The Puffer Forum

i'm just wondering if cherry shrimps r gonna be ok in BW of salinity around 1.006?
cuz my ghost shrimp r doing fine in the tank for weeks..helping me clean the tank a bit
(my puffers don't really bother them if i keep the puffers well feed. and there's plenty hiding places in the tank. I just lost one or two now and then when the puffers decided to take a quick snack! )
the cherry shrimp that i was breeding in my snail tank just had lots of babies
just wondering if i should put a bunch in the puffer tank (when the babies get bigger), so i can have some tank cleaners or will they die off quickly becuz of the salt?

I'm not exactly sure...but i believe cherry shrimp are freshwater shrimp only. I feed them to my GSPs quite often and when i go to this petstore to get them, it even says on the side of the tank "FreshwaterCherryShrimp". So id assume they might not do so got in saltwater.

I've had both. I keep my cherry shrimp in my FW DP tank as cleaners. They are neat to look at and since they cost me like $2 each, I don't dare feed them to my puffers. The ghost shrimp, on the other hand, don't seem to care if they are in brackish or fresh and I feed them to my puffers quite often, as they're much cheaper- something to hunt and chase after kinda thing.

Cherries will probably live for a few days, maybe even a few weeks. BUT, they will likely die from either the salt or the puffer eating them within a month. I know I've had cherries live in my brackish tank for a week or more hiding in the fake plants, but either the salt killed them or the puffer ate them since I didn't see them after a short time.

In any case, I really do not recommend housing inverts to be kept as pets with puffers. The puffer will eventually eat them. You have to be prepared for this eventuality, and also only put in an amount that the puffer can safely eat. This is because once it realizes they are food, he will hunt them all. I really don't think you want your puffer to explode from eating too much. You can drop in a couple every few days, if he eats them that quickly, and they might help clean up. However, I really think that just doing WCs and vacuuming and algae scraping will clean up much better than they can. Cherries aren't that great for algae cleanup. Amanos are much better at it, but they are too expensive, IMHO, to be wasting as puffer food. At least the cherries will multiply for you in another tank. Oh, and smaller cherries generally last longer since juvies acclimate better and the puffer doesn't see them as readily.

My DP has never had a shrimp. I've kept several in there at a time. He won't really eat anything but blood worms. He's an odd fish that way. My F8, on the other hand, would eat one the moment it hit the water.

our F8 ignore the six amano shrimps we have in his tank. we started out with 4 small amano shrimps and the puffer was a bit curious about them the first few days, so the shimps hid themselves. after these days they came out and leave peacefully together with the puffer. so we addet two more shrimps and everything is still peacefull.

the tank is decorated with plenty of white stones with holes in them, so the shrimps can hide if they want to. and in these holes the mysis and red blodworms sometimes get stuck and out of reach of the puffer. but he is a smart little fellow: he follows the shrimps and spy on them: when the shrimps find some of this food they often loose it - and the puffer takes it from them. nice teamwork.

and yes, we have never fed live shrimps as food to the puffer. and as bazil323 says, the puffer might find out that the shrimps can serve as food for him.

Yep, sometimes they will leave shrimp/snails alone for a long time before they realize this. I had some ghost shrimp in with my F8 for at least 2 months, and they were completely ignored. The one day, I happened to notice my F8 had an unusually huge round belly, and on further inspection, I found that he had eaten 1-1/2 of the ghost shrimps in there (were 2 at the time). These were fully grown ghosties, and my F8, at the time, was only about 1.25" long! He was so stuffed I was afraid he might burst, so I fished out the remaining half of the shrimp. Since then he is hit and miss with eating the shrimp I put in, and I make it a point to only add 1-2 small shrimp (now using cherries for easier breeding/visibility) at a time and wait until they are gone before adding more.

Oh, and I think part of the reason he sometimes leaves them alone for a while is that I feed other foods (frozen mysis, bloodworms, plankton, etc.) every day because I also have mollies and bbgs in there. I think that since he has a ready supply of easy-to-catch, easy-to-eat foods, he ignores the harder to catch shrimp. However, he loooooooves snails and will go after them pretty quickly.

Yea i know cherry shrimp are a little on the pricey side but my puffers love them. they love ghost shrimp too but sometimes there is one that is too big and it stays in there for weeks.

Red Nose Cherry Shrimps should do fine at that salinity. Nmonks is a mentor I believe on here and his FAQ page is well worth a look if you're into brackish:

http://homepage.mac.com/nmonks/Projects/FAQ/8a.html