Palaemonetes vulgaris

Anyone have any experience with grass shrimp in their tank? I'm thinking of adding them before I add fish. My first planned addition of fish is Pajama Cardinalfish who apparently love to eat these guys.

 

If fish eat them, i doubt you can get a sustainable amount in the display. I was playing with trying to raise in sump or it's own tank. For when I'm ready to try cuttlefish.

 

Oh and if you Google around, i don't have link handy on phone but on tonmo or another forum they have breeding journals. Seemed fairly simple. I wish mysis were the same.

 

I suspect the population will get decimated by the fish unless the fishes' mouths are too small to fit the big ones. Keeping a breeding population would be cool. I've heard you can even do that in a five gallon bucket with aeration and old flake. I'm also playing with the idea of adding them now (even though I still have trace amounts of Ammonia from my cycle). Apparently, they are fairly tolerant to it. (See, https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitst...655.V855_1996.H837.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)

Do the mysis shrimp have higher nutritional value?

Also, wondering if anyone has used the https://www.algaebarn.com/ live products. Seems like a great local resource.

 

The pods get expensive imo but great seeding especially if you start with dry rock. But I'm a cheap skate.

Mysis are much smaller and i do think may be more nutritional. For me i need them live while the cuttles are fresh hatch before moving into the P. Vulg as they grow.

Mysis are hard because they are highly cannibalistic.

 

Will they let you stop by to pick stuff up or is it mail order only?

 

Apparently, Algae Barn doesn't let you stop by which really sucks because they are in Longmont and I work in Longmont. They have some kind of zoning issue and can't do retail.

I ordered some pods and phytoplankton anyway. The guy said both are okay with the levels of Ammonia and Nitrite that I have left in my cycle. I'm going to see if I can get them going and then step up to the grass shrimp.

 

The place I'm talking about isn't really setup for walk up... however when I spoke to them a year ago as long as you are making the minimum order sounded like it would work if you met at their time/convenience for it. Forget it it was like $40 min or 400 mysis or somesuch like that. They were really confused at first when they found out I was a private person wanting them for an aquarium. They are usually used with their other livestock in pollutant testing etc.

 

It won't work in the display. There can be some that can hide out and stay alive and probably even breed. The babies just cannot make it without being in the open and having to compete with the bigger ones for the hiding places and the food that happens to float by. They don't live long IIRC and will eventually die out if a few cycles of babies don't make it to adulthood.

If you have any freshwater experience, this is like having cherry shrimp in a tank with africans - they will just get to all of them as fast as they can.

 

Algae Barn's free shipping kicks in when you order $40 or more. I told them that they should hire a delivery dude and offered to let them just drop my order off at my office. It's just as close to them as the post office and has the added bonus of being free to them. So, we'll see what happens.

 

I'm going to try to give them a head start and see if they can colonize my dry rock. They have until next Monday when the grass shrimp arrive and, I suspect, eat most of them. Depending on how many survive, I will either start my fish additions with a Mandarin or a school of three Pajama Cardinals.

 

This is a new tank? Please dont just jump in with the mandarin. Mandarin is going to starve or make you go broke trying to keep it fed in a brand new tank. Even if they take to frozen food, they require constant grazing thru the day in an established tank that has a large population of pods. (Smaller the tank the more lush and packed it needs to be). They will eat thousands in a day. Even if you feed frozen it doesnt work well as they will peck a few bites, but that's it.

Mandarins are like a few other fish in that they don't really have stomaches, just a straight run to the intestine. In other words they have to graze all day, they can't be like my other fish where they get a big load of food stored in their stomach in the morning and that's it except for some light grazing in the tank.

Mandarins are great for adding later because just about all fish will leave them completely alone so you don't have to worry about them being harassed usually. So by all means get one, they are amazing. But really patient and wait minimum 6 months after tank established if not a year. And if starting with dry rock make sure you are getting macro algae from people and maybe some seed rock or otherwise do indeed get some various species of pods/amphipods dumped into display and sump to start getting established.

Grass shrimp won't be bothered by mandarin, nor will the cardinals eat them btw.

 

Others had said to wait on the Mandarin. I thought it was just because the pods wouldn't be there yet. So, I figured, if I added the pods, they would be happy. I was also concerned that because they are a peaceful fish, it would be hard to add them late. Glad to hear that is not an issue. I'll definitely wait then.

My problem with macro algae is that I don't really know where to put it. I keep thinking about adding a fuge, but my cabinet will not house both a fuge and a chiller and I don't yet know if I'll need a chiller. The only other place to put macro would be in the part of the sump that houses my protein skimmer. I am concerned that, if I put it there, the protein skimmer will try to eat it and make a real mess. Any suggestions?

 

Also, bummer about the cardinals not eating shrimp. liveaquaria.com says they'll eat feeder shrimp.

 

If they are tiny enough maybe but I've always seen them as a high/mid water column fish. The shrimp can be good clean crew if left alone. Often people get them for feeding picky fish like Lions, angler, etc.

Have you looked at dottybacks. Either ora indigo, springeri are calmer. The typical orange and blue are meaner. But at least in a bit tank i love their spunky personality. But most of my fish bigger or meaner. I suppose in your tank some risk of them bothering some fish. They sure would eat your shrimp for you.


you might even try one of the tiny species of mantis shrimp. Kept one in a 210 with no issues. Maybe occasionally eat a snail but mainly got hand fed. Sadly in my current tank my tusk and trigger would eat.

 

I like the Bicolor Dottybacks, but the wife and kids aren't all that enamored with them. If nothing else, the shrimp will be a good cleanup crew and I'll give some away. I'm not all that familiar with Basslets, but I've been bass fishing all my life. They seem to eat anything they can fit in their mouths.

 

Cardinals will eat anything that they can fit in their mouth. I don't think that they will stalk down their prey and all of that, but they will definitely eat them if they can. They probably cannot get the big ones, but they don't start out that way.

 

Have them watch some videos. Like i said half their charm is there seeing and personality.

The small saltwater ones are mixed, the chalk are really docile. Others eat everything. With salt you have to deal with a lot of fish that won't eat something but will harass them to death.

Kinda like how a lionfish isn't aggressive but eats anything small. But a small damsel can bully a fish 3x it's size to death.



I'm game if you want to see the big tank and see some of the fish i have in a few weeks. Need to get a few pests under control but finally winning against a crazy mutant hair algae nothing will eat.

 

Sounds like a plan. Good luck with the hair algae thing.