Shrimp for planted 3gal?

1

1cmarie

AC Members
Jan 6, 2007
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Hello,

I'm considering housing a few dwarf shrimp in an empty 3gal. My fish are recently deceased, so the planting and stocking of shrimp will be a new experience. My questions: are the easy-to-care-for java plants good choices for shrimp stock? And, what breeds of shrimp can you recommend for me? I'd like to try for up to four of the dwarf variety. Which are easiest to find? I do have an over-the-hood filter; will this be a problem? Lastly, are there any small breeds of fish that are compatible with shrimp? If all goes well, I would like to try to stock two or three small fish, as well. TIA for any answers.
 
The problem with that small of a tank for alot of the dwarf shrimp is that they reproduce so readilly they quickly out grow it. You could on the other hand get something like amano shrimp that do not reproduce in freshwater. As far as fish, many will try to munch on baby shrimp (if you went iwht a neocaridina species the other easy type-cherry shrimp are the best and most available). Cover the intake of your filter with a sponge to protect the shrimp.
The java fern will do fine, they like moss as well and anubias nana or petite look nice in a small tank as well. I think you could add an apple snail as well for more variety but don't recommend most fish for a tank that size. Even the apple snail is debatable as they do best with 2.5g of space in a tank for their bioload. Hope this helps!
 
:iagree:
She is the Expert. I have a 7 gal bow and have had Red Cherry's for 2 1/2 months they have reproduce 3x in that period producing about 40 babies. The good thing is I have lots of friends wanting these, a bigger tank to feed them to, and a LFS to sell to when they are big enough.
 
You can keep cherries or other dwarf shrimp in that size tank, the general rule of thumb is 10 per g, but they will just overpopulate it quickly.
 
If it was me, I would get one male and one female of any kind of dwarf shrimp and try to experience the full breeding cycle of them.

And maybe a couple blue ramshorns.
 
i can attest to the easy breedability of cherry shrimp. i have a ten gallon planted tank. i started with 6 cherry shrimp; 1 male, 5 females. two of the females died. i had two out of the remaining 3 cherries berry up. i wound up with at LEAST 2 dozen baby shrimp. its been about 3 weeks and ive seen at least 10 more tiny new baby shrimp. one of my females is still berried and the other two have offloaded their eggs and have HUGE saddles again. my water tends to stay warm, so they seem to be having baby shrimp every three weeks or so.

thank god i have a puffer
 
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