ABK and shrimp?

[d_thomas_cg]

So I'm guessing the title alone has people chomping at the bit to bring me back to reality, but hear me out please.

I am currently in the gathering and planning stages of my 120H setup. I plan for the tank to be primarily a heavily planted community tank (I know, I know, wrong forum), but I would like to add a few "feature fish", and an ABK is one of them. That being said, I would also like to have a gaggle of shrimp cruising the tank as well.

So... do they stand a chance? I know the rule for most fish is that if it fits in it's mouth, it's in trouble, but most fish are not both nocturnal and diurnal like shrimp are. So since they're active at night, do you think they have a good chance of being able to escape any attempted predation by the BGK?

Again, tank will be very heavily planted and scaped with gnarly driftwood with tons of nooks, crannies, and holes, so lots of hiding spots for both sides. I plan to plant one corner of the tank heavily with Jungle Vals and I am hoping the ABK will call that home, but I know that area will be very attractive to shrimp as well.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[FLA]

Lots of people keep shrimp with their knives. Most are using them as feeders. I agree this would be fun if it worked, but I seriously have my doubts. If you are going to do this I would use ghost or grass shrimp. They are cheap and you might be able to get enough to overwhelm the ABK with numbers if you can keep him well fed. 120 gallons is a lot of room. It also depends on what else is going with these the ABK may not be the biggest problem for the shrimp. You also mentioned BGK in the end and I see no way that works.

Remember many of these nocturnal carnivorous fish are nocturnal because their prey is not as alert at night, thus easier to eat. Anything can hide for a while. I put a ton of ghost shrimp in my archer tank once and I had 2 or 3 that managed to hide and survive for a few months, but the end was inevitable. It was pretty cool watching him shoot the shrimp out of small crevices that he couldn't reach into.

 

[d_thomas_cg]

Yea the "BGK" was a type, ABK is the only thing I plan to have in that tank as far as knives are concerned. Thanks for the info, that's about what I figured!

 

[thefredpit]

It maybe my lack of sleep what is an ABK

 

[Hendre]

Are you referring to African brown knife? Xenomystus nigri?

They'll easily catch and eat shrimp, a decent portion of their wild diet is small invertebrates

 

[celebrist]

Maybe if you had some sort of internal refugium that the knife couldn't get in to