In my experience they are hardy and easy to care for, although I've not kept them in hard water, which is what I assume you have if you are keeping guppies. Make sure your water parameters are suitable.
My water is pretty hard, at 253pm, and have kept a large colony of neocaridina shrimp for years now, and they've survived accidentally being poisoned by dodgy plants then moved to a brand new set up (I lost a lot of shrimp to that and it was horrible, but the rest of the colony survived and bred after, so I count it as a win for the colony coming through that and soon building their numbers back up), they're a strange mix of both delicate, and tough as nails!
To first get a colony established and going can be tough, but once they're successfully breeding and your shrimplets are surviving in good numbers and going on to breed themselves, they're pretty hardy and able to live in a variety of water conditions (hard/soft) so long as the water is clean, maintained, and they have a constant food source in the sense of an established tank with things like live plants, botanicals, and algae for them to feed on.
I will add that newly hatched cherry shrimps are tiny and easily sucked up during a water change. Mine are in their own tank and I always check the old water thoroughly before throwing it away. My record is 32 shrimps from newly hatched to adults in one water change.
Very much this! You soon get to recognise the quick darting movements of baby shrimp! I was always determined to rescue every single shrimplet that got sucked up during a gravel vac/water change. Using a bright light, light coloured buckets, and a jug to carefully check every jugful I'd removed from the tank. Swirling the water then letting it settle, so the muck would settle and the shrimplets would reveal themselves, saving those ones, then doing it again! Makes water changing tanks with shrimp a longer process, but that's okay! I also have to search carefully like that for pygmy corydoras fry, since they're also easily sucked up and need careful searching since they blend into the mulm so well.
I put 6 in a sump chamber about 3 years ago but they ended up in another sump chamber that is full of alfagrog and sponge and now theres thousands, never fed or under light etc but thriving in the sense of breeding
When I first had mine breeding and I didn't realise my intake cover wasn't fine enough to prevent shrimplets being sucked up, I was shocked to find young shrimp thriving in my canister filter too! They looked great, obviously thriving off the muck on the filter sponges, but still returned them to the tank and got a much finer intake sponge
@BigJfish12 - tips - don't clean the back and ideally sides of the tank for a few weeks before you get your shrimp. let the algae and biofilm build up there, and just clean the front so you can still enjoy your view of your fish, but that soft new algae and biofilm will help provide food for the shrimp. I never clean the back and one side of my tanks now, those are hidden by plants anyway, and provide food for shrimp and fish (my plecos and pgymy cory fry).
Provide a lot of ground cover for shrimp to hide, especially if you're putting them with guppies. They can live with guppies, I've done that too, but guppies will eat shrimplets if they can, for sure, and the new shrimp you get will feed safer to get settled in and start breeding and building a colony if they have lots of places to hide from the fish. Lots of plant cover is ideal, but also things like almond and oak leaves are fantastic to add for several reasons. Providing food, as mentioned before, since bacteria and micro-organisms work on breaking down the leaves, and provide another source of food for the shrimp. The leaves provide tannins and are good for water quality and fish health. They also provide shelter for the shrimp to escape any fish looking to eat them!
You can also get fake decor that provides hidey holes, or build up some stones to provide little escape areas. The more ground cover, the more likely your shrimp will survive being with fish, produce shrimplets, and have those shrimplets survive. Don't skimp on your first group, get a decent amount of them 10-20, so there's a good amount of them already, and you'll have a good ratio of males to females and they can start breeding faster, and feel more secure when they're in a group.
