Gouramis and ghost shrimp?

[trisha1972]

Do Gouramis eat ghost shrimp? I didn't even think about it. I bought 9 LARGE ghost shrimp and put in our 55 gallon tank to be "clean up crew". I can't find any of them! They MAY be hiding in the plants, but I can't see any of them!

 

[sylvia]

Just how big were they and what species of gourami do you have? What other fish are in with them?

IME large shrimp are perfectly safe from most gouramies as they have small mouths and won't usualy take the time to tare the shrimp apart into bitesize morsels (thankfuly).

BTW, besides getting trapped in the filter intake, hiding between ornaments/plants and getting eaten, shrimp are remarkable escape artists and can clamber out of the smallest hole...

 

[trisha1972]

I have what was sold to me as gold gouramis (but I think they are snakeskin), a couple of blues, and a dwarf (they all get along fine. The dwarf is the only male). The shrimp are all almost an inch long. I just saw one of the gouramis with a shrimp picking at it. Oh, well...........

 

[sylvia]

If your 'gold' gouramies are snakeskins they'd eat the shrimp. The others I'd be quite surprised at eating them though the shrimp are still under 1" so quite small realy.

 

[trisha1972]

So what could I put in there for "clean up crew"? I can get ghost shrimp 3/$1 so they aren't too expensive to have. I just don't want to have to buy them often. Are there bigger shrimp that would be ok in that tank?

 

[sylvia]

Well there are larger filter-feeding shrimp you could get but they won't do much as far as cleaning up. Most other scavenging shrimp are the same sort of size as ghost shrimp. Take a look here for other shrimp species including the filter feeders: http/www.petshrimp.com/shrimpspecies.html Actualy, your best bet would probably be an apple snail (or several): http/www.applesnail.net/ They come in plenty of color varieties and grow pretty big (almost to the size of your fist). They won't multiply out of control like other snails and are excellent scavengers so would make an ideal clean-up crew. The downside to them is that snails are big waste producers (kind of like plecs ) so you need to consider them in your stocking calculations more than you would a group of tiny shrimp.

I'm wondering why you need a clean-up crew though to begin with. If your problem is algae then neither shrimp nor snails will solve the problem. If it's uneaten food you can just reduce the amount you are feeding. But maybe you have a planted tank and want something to clean up little bits of plant debris? That's what I use shrimp for anyway .

 

[afireinside]

Maybe that is why my Ghost Shrimp mysteriously started to disapear...

 

[trisha1972]

I want them to clean up any food that gets into spaces my fish can't. I have a ton of fake plants in the tank right now, and I know that my fish can't get inbetween all of them to get every last spec. I am going to be adding more live plants too.


I really don't like snails. My biggest fear is my tank getting overran with snails.