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How many males in a tank?


revolutionhope

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I know a lot of people keep only 1 or 2 males in small aquariums.. but could anyone shed light on whether a couple would be enough for a fairly densely planted/scaped 4 foot tank?

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Will

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This is an interesting question. It would only matter to get a colony started, because once the females have their babies, sexes will be randomized so you'll just even at out whatever the normal male to female proportion is. With that being said I would guess about 10-20% male wouldn't be too low but also maximize the amount of females berried at any given time. Just an estimate.

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For a tank that size, you could easily have over a thousand shrimp in there....

 

I guess a better question may be whether or not you want them to breed and what else is in the tank...

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With cherries in large tanks I just try to take a larger proportion of males when I cull, As Ive found if you just let them go you get alot of males. Could be seasonal or temperature dependant like other animals. It seems in summer I get a larger percentage of females.
Has anyone else noticed this?

 

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13 minutes ago, Zebra said:

Has anyone else noticed this?

Yes, we had a conversation on this topic a while ago.

It was made into a sticky post. Let me see if I can find it.

 

Found it in General Discussion

Temperature effects on Shrimp eggs hatching & gender of shrimplets

Edited by jayc
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What I'm particularly interested to know is if there is a risk that with only 1 or 2 males that they will not be able to find the moulted female for mating.

Is this likely? I don't know how long the female is "ready" to be fertilised for before the window of opportunity is missed.

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Had a 90 gallon tank that was 5' long... Exact dimensions were 60 L x 18 W x 20 H

 

Started out with about 20 shrimp in that tank, give or take. Didn't have any issues with the males finding the females. Males *will* swim all over the tank looking for that female!

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No longer have the tank (sold it), but here's a couple of pictures that were taken while it was still up. Fake plants were added for extra hiding places, which probably wasn't necessary... Shrimp are in at least one of the pictures, but they aren't easy to see... (low grades)

IMG_20160307_104151.jpg

IMG_20160307_104221.jpg

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