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Hi,

I've just acquired a mountain shrimp, he's about 3 or 4 inches long. I'm a beginner at all this fish business, i've tried looking up info on the net about mountain shrimp but can't find anything. He's hiding in a cave, doing nothing, he moves a bit every now and then so he's not dead, but is this normal? Also, i have two algae eating sucky fish (not sure what they're really called) and the albino one seems to love my shrimp - she's in the cave with him all the time, the one time he ventured out, she followed. also how do i know whether he's eating OK?

If anyone has any advice, I'd be really grateful.

Thanks

Wendy

Well, I'm afriad we probably won't be able to help you much without more information, or even better would be pictures. The Mountain Shrimp sounds like a name that the supplier that the store got it from made up. Is it a big shrimp with "fans" on it's front legs? Is it a small clear shrimp? Brown with stripes? Most shrimp are detrius eaters and will pick up anything left on the surfaces in the aquarium, so you don't need to worry about them getting enough food that way. If they have little "fans" on their front claws, then they are filter-feeding shrimp who trap debris in the water column, and sometimes these shrimp can be hard to keep fed.

As for the sucker-fishes, I'm guessing you have bushy-nose plecos. Try looking them up and see if the pictures match what you have.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

First of all, welcome to FP! You definitely came to the right place, in my opinion. I know I came here many years ago and never have regreted it. We are going to ask a lot of questions about your tank, just so you know. We just want to make sure everything is "happy" and going to stay that way.

-What size tank do you have?

-Do you know about "cycling" a fish tank? If not I would highly suggest you read this article]http://www.fishprofiles.net/faq/begin-cycling.asp[/link] and I would also suggest [link=this on as well.

-What kind of algae eaters do you have? I have not heard of a mountain shrimp personally but that doesn't mean that they don't exist.

Well this is a start! I wish you the best of luck in the future and we'll always be around to help:-D

-Josh

It would be impossible to identify the exact scientific name but the usual shrimp referred as mountain or rock shrimp are in the Atyidae family with the wood/flower shrimp. They do some filter feeding but rely more on cleaning up leftover fish food than the wood shrimp. They also tend to hang out at the bottom and in hiding places instead of close to the output of filters like the wood shrimp will. I would feed them on small amounts of sinking fish food. Similar to the wood shrimp they prefer neutral ph and don't always do well in high ph water. They also prefer fairly warm waters compared to many other shrimp and will do fine into the low 80s F or around 28C. Pretty much all shrimp in this family get fairly large and generally you don't want to keep them in less than 10g per shrimp unless you know what your doing and can give them more specific care particularly enough food. Despite their size they will not harm even small fish and can only eat very small particles of food.

If you want more info I would just search up wood shrimp and treat them much the same. They only have a few small differences from the wood shrimp.