# seed shrimp outbreak



## Bell (Nov 11, 2010)

I used to have a tank with cherry shrimps, otos and guppies. But, while the shrimps were breeding regularly, the population wasn't growing... I suspect the guppies were eating almost all the shimplets, and my gh is not exactly low - between >7˚d and >14˚d as read on my 5-in-1 test strips - so several adults have died molting (mostly females after hatching their eggs), but I have no access to RO water, so there's not much I can do there right now (any suggestions would be welcome too). So... the guppies had to go... I sold them a little over a week ago. Funny enough the remaining shrimps don't seem to be moving about as much as I hoped they would now that the guppies are gone... they're as shy as ever, not swimming or flitting about as I've seen in many youtube vids, just walking among the plants. 

But ... as the title says, my problem is with seed shrimps. They probably came with some plants a while back. And there were always a lot of them around... I always kinda thought the guppies ignored them and never ate any of them... but now I understand they WERE keeping the seed shrimp population in check... in a big way! They're now everywhere! Mostly invading the moss and all over the bubble filter sponge. Now that I have no guppies in the tank I no longer feed daily so it really shouldn't be an excess of food that they are thriving so prolifically right? Short of starving the otos and cherry shrimps, is there any other way of rectifying this situation?


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## gordonrichards (Jun 20, 2009)

Impossible without pulling and treating your plants and cooking your substrate.

I suggest keeping a tank for baby guppies. Put them into your shrimp tank and let them grow up. They'll chow down on your seed shrimp.

This is what I do with my daphnia colonies in my shrimp tanks.

-Gordon


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## Jaggedfury (Sep 11, 2010)

I struggled with seed shrimps alot. In all my shrimp tank, for some odd reason they are present in swarms. Tried many ways in getting rid of them but they seem to come back in a day or so. I'm at the point where I just leave them alone. I've seen them a few time latch on my shrimps just relaxing on their outer shell.


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## Bell (Nov 11, 2010)

@Jaggedfury, They also crawl all over the otos making them twitch uncomfortably and swim somewhere else where others will do the same again... *sighs* It's a hard life! LOL

@gordonrichards, Thanks but I'm not sure I want to have more than 1 tank at home... can't really afford to do that, nor do I have the space/power sockets in my apartment. All I can think right now is to put up with the seed shrimps and allow the cherries to populate the tank enough that I don't have to worry so much when I go to the petstore and buy some fish which are suitably small enough that they are not too great of a threat to future shrimplets... at least a smaller threat than guppies in any case. Right now, I only have fewer than 20 cherries, 3 are berried and about 4 - 5 are very small shrimplets... survivors of the guppy era. Fished out another dead juvenile today


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## Jaggedfury (Sep 11, 2010)

They aren't harmful, I don't think. I have read that if not taken care of, it will mess up plants stems.. wasn't the case for me. Plants seems fine and believe me, I have not yet seen anyone have more shrimp bugs than me. Mines was literally all over the tank on plants, all sides of the glass and some were even upside down right below the water line. If I were to stand 10 feet away, I would still be able to seem them all over the glass. That's how massive thick of a swarm was present in my tank. 

I have noticed they tend to like warm temperature. Right now, I keep my temp under 70 degrees but still there are a few here and there.

If you don't have any babies shrimps, I would throw guppies in there.

I put my baby shrimps in a different tank while the adult shrimps are in the same tank as the shrimp bugs and I have about 22 White Cloud Tetra swarming the tank incase they do appear. Better to get rid of them early than later down the line when massive outbreak occurs.


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## Bell (Nov 11, 2010)

No they're not harmful.. they clean up all dying plant parts real good actually. I once OD my tank with flourish excel to clean up some hairy algae, but it also did quite a great deal of damage on dwarf baby tears I was trying to grow  but all the bleached out leaves were gone overnight leaving only healthy stem bits and allowing more leaves to grow back. They also clear up any exposed stem plant cuttings really quickly. I know they're harmless, but they're certainly not very nice to look at  

My tank temp is around 23˚C or 73˚F... do you think turning it down some more will affect my otos? I read that it will slow down shrimp growth though. I have shrimps of all ages in only one tank. I don't have another tank to transfer them into.


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## Green024 (Sep 19, 2009)

Overfeeding was why I had such a large outbreak of seed shrimps. Uneaten food needs to be removed after so much time of being in the aquarium.


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