New to invertebrates!!

[yjjeep43]

I have a small 7gal tank with some community fish and lots of plants. I would like to get a few shrimp just for something different. Here are just a couple of questions I have:

1. How do shrimp affect the bio-load of a tank, meaning, how many per gal can be placed in a tank?

2. I have guppies and neon tetras in the tank. The only shrimp the lfs sells is ghost shrimp. Are these compatible or should I order some, which then goes back to quest. 1 with how many can I have?

[msjinkzd]

Typically with most dwarf shrimp 10/g works out fine. They do best in a tank with some densely planted areas. Ghost shrimp should do fine with those fish, especially if there are some plants for them to hide out in. I usually recommend people to cover the intake on their filter with a sponge to protect the shrimp and any babies if they should reproduce. Not all ghost shrimp commonly sold with reproduce in freshwater. Cherry shrimp are another great alternative. There are many people here sellign them in the classifieds for relatively inexpensive. I would only put about 5-7 shrimp in your tank to start if you get cherries, as they will reproduce.

[yjjeep43]

Thanks msJ,
That brings about acouple more questions. 10/gal would be around 70 in my case. Obviously I wouldn't do that. What is an actual good number if one is very careful with feeding. The guppies swarm the food at the surface and the tetras do a great job of catching anything that starts to sink. I only feed a little bit so very little makes it to the bottom. Do you think that if I just get between 5 and 10 then they should have enough food? And as far as reproducing goes, I don't really want to deal with offspring. Is there anything special that has to be done to assure the success of offspring or will they just appear without any real help?

[msjinkzd]

If you don't want to deal with offspring, you could get something like amano shrimp that do not breed in freshwater, bee shrimp, or some of the ghost shrimp. Or a fan filter feeding shrimp (they are much larger). With neocaridina species (cherry shrimp, yellow, snowball, blue pearl) the babies just pretty much happen. With some of the caridina species (crystal red, tiger, dark green, etc) they require much more exact water conditions. I would recommend feeding any shrimp you decide to get with a sinking pellet (hikari crab cuisine is usually pretty easy to find, or algae wafers).

As for how many, i would get less than 10 regardless of reproduction as the tank is already stocked with fish.