[Teebo]

I have a 5 gallon AIO (all-in-one) with the sump in the rear. After searching the entire room for a missing Amano shrimp I gave up...few days later I find my one and only Ghost shrimp has now vanished so I start looking in the rear. Bingo, they crawled up over the back wall so I assume if they really wanted to get back into the display they could if they wanted. With that being said what do you think about leaving a shrimp or two back there in the dark? Granted it does need cleaning there is a lot of surface area for algae to grow so they are probably grazing away. Would you leave them? I can remove them a few times a year and vac the bottom of the sump out. No snails are yet to make their way over there, but I am sure a Nerite would clean the sump out nicely!

 

[Freemananana]

Getting into the back is probably easier since water is flowing that way. Returning to the tank is probably going to be tougher.

 

[Teebo]

They are not following the flow path though, they do not go through the filter pad they climb over the wall, the flow is cranked all the way down as well.

 

[Zoidburg]

I've heard of people keeping shrimp in their sump (for large tanks), one guy said he even put a bunch of ghost shrimp in one and they all turned red... these were mostly feeder shrimp for their fish, though.

Wouldn't recommend it for a small tank but unless you can "seal" the top, you can't stop them, either! Lol

 

[Teebo]

This is the opening they are going through, a lid would help but I have emerging driftwood.

 

[theatermusic87]

It's fine, just don't be surprised if one end up in the pump... my cherry shrimp climb up into my hasn't on filters all the time, they also climb out when the see fit

 

[Teebo]

Cherry shrimp do not climb over, its the larger strong Amanos which I can not see getting stuck in the pump. That was a thought though.

 

[Zoidburg]

TM87 has a point though... even the cherries will do it!

Put a breeding net in one tank here which floats with the water surface. Put cherries in there to keep them separated from the rest.... had some crawl out and others crawl in!

Amano would crawl to the top but never in.

 

[Teebo]

Okay so it has been a while, I checked on the Amano in the sump and he is still alive and kicking but this poses a problem now...I tried real hard to remove it without success the area is just too tight and he can hide in the area under the filter where I can not net. What forced me to check on it was the fact that I turn the pump off twice a day to feed and when I turn it back on it shoots a cloud of garbage now. When I looked in the back there was a lot of Amano poop I had to vac out, which is probably getting sucked into the pump because the inside of the return line looks really gross already. The small particles of algae that make it past mechanical filtration gets eaten by the shrimp then their large poop gets deposited after the filter but before the pump which as you can imagine is very counter productive...I really do not want to kill this shrimp but if I have to I will grab it with tweezers and feed it to the birds.

 

[Lousyweather]

I had Sakuras in my canister filter! I got some young shrimp, and didn't realize that my foam pre filter on my Eheim 2217 had slipped slightly down, allowing 5 to enter the lower section of the Ehiem. One day, decided it was time to replace the Purigen in the canister. For some reason, I pulled the whole thing apart, and lo and behold, 5 semi adult Sakuras living in the lowest section of the filter! I put them back in the tank, and got some filter fabric, which I wrap round the pre filter now, hold them in place with elastic bands to ensure shrimp don't go on there again!