How many shrimp can I keep in my aquarium?

[HelloUnderwaterWorld]

Hey there, and thanks for helping. I have a 1.5 gallon that currently has 1 ghost shrimp, 1 cherry shrimp and a solitary male guppy. The guppy leaves the shrimp alone, and the shrimp get along fine. I was wondering how many shrimp I could keep in this tank? It is filled with plants and rocks (water wisteria and 3 Marimo algae balls). The shrimp seem to enjoy it, as they swim around and clean the plants. I do water changes about every two days, not becuase my levels are high, but because I enjoy it. The tank has a filter and air pump. pH is constantly 7.8 and Tempurature is always about 70. 

[OzShrimp]

If u enjoyndoing ur water changes that often then dont add more shrimp as u will stress them out and they will die with that many constant changes.

Shrimp tanks need to be left alone when their all setup with minimal change.

Ultimately though the amount of shrimp u can have depends on the ability of your filtration. Also the smaller the tank u will have more competition for food aswell the more shrimp u have. 

[HelloUnderwaterWorld]

So by doing constant water changes I am stressing out my shrimp??

[Mitch91]

I've heard it's best to do a wc once a month with shrimp unless your water quality is bad then regular small changes to adjust until right. But I'm no expert still a beginer :)

[HelloUnderwaterWorld]

Well I have a single male guppy too but my tank is cycled and I have lots of plants that take the nitrate out of the water so I guess maybe only once a week?

[OzShrimp]

I had a 4 ft fish tank over filtered and i would do a water change every 4-12weeks everyone is different but your definitely doing too many atm.

If your shrimp breed you will find your guppy will nip at the shrimplets aswell :)

With all the filtration you have in your tank you could get away with even 2 week WC.

 I used to judge mine on my TDS when it started to climb i would do a WC to bring it back down, is just me though

[zn30]

I've never been a great advocate for water changes as @OzShrimp states monitor the water parameters and act accordingly. I have been breeding fish for over three decades and never had a problem if you don't over feed the fish I do however constantly top up the water. I have found that with shrimp I top up water rather than complete water changes. 

[HelloUnderwaterWorld]

Oh ok! Thanks for all advice. 

[Matuva]

I have noticed that I very often find dead shrimps after a water change over 10% of the tank.

I do water changes only when necessary. My TDS level will tell me when.

At the moment, I have 4 of my tanks facing big problems : 1 1/2 month ago, just after I cleaned the front glass, I saw the shripmps "running" everywhere in the tank. I immediately understood something weird was going to happen, though, I decided not to d anything, just wait and see.Probably, there was something on the sponge I used...

The days after, I started finding numerous dead shrimps laying down at the bottom. I then did a major water change, around 40%, adding some dechlorinator (Seachem Prime) and live bacterias (Sera Bio-Nitrivec). Then , I'm at the moment doing regular water changes - 10% - every 10 days.
At the moment, I'm losing 1 or 2 shrimps each days, so my blue carbon rili, red rili and blue pearls colonies are almost in the way of disappearing... the orange are may be OK, at least they have stop dying

In the other tanks, the yellow and the red are fine, no such dead and still having shrimplets. In these tanks, I perform water changes only when TDS is above 130.

All that story to say that IMHO you should rather care about water parameters, be careful and be sure to well wash your hand and sponge when you clean the inside of tanks, careful with water temp, and perform water changes only when necessary...

As long as your tank is cycled and set, just monitor it and do changes when needed.

In french we say, " seeking the better is the enemy of the best you already have", I assume you are used to say "when it's not broken, don't fix it"... ;)

Edited May 31, 2016 by Matuva