The Puffer Forum

So I heard some controvery about the housing of live shrimp+fish with your DP. So I was wondering from experience what is a good cleaner/scavenger shrimp+fish. Also, I was wondering about the care of these shrimp+fish species. My tank is not extremely big so I don't want to risk over powering my tank's filter with waste. I was only planning on 1 fish/shrimp. Not too many. My filter is a PF10 which is made for tanks 5-10 gallons.

Currently I have a 10g with a DP and an Oto (as soon as I find some more going to be adding 2) and I haven't seen any aggression. It also houses 3 Cherry shrimp. They seem to be very active cleaners, plus one of the females just had babies and they are growing well. My theory is by the time the DP knows they are edible there should be a healthy breeding population. If he never takes to eating them, then I'll have some shrimps to use as trade goods.

hmm...interesting idea. Do you believe I have enough room for another shrimp of some sort? It's only a 5 gallon tank but has quite a lot of plants.

Not many fish would be happy in a 5 gallon..not even a tiny glofish..

You might could try a single ghost shrimp..see how it works out..but I am not sure it would go well..

I have 4 dwarf puffers, 2 kuhli loaches, 3 ottos, 2 cherry shrimp, and 2 ghost shrimp all together. No problems at all. Tank is much cleaner since adding the ottos too. My puffers are all girls though so I think that helps.

Don't loaches need larger schools than that?

In a 5g, I'd leave it at one or two small shrimp.

I am planning to get one more kuhli loach as I've read 3 are good. The two seem extremely happy though. I am having trouble finding another one. I bought the only two they had and nobody else has them.

LilGreenPuffer wrote:Don't loaches need larger schools than that?

In a 5g, I'd leave it at one or two small shrimp.

The red cherry shrimp are tiny compared to ghost shrimp, so you could add a fair amount to the tank if you went with that species.