Our favorite small crustaceans

Crustaceans are a family composed of more than 50000 species. The best known are certainly the shrimps. Discreet and peaceful, shrimps are very interesting species to adopt in your aquarium. They adapt willingly to cohabitate with fish.
Shrimp can be divided into several categories: dwarf, large-clawed or fan shrimp.

The most popular are the dwarf shrimp, which are very appreciated by aquarists. They generally do not exceed 4 cm and adopt a peaceful behavior.
It is important not to introduce a lot of them. They must each have a space where they can hide during the moulting period when their bodies are devoid of carapace. Then their soft bodies are totally exposed, so they are very vulnerable to potential predators during this phase of their life.

Large claw shrimp are crustaceans that can grow to be very large. You have to be careful with this family, because as they grow up the shrimp will feed more and more and sometimes they will end up feeding on fish. To avoid disturbing the cohabitation in your aquarium, we advise you to take care to separate the large clawed shrimp when its size becomes large compared to other species so as not to cause stress or aggressiveness.

Fan shrimp are shrimp with a recognizable peculiarity. They have long bristles at the end of their legs which they can spread out in a fan shape. This characteristic allows them to filter their food like plant plankton usually does.

To maintain the shrimp, it is important to know that they are sensitive to the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the water, that is why it is necessary to pay great attention to the filter to properly aerate the water in your aquarium.
You can find fresh water, seawater, neutral, acid or alkaline shrimp.

It is therefore important to choose the species to adopt according to all these parameters. The ideal is to maintain a tank for each species of shrimp and not to mix them, because they do not all have the same needs.

For their food, they are species that feed on dried leaves or animal corpses. They are detritus feeders and need a good supply of calcium and minerals for their growth and successive moults throughout their life. You can give them peas or salad.
By paying attention to the filtration of your aquarium, but also to the thickness of the floor of your tank (rather important), there is no reason why they should not thrive in their new habitat.