color).

As for your situation, since they are going into their own tank with no fish, then no quarantine would be necessary. I would recommend starting with 20 for your 25 gallon tank. 10 would be a bit too few, and the larger gene pool you start out with, the better things will go in the long run. With 20 you will have a good mix of male and female so you will be off to a good start.

Get some plants like java moss, subwassertang, hornwort, frogbit, etc. They love the small leaved, frilly plants. Make sure your tank is fully cycled and stabled before adding any shrimp.

 

Fire red cherries are actually a higher grade then sakura. Sakura's are one grade above regular cherries. They are a little bit darker. There are actually a million different "named" variations I have come across, and the name isn't really that important.

The most common names and grading scale I have seen goes something like this....

regular red cherry shrimp < sakura/Taiwan < fire red/supreme red < painted fire red shrimp

What is important is that you get good bright red colored shrimp to start with. If you mixed regular cherries with sakura cherries, you would end up with something in between, a little bit better then regular cherries but a little worse then sakura. You want your shrimp to be opaque if possible with very little clear or white spots on them. The more red the better. After time you may need to cull out some random clearish, or less colored shrimp that end up happening every now again due to mutation and slowly reverting back to their wild form (brownish, mottled color).

As for your situation, since they are going into their own tank with no fish, then no quarantine would be necessary. I would recommend starting with 20 for your 25 gallon tank. 10 would be a bit too few, and the larger gene pool you start out with, the better things will go in the long run. With 20 you will have a good mix of male and female so you will be off to a good start.

Get some plants like java moss, subwassertang, hornwort, frogbit, etc. They love the small leaved, frilly plants. Make sure your tank is fully cycled and stabled before adding any shrimp.

I thought I might have mixed those up.

 

I have 18 tanks currently running. would I be okay taking a small amount of media from a few healthy tanks and adding them or should I add some media and a fish to ensure it's cycled then remove the fish and put the shrimp in once I know it's stable?

I am probably going to get 20 Red Sakura shrimp as the ones I saw in the LFS were beautiful and bright. Should I aI'm to get a certain amount of each sex or just 20 healthy looking ones and fingers crossed I haven't accidentally chosen all of one sex?

I have began planting in the tank. I will be carpeting DHG across most of the tank and have some rocks with subwassertang and flame moss attached in there too. I have excess Cabomba in my goldie tank and plan on moving some across and probably some Salvinia Natans for some cover too. (if the shrimp are suited to them? I don't see why not but no harm in checking!)

Is there a recommended food? There is so much variety I never know where to start and usually end up with several useless foods before I find a suitable one.

Thanks for your help guys.x

 

Taking media from an established, healthy tank will be great. Should have no problems there, as shrimp have a real low bio-load. Plants will also help ease the transition as well.

For 20 shrimp, ideally 10-12 females and 8-10 males so you would be sure to have a good start to your colony. If you selectively pick out 20 shrimp though, you may be at the LFS a long time, as they move fast and sometimes sexing them can be tricky when they are scurrying around. Usually females are more colorful and larger, while males are more clearish and smaller. I would just try to net out 20 shrimp and pick any really colorful ones you see. With 20 you are sure to get a good mix with at least some of each sex. If for some crazy reason you got all males or all females, you could go back and buy 5 more of the other sex, but I doubt that would happen with 20.

Pretty much all plants are safe for shrimp. The only plant I would "worry" about is perhaps anubias. I don't personally believe in this, but there are mixed feelings about anubias and shrimp across the internet. From my research it seems that when trimming anubias they may release some chemical in the water that the shrimp don't like and perhaps kill them. Many people disagree and say they have kept anubias for years with shrimp and had no problems, trimmings or not. Others say they have wiped out an entire colony of shrimp after adding anubias or trimming it. I personally don't have anubias so not sure what I think. There are so many other plants that are easy to get and grow that I just stayed away from them just in case there is some truth to the myth.

From what I have read, I think it has more to do in where you get your plants, in that many anubias come from Asia, and they treat them with a lot of pesticides especially when they import them into the U.S. or Europe, as other areas don't want some invasion of Asian bugs, etc. I think the anubias may somehow store up some of these toxins, and then when they are trimmed those toxins are released. This is just a theory I have read about and think that may be where some of the "bad experiences" with anubias and shrimp have come from.

As for food, they don't really need anything special. They mostly eat bio-film and algae in your tank already. You can supplement their feeding with things like blanched veggies (zucchini, spinach, leafy greens, etc), algae wafers, or there is a wide variety of shrimp specific food. NLS makes some that is supposed to be good, here's a link....



I generally like NLS and think they make quality stuff, I keep meaning to try it, but I have other kinds already so I talk myself out getting some every time.

Another popular brand is Hikari....



I also really like HikarI foods as well, but again I haven't tried it.

I make my own shrimp crumble food as well. I don't want to take over this thread though, I may start a new post in how I make it, and when I'm done I will come back and edit this post to include a link. Here is the link to that post....

Homemade shrimp food ideas

One thing with feeding, especially in a shrimp only tank, you don't want to over feed, as this will cause problems with worms, planaria, water parameters etc. They don't eat much. 1/10th of an algae wafer is enough for 20 shrimp for a day or 2. Many people will throw an entire algae wafer in every day or so, and then end up with planaria problems. You only need to supplement their feed 2 or maybe 3 times a week, and even then not with much. The rest of the time they eat bio-film and algae.

Overall you are off to a good start and should have an easy time of getting your colony started.

 

Thank you ever so much for putting this together Dolfan!xx