Shrimp with half moon plakat

[On_a_dishy]

I have 3 cherry shrimp in my 34L tank - all different colours. A poster has alerted me to the fact that, if they breed, I’ll end up with the colour genes mixing to produce an unimpressive outcome!
My aim is to have a half moon plakat Betta in there. I’m now wondering if my Betta would sort this unimpressive shrimplet offspring problem out by eating them?
Am I being overly hopeful thinking that:
A) the shrimp would breed at all (although if they don’t the unimpressive shrimplet problem goes away)
B) my Betta would be able to eat the growing shrimplets?
C) my Betta won’t attack my 3 new shrimp friends?
In short, I don’t want my small tank aesthetics compromised by unimpressive cherry shrimp!

 

[Essjay]

A) They will breed if at least one is a male and at least one is a female.
B) It is very likely that a betta would eat the shrimplets.
C) It is also likely that a betta would try to eat the adult shrimps. Some will ignore them, others regard shrimps as a tasty snack. But there's no way to tell if the betta in the shop is or isn't a shrimp eater. It's a gamble.




I have had several bettas, one at a time, over the years.
With one betta, I moved some floating plants into his tank from my main tank and there must have been rice fish eggs on the plants. Shortly afterwards I spotted rice fish fry in with the betta, and he ignored them. Once the fry were big enough to go into the main tank, I moved some shrimps in with him and he ignored them. He also ignored shrimplets and the shrimp population increased.
When that betta died, the next one also ignored the adult shrimp but there was no increase and presumably this betta ate the shrimplets.
The next betta did not play well with shrimps. I got up one morning to find bits of shrimp on the tank floor. I had to rescue the survivors and move them to my third tank which had shrimps already.

It all depends on the betta.

 

[On_a_dishy]

Here he is! Nitrite and ammonia at 0, nitrates low and being controlled by water changes, and I still have 3 alive cherry shrimp, although my beautiful new addition has nosed up to them with hearty interest. He’s being on his hammock, he’s spread himself out on the moss balls and he’s had some betta pellets. He’s just lovely!

 

[Essjay]

He's gorgeous






The white and green striped plant - if that's a live plant I would remove it from the tank and put it in a plant pot on a widow ledge. it looks very much like a dracena, a non-aquatic plant often sold by fish stores.

 

[On_a_dishy]

The plant is curiously bushy.
It had these bulbous, white elongated balloon-like appendages on the roots - I’ve looked up Dracaena roots and they look different, so fingers crossed… unless someone comes along to tell me that that’s exactly what young dracaena roots look like!
Shrimps and Betta still alive…but he cocks his eyes towards them with interest (see photo)

 

[On_a_dishy]

@Essjay - you were right! I've just hunted through my rubbish to find the label for the plant - it's chlorophytum bichettii. So I looked it up and it isn't an aquarium plant at all. £4.50, too, so that's going back, grumpily, to my LFS.

 

[Essjay]

A lot of fish stores sell terrestrial plants for aquarium use. But they do OK for a while then just die and rot. Like with fish, it's always a good idea to research a plant before buying to find out whether it is terrestrial or not.