shrimp and crayfish in freshwater tanks

Keeping shrimp in aquarium in fact is fairly easy. The most important thing to avoid is copper. Copper is absolutely deadly for your shrimp. In your freshwater tank you should make sure thet your filter could not aspirate shrimp especially the little small baby shrimp. If you want to keep fish together with your shrimp you should keep in mind that shrimp are food in nature. So don't keep fish that is too big and eats all your shrimp. As shrimp were growing the molt (moult) so dont worry if you see a transparent skin (its called exuviae). Directly after this process they have a soft skin and try to hide. They try to hide until their skin is harden enough to stand against possible attacks. While knowing this you should ensure to have many plants or some kind of moss in the aquarium.

The CPO Cambarelus patzcuarensis orange is a small and very smart crayfish. He is growing upp to five centimeters and is an absolut friendly neighbor to fish. Each male cpo crayfish has his own path that he defenses. Sometimes you will see them fighting and propably loosing an articular like a pincer. After the next ecdysis (molt) they get back what they lost before. Crayfish like to hide. Best are thumb thick one opened tubes. You can make them fine binding up some moss. They don't eat plants so you don't have to worry about them.

Best temperature is about 20° Celsius but they can handle temperatures between 15° C and 25°C. They normaly live in the highlands of Mexico on 2000 Meters so you might have an idea about how they live. If you want to breed them you should keep the CPOs alone in a tank. Other fish or shrimp could be too much stress I have experienced. Best temperature for breeding is about 21° to 23°C.

There are many different races availaible on markets. You can buy them very easy while the most countries allow shipping of invertebrates. We do this very successful for some years now. The following lines will show you some shrimp you can keep in your aquarium.

- Crystal Red (Caridina cf. cantonensis "Crystal Red")
- Red Bee (Caridina cf. cantonensis)
- Bee shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "bee")
- Black - white bee shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "bee" black/white - Japanese)
- Black tiger Shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "Black tiger")
- Red tiger shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "Red tiger")
- 'Deep blue' tiger shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "Deep blue")
- Blue tiger shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "Blue tiger")
- 'Orange Eye' tiger dwarf shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "multicolored")
- Tiger dwarf shrimp (Caridina cf. cantonensis "tiger")
- Fire dwarf shrimp (Syn.Red Cherry or Fire red shrimp / Neocaridina heteropoda var. red)
- Sakura (Neocaridina heteropoda var. red)
- Yellow dwarf shrimp (Neocaridina heteropoda var. yellow)
- White beads dwarf shrimp (Neocaridina cf. zhangjiajiensis var. "white pearl" or "snowball")
- Blue Pearl dwarf shrimp (Neocaridina cf. zhanghjiajiensis var. blue)
- Green Dwarf shrimp (Caridina cf. babaulti "Green")
- Marble dwarf shrimp (Neocaridina palmata)
- Sri Lankan dwarf shrimp (Caridina simoni simoni, Bourvier, 1904)

Some bigger shrimp are the Macrobrachiom races with long arms:
- "Red rusty" shrimp blue red (Macrobrachium dayanum var. blue red)
- Long-arm shrimp (Macrobrachium assamense (Tiwari, 1955))

Beginning with the substrate (soil) there is often asked one question: Should I use sand or gravel? This is easy answered: What do you like? The shrimp doesn't mind. On sand they can easily find duff where they search something to eat. But shrimp are also able to put single gravels beside to get food under it. They are very agile and also love to climb in plants where they find algae to eat. So the substrate you use is your free choice. Be careful with plastic covered substrate. There are reports that they release deadly chemicals!

Plant your shrimp tank! Use a high amount of plants. Shrimp love that! They like to climb onto the plants and eat algae growing on the plants leaves. They also like moss. Especially the baby shrimp have great chance to hide and find food in the moss.

Some stones or driftwood would be also great in your aquarium. They are also objects the shrimp will climb on and find food to eat. Especially the Caridina dennerli from Sulawesi likes stones. Her natural environment is rare with plants but full of stones.