My 5 gallon maternity tank is overrun with cherry shrimp. Hundreds of them. I had two young guppies in there that I had pulled out of the main tank because they had an interesting lemon body color and I wanted to see how they would develop separately and also wanted to increase their chances over the community tank lottery.
Yesterday or the day before I saw them happily swimming around. They were about 1/2" long up from how tiny they were when I moved them. Today, they're gone. I even pulled out the java moss and also looked under the sponge filter. No sign. Nothing. I noticed that the Java Moss is a little taller (predatory java moss?) such that there isn't a free swimming area in the center of the tank any more, just around the edges at the top. Do you think they could have settled down to sleep and been mobbed by the cherry shrimp. I can imagine that once they have legs on a guppy the guppy might not be able to get away... I wouldn't ordinarily suspect the peaceful little vegetarian critters, but this morning I saw several of them fighting over their morning algae flakes (I feed them a little algae based flake in the morning because I don't think the tank grows enough algae for their population). A few days ago I fed the guppies some blood worms and the shrimp were greedily grabbing that and eating it. It kind of puts me in mind of this awful horror movie I saw many years ago. Two ne'er-do-wells are robbing graves and grinding up the bodies to make cat food. Later, the cats, accustomed to this diet, all eat their owners. I wonder if the equivalent happened with my cherry shrimp. :-) What do you think? Jeff Walther
