How many shrimps are enough?

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hadjici2

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Jun 24, 2005
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In a 120 litre planted aquarium would there be enough nitrates by keeping just Amano Shrimps?

How many Amano Shrimps in sush an aquarium would not starve to death but also provide a good balance in nitrate levels?

Always assuming that there are no plants in the aquarium that Amano Shrimps especialy like!
 
Amano shrimp do not eat live healthy plants.

I'm not sure what you are asking about on nitrate - are you counting on the shrimp to produce sufficient nitrate to support the plants without supplements? That I consider unlikely. But then I don't count on fish to do that either.
 
I was thinking that the shrimp can provide enough nitrates....

Do Amano Shrimp eat hair algae? Would they die in a 30 degrees celcius tank? What about the changing pH by my DIY CO2, can they survive the pH changes?
 
Amano shrimp do an excellent job on hair algae.

Everyone says Amanos should not be kept above ~26C, I have them in tanks up to 27.7C, but have not tried past that.

Fish and shrimp are not particularly affected by pH changes from CO2 addition, unlike similar pH scale changes from adding minerals (which give big TDS changes, the real culprit).
 
Do GHOST shrimps eat hair algae?

Does anyone know how to breed them?
 
Ghost shrimp are primarily scavengers, they will not eat hair algae.

Put a berried female in a ten gallon heavily planted tank with plenty of bushy plants and a fair bit of Java Moss, then remove her after she drops the fry. Very tiny foods fed sparingly until the fry are easily visible.
 
ghost shrimp do not eat algae. I don't know why everyone likes them so much. Thye are bait and they die. Amanos do eat hair algae. My amanos have been around for over a year so far. The aquarium gets up to 90 degrees during the summer sometimes. They seem fine. REALLY hardy shrimp. You can keep up to one shrimp per gallon, probably more.
 
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Kissofthegorami said:
You can keep up to one fish per gallon, probably more.
Click to expand...

just my .02 - I wrote a letter to an expert at the UK's best fish mag (didn't get published so no free decholrinator for me!) and he told me that I could fit another 20 in my tank at least, taking into account my stocking at present.
I am not going to do this (I am going to add 5 more and that's it for this tank) but i believe they don't have a big impact on bioload.
 
hadjici2 said:
In a 120 litre planted aquarium would there be enough nitrates by keeping just Amano Shrimps?

How many Amano Shrimps in sush an aquarium would not starve to death but also provide a good balance in nitrate levels?

Always assuming that there are no plants in the aquarium that Amano Shrimps especialy like!
Click to expand...
Yes 20 would be great if you plan to have nothing else in the tank and you are having an algae problem. There are somethings you should know about amano shrimps though.
A) they will eat any fish food that hit the bottom over eating algae. They'll snack on the algae but that's about all they do.
B) if your tank is infested with algae, you need a hord of starving amano shrimps to clean it up.
C) so what happens when that hord finnished eating all the algae? They start eating your plants and themselves. When faced with starvation, they will eat plant and canabalise themselves.
So it's up to you to find that balance.
 
Amanos do not eat plants. They don't have the mouth for it. Nor have I ever witnessed canabalism among them. I think that there is a bit of exaggeration going on here.

But, yes, like most algae-grazers, they will take the line of least energy expenditure and eat fishfood before doing the work of clearing the algae. But I can't blame them, I act the same way.
 
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