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as the topic suggest...can one do that...will the shrimp strong enuf to defend themselves??? thx

It shouldn't be a problem. Rams are quite peaceful fish for the most part, and anything short of a territorial breeding pair shouldn't bug the shrimp. Besides, these little shrimp are pretty tough. They're armored, and could withstand a few attacks from a small-mouthed ram.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

I think it depends on the temperment of your specific rams. I've started keeping cherry shrimp and so doing a lot of research on them, and they tend to be just fine in peaceful communities, but I've also heard of conivorous fish, especially those that like crustaceans, pecking them apart over time to get at the soft and tastey insides. To be safe, you may want to provide them with one or two small caves (plastic ones from the lfs are fine, or you can use terra cotta pots with cracks large enough for shrimp, but too small for rams) for molting, since this is the time when they are very soft-bodied and stressed out. Even if they don't get eaten during this time, any fish chasing them could stress them out and they'll simply die.

I think the shrimp will be fine with the rams, but if the rams ever discover that shrimp are tastey you may want to have a contingency plan just in case.

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

Rams are quite peaceful fish for the most part, and anything short of a territorial breeding pair shouldn't bug the shrimp.

Peaceful they may be, rams, in the wild, are voracious predators of small crustaceans; one might wish to see how small ghost shrimp (if available) fare amongst them before adding red cherries.

thank you

"Peaceful they may be, rams, in the wild, are voracious predators of small crustaceans"

Yup, this is true. However, rams have very small little mouths; it seems logical that they would greatly prefer very small crustaceans or baby shrimp to anything the size of the cherry shrimp offered in stores (usually an inch). Rams can't even eat cichlid pellets that are much more than three millimeters in diameter, so that says something about their ability to eat larger shrimp.

I do agree that you should test a ghost shrimp with the ram(s); better safe than sorry.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

I kept amano shrimp with rams. They fought over food pellets sometimes but mostly got along ok....the shrimp can and will defend themselves. My shrimp always won the food pellet battles, I'm not sure how they did it but usually I would see them standing on their tails and waving their "arms." I think it scared the rams because they would swim away. Sometimes the amano shrimp would even get excited and try to mate with the fish, but other than that they really didn't bother each other. Try them out. It really depends on the fish, and you won't know until you try it.