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Getting cherries, but already have ghosts!

759 views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  kcartwright856 
#1 ·
As the title says, I have cherry shrimp on the way for my 10 gallon tank, but I already have around a dozen ghost shrimp in the tank.

I am reading opinions all across the board from internet searches as to how the two species will interact. I much prefer the cherries, so if I take the "better safe than sorry" route here... how exactly do I get the ghosties out?

Gravel vac? Ugh, I feel terrible. Can I euthanize them with anesthetic overdose as you would a fish, or do the inverts not operate that way?

I'm getting grey hairs over this! :eek:
 
#5 ·
Thank you for the suggestions, everyone.

I wanted to take the "better safe than sorry" approach and go ahead and remove them. The tank is nowhere near the point of heavily planted yet and there aren't enough hiding spots for the little shrimplets.

I started out with the shrimp net, hoping that the supposed curiosity would win over. Wrong. They wanted nothing to do with it and sped away at first sight! After ripping up several plants as none of them have root systems yet, I gave up on the net.

Next up was the siphon. I needed suction power, so I avoided the actual gravel attachment and just went with the tube, fed into a bucket in the sink to catch the shrimp. Man, these shrimp are fast. I had to come up on them from behind if I wanted any shot, and even then they would dart off as soon as they felt the water behind them moving! To make matters worse, all of the chasing with the tube caused it to fling out of the bucket and begin to siphon water, shrimp, and sand all over the kitchen floor. That was fun. It took longer than I'm proud to admit to catch shrimp off of a dang floor where they can't even escape! I didn't want to hurt them.

Fast forward to after mopping that mess up and clamping the tube back onto the bucket. It took me a good 45 minutes to make sure that I had all of the shrimp, and I do believe I got them all. As the plants were already flung around, I checked everywhere. I've been closely monitoring the tank to see if any stragglers appear, but I'm pretty confident.

This was quite the adventure, but setting my little cherry shrimplets and their berried mama into the tank was rewarding. They are already proving to be much more interesting than the ghosts! They seem to feed differently. They little limbs move much faster and they are just busy beavers!

I'm very pleased, even though it was a frustrating afternoon. The captured ghosts are awaiting fate. I'll see if anyone browsing the RAOK would like them before I leave town tomorrow, but I suppose I'll probably have to euthanize them.

Thank you for your help, everyone.
 
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