# Other Aquarium Forums > Freshwater Fauna >  Is there any big fish that is gentle to adult Yamato or cherry shrimps?

## Shadow

I'm looking for big fish for main fish in my 3ft tank (put maybe 3 to 5). Most of the fish that I can think of is or tried killing/hunting my shrimps. Is there any big fish that gentle to adult shrimps? My shrimps mainly Yamato and Cherry. I don't mind for them to eat the Cherry shrimplet but let go the adult shrimp.

Fish that I try:
1) Ram
2) Discuss
3) Apisto
4) Angle fish (have not try but heard that it will kill shrimps)

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## Fuzzy

I think the only big fish that won't eat your shrimp will be Pleco$$$  :Very Happy:

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## Jungle-mania

It is possible to keep discus, even a school provided you have a heavily planted tank with alot of moss like java moss for dense vegetation and a large tank at that, like 4 feet. Generally, the discus are not fast enough to get them.

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## torque6

Most big fish will eat shrimps or small fishes, because the only fish i know which is vegetarian is the WHALE.

*ps sorry, whale isnt fish technically speaking.  :Sad:

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## WiNd08

Pacu LOL!

don't try congo tetra!  :Smile:

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## Shadow

I guess not possible huh, except pleco  :Laughing:

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## patricc

The Redline Torpedo? Although most LFS don't sell them in large sizes but they do grow at least 10-14 cm long (for my case). Not that sure if they are shrimp friendly but my cherries and Yamato are quite fine.

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## Jungle-mania

Nope, they willl attack. Essentially all of them will eat the shrimps so long it can fit into their mouth. But heavy planting ensures they have alot of cover to hide. From my experience, you have better luck protecting your shrimps with larger fishes than fishes than tetras, as they target shrimplets.

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## StanChung

Confirm red line torpedo to eat shrimps. Expensive confirmation.  :Laughing:  [CRS!]

Interesting question as shrimps are natural food for most fishes. Big fishes eat small fishes as well.
Glass catfish?

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## xiandan

Such experiments are sure expensive. But even more heart pain.. :Sad:

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## Shadow

not me, that is why asking first  :Razz:

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## YAL05T

I have been looking at this too, but I want a fish to eat the planaria worms in my cherry tank but will leave the shrimplets alone.....too hard to find a good fish for the job.

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## Shadow

boraras brigitae will keep it in check, but not sure if they will eat big planaria

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## Jungle-mania

This may sound odd but yet subtlely logical, if you are fish, which you rather eat, the worm or the shrimp?

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## Merviso

> boraras brigitae will keep it in check, but not sure if they will eat big planaria


Nope... my tank are overrun by the flat worms, but the 8 boraras brigitae/merah just stare at them...  :Opps:

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## YAL05T

> This may sound odd but yet subtlely logical, if you are fish, which you rather eat, the worm or the shrimp?


 
That was my concern, if I go to a BBQ do I eat the prawns on the flys buzzing around. I think I will have to just accept the planaria in my tank.

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## Fuzzy

My boraras brigattae will eat planaria and hydra. 
I've even seen one of my Yamatos rip a hydra off the wall and snack on it.  :Grin: 

I'm not sure what exactly qualifies as large planaria though, lol. I've not seen any gargantuan ones in my tank yet...luckily  :Opps:

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## Shadow

I think the biggest I saw is something like 2 cm long  :Opps:  at biotope shop

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## juggler

> Most big fish will eat shrimps or small fishes, because the only fish i know which is vegetarian is the WHALE.
> 
> *ps sorry, whale isnt fish technically speaking.


I believe whales (not the killer whales) eat krill -- small shrimps. So not vegetarians.  :Smile:

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## Newbiebetta

does betta eat shrimps or attack them? i know they aren't very big and abit off-topic but i don't want to create a new thread about this.

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## Fuzzy

Yes they will, you can't really keep bettas or cichlids with any kind of shrimp.

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## Navanod

The largest fish I had tried so far that does not disturb shrimps at all is the Rainbow threadfin

Other successes:
Galaxy (CPD)
Boraras brigittae
Ottos (obvious)

Now testing with clown killies

Anything big enough to swallow a shrimp whole probably WILL DO IT.

IMHO, although a heavily plant tank will allow some of the shrimps to evade the fish, they'll be almost always in hiding (cannot enjoy watching them swim around) and stressed...not much enjoyment there

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## alas

> Yes they will, you can't really keep bettas or cichlids with any kind of shrimp.


Hi i'm thinking of keeping a pair of betta with shrimps too.
Is it possible even in a heavily planted tank?

I dont mind occasionally loss of shrimps as long as their population is increasing.

Thanks!

EDIT: If this is still not possible, how about guppies and swordtails?

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## Shadow

guppies and swordtail is no-no

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## Jungle-mania

I have seen discus with CRS in the same tank, no obvious shrimp loss, but the amount of plant and moss was massive.

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## JadeIceGreen

> does betta eat shrimps or attack them? i know they aren't very big and abit off-topic but i don't want to create a new thread about this.


Bettas may not kill your shrimps to eat, but they will certainly kill for sport. And even my yamato shrimps were not spared despite their size, they will be very vulnerable right after they molt.

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## alas

I wonder if anyone has seen Rock shrimp in LFS?
They're huge i wonder if they have any success with these large fish.

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## Navanod

> I wonder if anyone has seen Rock shrimp in LFS?
> They're huge i wonder if they have any success with these large fish.


Those are very specialized shrimps and can be still attacked after they molt

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## alas

Hmmm i wonder if golden white cloud are consider big fish for you.

Anyway it seems they doesn't attack my shrimplets.

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## Ingwe

how about male endlers? don't think they're big enough to attack adult shrimps.

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## TBoss

> Most big fish will eat shrimps or small fishes, because the only fish i know which is vegetarian is the WHALE.
> 
> *ps sorry, whale isnt fish technically speaking.


Whales are NOT vegeterians.

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## GaspingGurami

Instead of guessing, why not get a bag of those feeder ghost shrimps (Palaemonetes spp) to try out? What may work in one's tank may not work in another's because of individual fish's character and the balance of power (who's in power in that tank).

eg: I kept a 2.5ft pacu that was traumatised at childhood, together with discus, a pleco, an Ancistrus, some otos and I gave ghost shrimps as a treat to feed the pacu, hoping he'd get a better balance of diet.
But instead of eating the shrimps (or oto for that matter). the Pacu chose to eat nuts (pistachio, almonds, cashews, brazilnut,) instead of the shrimps. 

However, when the pacu is gone, the discus started to hit up the shrimps, despite the amount of food it is fed, they still will attach the shrimps... and the plecos decided that they love discus slime and hit on the discus in return....

So it is not possible to safely say which is the biggest fish that will live peacefully with shrimps, but to test it our for yourself in your tank. However, if you are thinking of introducing fish to control planaria, it is wishful thinking from my past experiences.

Fish almost never want to touch the worms unless they are starved. However, planaria happen mostly because there is excess food in a shrimp tank. This alone tells you how futile the effort will turn out to be.

I eradicated my planaria with:
1) added ghost shrimps to help remove uneaten food,
2) more frequent gravel vacuuming since I can't stop myself feeding me pets,
3) more frequent rinsing of the filter media (there's lots of em planaria in there as food gets sucked in the filter).

and if all else fails (the above steps had been sufficient to work for me mostly), I once added "Vermex" at half strength to the tank with the above 3 steps for a particularly resistant case and the most stubborn planaria died out within a week with no loss to livestock.

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## Cyworld

Try corydoras,
I don't have any experience with cherry/amano shrimps with corydoras but I think I read somewhere that they are compatible.
Maybe its because corys always stay on the floor.

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## lEddyl

how about goldfish?

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## Shadow

> Try corydoras,
> I don't have any experience with cherry/amano shrimps with corydoras but I think I read somewhere that they are compatible.
> Maybe its because corys always stay on the floor.


Cory is ok, but they are bottom feeder. I was looking for mid or top area swimmer

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## checkerboard

Bleeding Heart Tetra, can grow fairly big and I do not think they attack shrimps. I used to keep malayans with a shoal of 2 inch big bleeding hearts. They seem to leave the shrimps alone.

Some of the rainbows:- Bosemani (though high quality specimens seems to be lacking these days) should be fine. Rainbow's mouth are quite small.

Yellow Congo (Not the normal Congo): - These creatures are much gentler than the normal ones in my opinion and grow slightly smaller.

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## Cyworld

Oooh! how about a hatchet fish? They always stay on the top. :Smile:

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## shrimppaste

I think pencilfish like the rocket (Nannobrycon eques) should not eat prawn for their name means small mouth. ZTheir mouth are really small so I don't think can fit any shrimp.

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## PKB

Yes, my betta did that right in front of my eyes... 




> does betta eat shrimps or attack them? i know they aren't very big and abit off-topic but i don't want to create a new thread about this.

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## felix_fx2

> guppies and swordtail is no-no


guppies attack them too?

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## Biofeedback

> I'm looking for big fish for main fish in my 3ft tank (put maybe 3 to 5). Most of the fish that I can think of is or tried killing/hunting my shrimps. Is there any big fish that gentle to adult shrimps? My shrimps mainly Yamato and Cherry. I don't mind for them to eat the Cherry shrimplet but let go the adult shrimp.
> 
> Fish that I try:
> 1) Ram
> 2) Discuss
> 3) Apisto
> 4) Angle fish (have not try but heard that it will kill shrimps)




is this balloon ram? I have a pair, they shared 25 malayan amongst themselves....

Anyone want to take them away from me?

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## enhanzed

how about cardinals and rummy nose ?

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## Navanod

> is this balloon ram? I have a pair, they shared 25 malayan amongst themselves....
> 
> Anyone want to take them away from me?


Despite already knowing that I'll lose some shrimps to it, I was still too tempted by the beauty of the golden balloon ram to try it out.

In fact I had posted this before:
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...5&postcount=22
LOL

Many forums and sites and even the shop claims that these are peaceful fishes good for community tanks.
The shop even claims that the ram got small mouth and cannot eat shrimps (I know its bull)
Some threads here warned that rams completely killed off the tank's yamato population or or other shrimps but others will dispute and claim that theirs completely ignored shrimps.

Here's my experiment results:

Thinking that I had enough plants in the tank for shrimps to hide, I got a pair and tried.

Day 1
Boraras brigittae went into hiding and 1 totally disappeared
Shrimps also went into hiding
Rams alway having staring match and tried to bite each other

Day 2 onwards
Ram shitted "red shit" although I didn't feed anything red...since I didn't see any dead cherry or bits of it, I gave the benefit of the doubt that it was from food fed at the shop.

After a week
Saw ram actively chasing shrimps that got careless, but always failed.
Shrimps completely in hiding, cannot see any at all unless I feed and look under the Dwood and other hiding places.

2nd week
Found the smaller ram dead, with wounds on the side.
Just when I was fishing the dead ram out, the other ram chased a cherry out of the plants and caught it! I immediately chased it and it let go, but the shrimp already half dead.
So I decided to sit there and observe (previously I also observed but saw nothing serious)
The ram soon attacked a Boraras brigittae and forced it to nearly jump out of the tank.

Seems that the ram also learnt how to flush the shrimps out. It soon did so and this time, chased and swallowed an adult cherry whole.
I tried to get it to spit it out as I can still see the feelers sticking out of the mouth.
In the end I threw in a floating breeding tank and put the ram into it...only then did it spit out the head of the shrimp. Soon it ate the head as well, ignoring the fact that I had just sentenced it to prison.

The other fishes in the tank (rainbow threadfins, otos and galaxies) and the wood shrimp seems fine, so I can only say that the ram seemed to only attack brightly colored and adult shrimp sized targets.

It also preferred to feed off the substrate than to eat floating or surface food.

So there we have it. Another vote for "Rams eat shrimps".

For those who say they don't, its probably because you didn't see it, or the rams were raised from very young with shrimps in the tank and came to ignore them.

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## Jungle-mania

I have kept clown killies along with cherries and I had no problem with them living together in a 2 foot tank. I have to add that I added alot of tiger lilies which I trained to grow only at 10cm tall, that kind of prevented the killies from coming close to the shrimps all the time.

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## tinydot

> how about cardinals and rummy nose ?


yeah..i wanna know this....read that cardinals cannot be kept with shrimps...but rummy nose?

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## Shadow

probnably the same, both can grow quite big

they won't disturb the big shrimp but wil eat the shrimplet

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## jetset

> how about goldfish?


Goldfish eat everything! I used to cull guppies by dropping them in my gf tank.

However, I currently have a goldfish tank with cherry shrimps. The shrimps were not intentionally put in... used to be a cherry tank before I put the goldies in. They were baby shrimplets that I did not see and left them behind. All grown up now. Very difficult to see the shrimps though... all hiding under d/w... almost like they are not there in the first place.

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