[xanderman]

I have had the Danios in with the snails and shrimp for months, occasionally spotting a few young fry, with only one reaching maturity.
I had tried removing most of the snails at one time, no difference, tried removing most of the shrimp, no difference.
I removed most of the adult danios while having very high shrimp population and pretty high snail count…
about 20 little fry swimming around two days later!
They’re still growing fast, no mortalities, very conclusoive, shrimp are fine, snails are fine, but definitely remove the adult CPD.

[xanderman]

Well, these little guys have been in with the shrimp for a month and a half, with no babies showing up. Looks like they’re very happy, and there are some breeding behaviours, but no succesful spawns.
I’ve started thinning out the cherry shrimp, removing about fourty males, and we’ll see what happens in a month…

[xanderman]

I see that fishprofiles.com also says the Red Cherry Shrimp will also eat fry which are not free swimming…
I’m thinking I might have to reduce the population of shrimp to have a successful brood of Danios.
The males are definitely interested in making it happen, coloring up a bit too, just need to get the females fattened up a bit.

[xanderman]

Thanks Tom, I guess the species is so new to the market that little is known about it.
I’ll have to see if my wife will allow another tank… or wait for someone else to figure it out.
Maybe the food will offset predation, depending on a balance between the populations.
Like, 1000 RCS and 6 CPD will make it very unlikely that any eggs will survive, whereas 1000 CPD and a few shrimp will make the effect negligible.

I did see yesterday on fishprofiles.com that while the shrimp are primarily an algae eater they are opportunistic scavengers also, and it specifically mentioned that they will eat the eggs of scatterers like the Danios.

[xanderman]

I just got some yesterday, they are very small and have little color, so sexing them by color variations is impossible, all are pale.
The gravid spot, however, is very pronounced, so much so that it is easy to distinguish male and female even when they are very active, darting about the tank.
At first I saw the sex differences as a result of the behaviour, the females would swim around contentedly, while a male or two would follow them, frequently harassing them.
The males will swim under the female whenever she stops and do a little courting dance, quivering their body below and slightly to the side and front of the female, angled away slightly.
Once I knew which was a female I spotted the black dot and remembered somebody mentioning it here.
I took a look around and saw I had two male and four female, then confirmed the behaviour in all specimens.
The gravid spot is definitely not a myth, it is present in all of my females and quite pronounced, while completely absent in all my males (as distinguished by behavioural differences in courtship rituals)

[xanderman]

I can definitely confirm one theory.

I ordered some in a few weeks back(captive bred), finally got them today.

I put the 6 of them in a 30 gallon tank with about 80 Cherry Shrimp and a hundred snails, sparsely planted with some duck weed floating on the surface.

The tank is filtered with an air driven under gravel filter.

The Danios were very shy, hiding at the slightest movement, under a small cluster of Anubias.

Around 1800hrs I turned off the lights, 24 watt flourescent, and immediately they became much more active, exploring the entirety of the tank, mostly near the bottom, but sometime venturing up into mid water and even near the surface.

I turned the light on again and they immediately became shy and skittish again.

By the way, they absolutely love Cherry Shrimp, even while the light was on they were curious over the shrimp, and chasing down the smaller shrimp for food.

now that the lights are dimmed the shrimp are fortunate to have good tactile senses to avoid capture, or I might not have any shrimp soon.

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