Can shrimp help reduce this sludge in my filter?

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kingrattus
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Can shrimp help reduce this sludge in my filter?

Post by kingrattus »

I have a lot of wood in my tank, & I think thats the cause of this sludge (brown algie?). My filter gets clogged monthly. I also have 2 waterfall filters aiding in moving water around & collecting this sludge.

http://jess.the-dog-dish.net/gallery2/m ... 6e09328762
http://jess.the-dog-dish.net/gallery2/m ... 6e09328762

What I would like to know is if there is a kind of shrimp that I can look into getting that'll help eat this sludge before it gets into my filters & clogs them. I have a few Glass Shrimp, & 1 Banana Shrimp. Small shrimp wont do well in this tank, so something larger then a Glass Shrimp will work. I'd prefer if it was about the same size as a Banana Shrimp. I say this because I have fish & catfish in this tank. They'll eat anything that'll fit into their mouths. Luckily all my fish are small wee things & wont grow larger mouths to eat anything close to the size of a glass shrimp... But my Pim Catfish has a large enough mouth to eat anything a little smaller then a glass shrimp, & he will grow larger (over a LONG period of time, thank goodness!). I also like larger shrimp, as I love being able to see what pets I have without straining my eyes, like the cyclops & water fleas I have lol

I took another sample of my filter water to see how my cyclops were doing since last month. Their number are VERY strong. However I can only see 1 water flea in this sample. I did take this sample from a different part of the filter, so the water fleas might have been too large to get into this section.

It also looked like the Cyclops were attacking one of the white worms. It was a large number of cyclops working together to take down this worm. As the ball of cyclops & worm fell towards the bottom of the sample, they stopped their attack.. once at the bottom, the worm was still alive & swam off with not a single cyclops on it tail. I wonder if the cyclops were defending its young? Regardless it was awesome to watch!!


EDIT:
Forgot to state this is a 90gallon tank. Here is a photo of it.
http://jess.the-dog-dish.net/gallery2/m ... 6e09328762
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