Advice on baby shrimp safety

[Thea B]

Hi all. I'm after a bit of advice before I find out the hard way. I'm new to the hobby and have cherry shrimp in my tank. They've been in about three weeks and I noticed today that one looks buried. What I'm a bit concerned about is if the filter I'm using will be baby shrimp safe or if I should DIY some changes to it. As I've not kept them before I've no idea how tiny the babies will be. I have an Eheim biopower in the tank which does have a sponge at the inlet. Will this be enough to keep out the baby shrimp?

 

[KirstyF]

I would say with a sponge that coarse, probably not.
Baby shrimp are super tiny and it looks like they could find their way into that pretty easily so whilst they might not get as far as your canister, you may well find that you’ll inadvertently loose/damage/kill them when you try to clean that sponge out.

I would say a finer sponge would probably work better.

 

[Thea B]

Thanks for the reply Kirsty. That's what I was afraid of. I'll try and make a shrimp guard with some mesh in that case to stop them getting in.

 

[MichaelJ]

I would say with a sponge that coarse, probably not.
Baby shrimp are super tiny and it looks like they could find their way into that pretty easily so whilst they might not get as far as your canister, you may well find that you’ll inadvertently loose/damage/kill them when you try to clean that sponge out.

I would say a finer sponge would probably work better.

What @KristyF says. After the female releases the hatchlings they will hide out for a while, but when they start to roam around they will only be about 2-2.5 mm. - tiny, tiny and will easily get stuck in a coarse sponge filter - I am not familiar with the Biopower but it doesn't look shrimplet safe to me.

Cheers,
Michael

 

[Thea B]

I would say with a sponge that coarse, probably not.
Baby shrimp are super tiny and it looks like they could find their way into that pretty easily so whilst they might not get as far as your canister, you may well find that you’ll inadvertently loose/damage/kill them when you try to clean that sponge out.

I would say a finer sponge would probably work better.

What @KristyF says. After the female releases the hatchlings they will hide out for a while, but when they start to roam around they will only be about 2-2.5 mm. - tiny, tiny and will easily get stuck in a coarse sponge filter - I am not familiar with the Biopower but it doesn't look shrimplet safe to me.

Cheers,
Michael

Thanks! I've ordered some very fine mesh to make a shrimp guard for the outside as I'm not sure they do different grades of sponge that fit and it's an awkward shape to cut my own. If that doesn't work I'll try a pair of tights over it.