Skirt Tetra Community Tank

[fishorama]

It's great you're being opened minded! You need to pick a species or 2 that you can house well. If skirts are your #1 choice, then work with them. All the different colors of skirts are the same species, all the glow colors, black & white; long & short fins. You can mix them however you like...They know they're the same & will behave like it.

Don't get hung up on plant species, go with what you can grow easily. I belong to a plant club & almost never buy plants but some are much easier than others. Go with easy!!! Get the hang of them & your skirts; anything else is kind of optional. This should be a long term hobby if you play your cards right...otherwise you'll be disappointed & quit...many do, sniff.

The smallest tank I've kept is a 10g. But cherry shrimp can probably be kept in a 5g...maybe even less...maybe...Mine grew & bred like gangbusters in a heavily planted low tech, probably more than 40 or 50 with light culling every couple months.

Hah! Balas, lol. I saw a school of them in a huge 12ft X 4 X 4ft display tank once, it didn't look too big for them at all! But their mouths are quite small for their length, I think neons or even shrimp might be safe...I'd love to know that!! Someday? Who can say?

 

[DefJ123]

A buddy I met through a local aquarium group has a small colony in a 2gal bowl. Now its filtered but yeah still a small tank. Hes got them in tanks from 2 gal up to 50 gal. Has shrimp mixed in many community tanks. Long as they have hiding places they will be fine.

As said , my tank is a 10g heavily planted. I carpetted with Xmas moss. I have ~40 shrimp, rarely see that many. Theyre a little less visible now that my betta Ugly has moved into it but you can still see some of them whenever you look into it.

 

[FreshyFresh]

Just to add to fishorama's excellent advice, see how it goes with your fish and shrimp mix. I know on some of my setups, some of the fish will so actively hunt and eat shrimp, the only survivors have to stay hidden to the point you don't know they exist. My active hunters are female bettas, tiger barbs, an angel and of course my oscar and severum. These are all in different setups of course!

My currently little red cherry shrimp setup is a ~3gal bowl I have setup with a small sponge bubbler filter and a cheap clamp on light fitted with a "75watt equiv" daylight LED bulb and a clump of java moss. I sprinkle in some zoo med spirulina flakes 4-5x/week and do a weekly big WC on it (80-90%) This is an old pic. I now have so many shrimp I have to net them out and distribute them to my other setups.

 

[Reido Dorito]

I'm glad to know that I can get several kinds of these fish together! For some reason, I was thinking that longfins were extra susceptible to fin-nipping, but if not, I think these guys might make up the majority of the population. I can't wait to get them all together.

Hmm... I think I'd like to get all of my tetras into the tank and work with them first, like you said. But, at some point in the future, I'd love to see how cherry shrimp work out! Maybe they're a better species to keep in a nano tank, or a QT tank, maybe?

Sounds like a cool bowl, Fresh! I think it would be awesome to get a bowl together, but it seems like it would be kind of tough to get all of the equipment to fit well.

Thanks for all the advice, guys! I appreciate it.

 

[fishorama]

Joel, I like your shrimp bowl!! Attractive & minimalistic, perfect!

RD, yes! make the skirts you first priority...Then plants, wood &/or rocks for the shrimp to hide in. Don't worry if you don't see the shrimp much. Start with 8 or 10 shrimp when the time comes & see what happens. But don't give up on RCS either, they might be just fine.

 

[Reido Dorito]

Alright, just got my black skirts in about five minutes ago! I'm amazed at how quickly and peacefully they shoaled (uh... 'zat a word?) up! Thanks again for your advice, everyone!

 

[DefJ123]

Whoa whoa whoa! Hold up! We need pics of this tank!

 

[Reido Dorito]

Sure thing! I'll take some pics tomorrow, when I have the day lights on, if that's alright?

 

[Reido Dorito]

Sorry for the blurriness, but these guys are so twitchy that it's hard to get a good pic of them. Anyway, here are the fish and the tank!

 

[fishorama]

So, how many skirts do you have total now?...right after these additions?

Some of your plants look to be planted too deep. The "crown" where leaves & roots meet, needs to be above the substrate, just a bit...but above.