Stressed out fan shrimp?

[Morchaiel]

Hello everyone,

After I bought an African Fan Shrimp recently (being told that they're quite easy to take care of), I decided to look up if it had any special needs regarding habitat/food.

I came across Monster Fish Keepers, so I decided to sign up

Now, I do have some questions about the fan shrim I was hoping someone could help me out with. I keep it in a 100 liter tank with plants. I added some nutrient powder for the shrimp (I got this from the guy who sold it to me) since there aren't any other creatures in the tank to provide it with a food cycle yet.

However, yesterday, the inquisitive shrimp got stuck in an awkward place in the tank, somewhere in the built-in filter housem in a little corner. I managed to fish it out again, and it seems to be alright.

Since then, the shrimp has been sitting in a nook in a decorative rock. I know this is normal behaviour for them, but it doesn't seem to be using its fans. Do you suppose it's a bit stressed or frighfull, or could it be that it just fans when I'm not looking ?

Also, I have been getting a lot of mixed information about the difficulty of keeping the african fan shrimp when I searched the forums. Is it hard or not to succesfully keep it?

Kind regards,

Morchaiel

 

[aquariumguy2300]

The fan shrimp isn't stressed when its fans aren't out. It just isn't hungry at the moment. My bamboo shrimp (Nearly the same thing) doesn't always have its fans out. If you want to convince your fan shrimp to eat, I suggest adding some current to your water, and adding some snails (I heard somewhere that the shrimps favorite food feeds of snail feces) The fan shrimp likes to eat off of currents

 

[guppy]

Should be fine, by way, they like live brine shrimp.

 

[Manny Stiles]

I have an African Filter Shrimp and sometimes he will hide and be impossible to find (I've thought he was dead several times now) but he also pops out every so often and runs around like a madman. They fan to eat so if he's not fanning, maybe he's not hungry.

My AFS experience has been quite different than bamboo shrimp. Bamboo shrimp are about half as big and move around less and also hide less.

 

[Manny Stiles]

Oh, another thing - my filter shrimp likes to scrape the vegetative stuff that grows on the strings of Pleco poop. He will take the poop in one fan and squeegee the matter off of the crap and keep rollin'... It's kinda disgusting, but it's fascinating to watch.