Brackish algae eating shrimp?

[jenBLKAROWANA]

Ok,
I was watching a Discovery Channel program on Crocs in Costa Rica on Sunday (great show on these magnificent reptiles).
They were showing mangrove swamps, and their inhabitants. They showed little shrimp that lived in the brackish water. What are they, and where can I find some. I would like to put them in my brackish tank to eat the algae.

If anyone knows the answer to my question, please help me out!

Thanks!

Jen

 

[davo]

this would help a lot of people, there are loads of threads to find algae eating anything for brackish tanks, and to no avail. whatever they are, they might not be available for aquariums... gd luck in the search though

 

[jenBLKAROWANA]

this would help a lot of people, there are loads of threads to find algae eating anything for brackish tanks, and to no avail. whatever they are, they might not be available for aquariums... gd luck in the search though

Thanks.
I have tried using red-legged hermits in my tank. They lived for awhile, but they just kept dropping off, and now I have none. They did do a decent job of keeping it somewhat clean.
It was a little experiment I was doing to see if I could actually convert them to brackish water. It worked for a few months.

Jen

 

[water_baby83]

Well there are a couple different species of Algae eating shrimp, but one that I am more familiar with would be the Caradina japonica. They origionate from Japan, and are absolute scavengers when it comes to food. They thrive off of algae of course, but once they go through that, they will eat fish-food (flakes, blocks, pellets, etc.), Green beans, Cucumber chunks, and even dead fish. These guys are a serious cleaning crew. The only bad thing, is that in a planted tank, if they run out of options, they will turn and consume your plants, so you would need to make sure they have a constant food source. Though they are far from picky earters, they will opt to eat fish food before algae, so if you need some gardening to take place - don't feed them, just let them hunt down the algae. Whenit comes to parameters, they don't seem to be bothered by much - they came from swamps afterall, so chances are that no matter what the conditions in your tank may be, they are almost certainly better than what they would be dwelling in if out in the wild. They do best with smaller fish, as they can easily become dinner for bigger ones. I wouldn't recommend mixing them with other small shrimp either since though they are not particularly agressive - they are tough and would easily cream other's their size if food was limited. They grow to about 2 inches, and typically hit the market for sale at around 1 inch. Some suggest about 2-3 shrimp per gallon to do the job - less if algae isn't bad. I can give you more info. later if you want, but hopefully this helps for now.

--Emi

 

[davo]

thats amanos shrimp isnt it? i have a couple in my tank, more for display than anything, but didnt realise theyd live in brakish conditions?