Will shrimp survive in my tank?

[MJMiller]

I have a pretty busy community tank and I wanted to add a few shrimp (maybe?). Right now I have:

12 cardinals & neons
2 angels
2 large rainbows
5 tiger barbs
1 rosy barb

I'm looking for something that is going to stay on the bottom and not disturb the tank any more than it already is. I was thinking a couple of shrimp, but I thought the barbs or rainbows would make a pretty quick meal out of them. Will they? Any suggestions?

 

[TKOS]

Try adding feeder shrimp or ghost shrimp (glass shrimp). They seem to be cheap and will make a good experiment. They might be okay if there are lots of plants, but if the tank is open the fish will probably eat them.

 

[PumaWard]

The angelfish will most likely be a problem. I tried ghostshrimp, another kind of shrimp similiar to ghosts, and amanos, either my angels killed my shrimp or I never saw them because the angels would attack them whenever they came out into the open. Once the angels were gone, my shrimp came out on a regular basis.

I agree with TKOS, I would try some real cheap shrimp to see how it goes.

 

[Leopardess]

Ghost shrimp should be cheap enough to put in and replenish every week or two. The angel and barbs will probably pick them off one at a time...

 

[MJMiller]

Yeah, I'll probably go ahead and waste my money just to see if it works. What are some of the larger varieties? How big do the ghost shrimp get? I think what the store had was ghost shrimp (being in France the name translation can be a bit of a problem), but they were all pretty small (< 3/4"). Anything a bit bigger would probably stand a fighting chance with my fish...

Thanks!

 

[MJMiller]

so far so good...

The store that I normally go to had 1 amano that was just under 1.5", so I bought him. They didn't even know that they had one - I happened to find it as I was checking out the rest of the stock. Anyway, he is still eating his way around the tank this morning. Nobody has shown much of an interest in eating him so far. We'll see how it goes. If they continue to leave him alone, I'll probably try the ghost shimp since they seem to be cheaper.