Can Red Cherry Shrimp live in small bowls like SuperShrimp?

[BostonJill]

Was just reading an article about setting up small planted 1/2-1 gallon bowls for Red Cherry Shrimp ( http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/00388Shrimp.pdf ) without having filters or heaters etc...
I know you can't believe every article you read. So I guess what I'm asking is can five or six Red Cherry Shrimp live in conditioned freshwater and live off the algae with an occasional flake of food kept around 72 to 82ish with almost no maintenance like the Super Shrimp? If they cannot I would be interested in knowing why.

[Rob in Puyallup]

It's worth a try, Jill!

[Mustafa]

They can be kept in such setups...and some very small fish work, too. The only problem is that those setups, especially with fish, need more attention than a normal setup. Such a small tank with no filter is extremely sensitive to changes. Things can just up and die in there. You also can't have too many animals in such tanks. To reproduce, they need more food. If you put in more food, you'll have to do more water changes...that further complicates things depending on your source water. If you have too many animals, they will use up a lot of oxygen and may produce too much ammonia. The great thing about Supershrimp is that they can not just *live* but *thrive* under conditions that are just marginal for other species. They can grow and breed with very little food, under low oxygen conditions that would kill almost any other vertebrate or invertebrate, and live for 20+ years. It's those features that make it possible to keep them with almost no maintenance besides the occasional feeding and topping off.

So, short answer...yes, it can be done, but expect difficulty and disappointment...and it's not all that optimal for the red cherry shrimp, either. How do I know all of this? Having been in this for this long I have, obviously, experimented with all kinds of setups...a lot.