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best plant cleaners ever!

979 views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Blue Fish 
#1 ·
Have you ever grown a brown algae on you plants? When that happens to me I place the plant in my blue velvet shrimp tank and withing a couple of hours the plants are gloriously cleaned!!!

These shrimp are the best algae cleaners ever!
 

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#3 ·
My shrimps eats the same good as the betta....and algae. Occasional spirulina pellets too and tiny bits of vegetable :) (they adore zucchini) but I really don't have much yet.

But yes, shrimps are amazing to clean the tank!!
 
#4 ·
I've only had some ghost shrimp for a couple of days, so I know next to nothing about them yet, but I'd heard that their little "hands" were perfect for cleaning up plants and into small spaces. Good to hear another version of the same thing! I put 12 ghosts in my 40gb sorority tank...and now I have no idea where they are...I'm assuming they're still in there, lol! I figure they can do their thing...I was told they shouldn't breed, and even if they did that the eggs and fry would be eaten off by the girls so I'm not worried about overcrowding the tank. I also put in four mystery snails (two may be coming back out, but I stuck them in there for now) and there are many ramshorns just from the plants. :)

Snails and bettas I can do...the shrimp, since I can't find them, I guess they're doing okay, lol! :)
 
#7 ·
Ghost Shrimp are scavengers and will not eat algae unless starving I'm sure. They will eat any left over pellets/flakes/wafers because they can get into the small spaces of gravel if you have that.

Other shrimp will eat the algae although only certain kinds. Diatoms are the brown algae you are experiencing which happens when a tank is maturing. The Diatoms will bloom for a while and after around 3-4 months they will have depleted their food source and die off. I've found algae to come in waves almost where Diatoms ended, regular green algae came up, that died off and then I got Green Spot in some tanks and BGA in others. It all depends on the plants you have, size tank and how far or close the light source is and what nutrients you have in the tank.

http://planetinverts.com/ is great for learning about shrimp! Also there are two different kinds of "Ghost Shrimp" one which is actually a Ghost Shrimp and the other which is the American Glass Shrimp which is commonly sold under the name of the Ghost Shrimp. The difference mostly is the color of the eggs of the shrimp, American Glass will have green eggs while Ghosts will have clear-ish eggs or similar to the adult in color. Both are scavengers though!
 
#8 ·
Ahh, thanks for the information! These are "feeder" ghost shrimp...the others were 30$ *each*...and that was just too much for my budget. I really just wanted something to help out the snails in terms of cleanup for the "big" planted tank. :) And 30$ shrimp were not on the menu for cleanup, lol! :)
I mostly rely on the ramshorn and mystery snails for algae control (although I've been pretty lucky in this area thus far...), only having to deal with hair algae, and it's actually not too bad. I tried combating it, then just realized it was actually easier just to reach in about once a month and clean it off with my fingers and throw it away than to try and find someone to eat it or to kill it off.

They're in the sorority which does have quite a bit of left-overs. I'm always worried that someone isn't going to get enough to eat...so I'm sure I overfeed...and I'm always concerned about having enough cleanup in there to take care of the excess. :)

Thanks for the link and the information!! :)
 
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