Shrimp?

[Zappity]

I have a barely over 1 inch female betta, and soon I'm going to be moving her to a 5 gal tank. I have a few questions..

~I'm going to TRY and make it a NPT, how will I go about doing this?
~I'm thinking about getting shrimp, too. How do I care for them? Will they hurt her cause she's so small? Which species? I'm leaning more towards Red Cherry Shrimp. and how many?
~Will this tank require a filter? I'm afraid it would suck her and the shrimp up.
~What would the maintence on this be?
~ What plants species? I tend to kill my plants, so something easy xD
~ That's all I can think of for now, so, thank you very much :)

[Vier]

Im running a 5.5g shrimp tank right now with a filter and heater with no issues. I had bought a girl recently because my male USED to be there but. I added in more shrimp and he is big enough to make almost all of them a snack. Then I acquired another girl and tried her out in the tank, she seemed alright and didn't pick on the bigger sized shrimps- she could definitely eat the babies though. -RCS are great..I probably have over 10 in there right now and a few more species (I only ordered 6 shrimp but now I don't even know how many are in there) -Definitely recommend the filter...I've had no issues with the flow sucking up things. I dove into the planted tank thing too, and its on and off, I would not be able to give great advice on taking care of them! Youll need an appropriate light, and easier maintenance species are : java moss, java ferns, anubias. I had duckweed that multiplied like mad but if you dont cover the filter, will get sucked in. Anacharis/hornwort touted as easy but mine are barely hanging on and anacharis did a lot better floating.

[Oldfishlady]

Take a look at my album for some pic of NPT's and here is a link to a NPT I setup in Oct to give you some information on the soil based tanks and a plant list.

http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=84915

When I first set a soil based tank up-I like to use a filter for the first 3 months-then I usually remove it-but this is for my smaller tanks under 10gal and if I do keep a filter in the small tanks I use sponge filters-I have found them to work well for both Bettas and keeping shrimp

On my smaller tanks that I keep shrimp I like to use sponge filters-mainly because the baby shrimp can get sucked into the HOB (hang on back) type-sometimes they survive the trip through the impeller-but most of the times they don't....so I always dump the water out into a container to check for life at least monthly.....

Depending on the Betta and the amount of cover you have-shrimp may or may not do well-this can vary-but if you have lots of moss-this can help to a degree-moss is great for shrimpletes to hide and feed in....

I like the Red cherry shrimp and have hundreds of them-reproduce really fast and they don't eat their own babies like the ghost shrimp will do.....

What kind of dirt do you plan to use and what kind of light do you have.....
Proper lights can make the difference between success and failure when it comes to live plants......

For plants-this is an endless list-but for the low-mod light plants for soil based setups.....you want lots of stem plants and some floating plants.

[Tigerfish1704]

Can you put shrimp in a non-planted tank?

[nintendobratkat]

Originally Posted by Tigerfish1704

Can you put shrimp in a non-planted tank?

I kinda want to know this answer as well. I just put two ghost shrimp in my tank with my betta and I don't have any plants yet. It's a slow process of building up my tank.

[kfryman]

You can have shrimp without live plants, they just prefer them. With any shrimp you need cover if you are gonna have a predatory fish.

[Oldfishlady]

Kfryman is correct....you can keep shrimp without live plants- but they do prefer them and the live plants can help keep the nitrate low-which often can be a problem for them at high level.....

[Zappity]

Originally Posted by Oldfishlady

Take a look at my album for some pic of NPT's and here is a link to a NPT I setup in Oct to give you some information on the soil based tanks and a plant list.

http://www.bettafish.com/showthread.php?t=84915

When I first set a soil based tank up-I like to use a filter for the first 3 months-then I usually remove it-but this is for my smaller tanks under 10gal and if I do keep a filter in the small tanks I use sponge filters-I have found them to work well for both Bettas and keeping shrimp
Where can I get a sponge filter? I've looked at my LPS and PetSmart/Co, and found nothing :/

On my smaller tanks that I keep shrimp I like to use sponge filters-mainly because the baby shrimp can get sucked into the HOB (hang on back) type-sometimes they survive the trip through the impeller-but most of the times they don't....so I always dump the water out into a container to check for life at least monthly.....

Depending on the Betta and the amount of cover you have-shrimp may or may not do well-this can vary-but if you have lots of moss-this can help to a degree-moss is great for shrimpletes to hide and feed in....

I like the Red cherry shrimp and have hundreds of them-reproduce really fast and they don't eat their own babies like the ghost shrimp will do.....

Will they over-run the tank, though? What do I do with the babies?

What kind of dirt do you plan to use and what kind of light do you have.....
Proper lights can make the difference between success and failure when it comes to live plants......
I'm not sure, what do you reccomend? My tank has a hood type thing with the screw-in bulbs.

For plants-this is an endless list-but for the low-mod light plants for soil based setups.....you want lots of stem plants and some floating plants.

Thank you so much :) Would it be too hard to try this in a 2.5 gal tank?