# How many shrimps



## sasa (Apr 15, 2005)

*How many shrimp*

Hi Guys,

My female Betta was having a hard time with her mate in my 77 heavily planted tank, My tank has a lot of places to hide but she was always after him and he hurt her badly. so we decided to buy a little tank to keep her until her wounds got better. Unfortunately we couldn't save her and Now I have a empty 3 gallons planted tank. (I use to have male and female bettas before in the same tank without problems, but this male is extremely aggressive)

I was thinking to use my spare tank just for shrimps (I don't have the heart to put the male in this little tank). I have cherries and ghost in my big tank, so I was wondering how many shrimps can I keep in a 3 gallon tank?

These are the specifications:
* 3 gallon tank
* 3 watts/gallon
* ph: 6.7-6.7
* kh: 5.0
* gh: 9.0
* one driftwood (small)
* plants: cabomba, Anubia nana, glosso and some small grass
* dosing per label with Seachem line (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, iron and flourish)
* dosing SeaChem excel

I will post a pictures later.

Thanks,

sasa


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

You should have no problems starting out with 5 or 6 of the Neocardina or Cardina types in that size tank.

Please also note that the usage of the word "Shrimps" in the post is incorrect. Plural for Shrimp is still Shrimp. The proper usage of Shrimps is as a discriptor. such as; Forrest Gump shrimps for a living and he caught many shrimp while doing so.


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## sasa (Apr 15, 2005)

*Thanks gnatster!*

English is not my first language.  
I'll try to be more careful next time

sasa


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## richy (Nov 8, 2004)

sasa said:


> These are the specifications:
> * 3 gallon tank
> * 9 watts/gallon


9 _watts_!! you have a 27watt bulb over a 3G?! that's a lot of light. sounds like algae heaven to me...

but back to your question, i think you can keep up to 10 of the smaller species of shrimp (e.g., cherries, tigers, bees, bumblebees, etc.) without too many problems. the plants you have in there will help handle the bioload. once you have a population boom though, you will need to upgrade to something bigger. amanos, on the other hand, i wouldn't put more than 4-5 in there.


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## shalu (Oct 1, 2004)

richy said:


> sounds like algae heaven to me...


but it definately keeps the shrimp happy, LOL.


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## sasa (Apr 15, 2005)

*Ops!*

Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking...

I have 9 watts in total (3 watts/gallon)

sasa


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## shalu (Oct 1, 2004)

now you go from a super high light tank to a medium light tank all of a sudden, LOL. To put bioload in perspective, my 10gallon shrimp tank houses about 100-200 various shrimps(majority are cherries), but it is very heavily planted.


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## kris (Jan 1, 2005)

can i extrapolate that in a heavily planted 5 gallon, i could keep about 50 shrimp of different varieties?


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

kris said:


> can i extrapolate that in a heavily planted 5 gallon, i could keep about 50 shrimp of different varieties?


Depends...

Are we talking about buying 50 adult shrimp and introducing them in one shot or getting 10 or so and letting them populate?

I breed shrimp in 5gal tanks and have easily 150+ cherries in a tank at one time. Maybe 10% full grown adults, 20% mid-sized not quite mature and the rest various sized juveniles.I'd not call any of these tanks "heavily planted" but they do have sizable amounts of moss floating in them. I also do weekly 50% water changes and harvest moss often.

Don't be so stuck on how many in X gallons but more on does your routine allow for a sizable population to grow and prosper.


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