Rasboras and specifically the galaxy rasbora have seen a surge in their popularity over the last couple of years due to being a relatively cheap, easy to care for, and peaceful towards their tank mates.
This makes them a great fish species for people of all levels of experience within the fish keeping hobby but with more and more people keeping shrimp in their tanks, there has been an increase in the number of people asking about keeping galaxy rasboras and shrimp in their aquariums.
For the most part, galaxy rasboras make an excellent tank mate for shrimp due to the small size of the fish making it extremely difficult to even try to eat an adult shrimp and any species.
Galaxy rasboras may eat some baby shrimp but for the most part, they will just go about their business, especially if you feed your galaxy rasboras enough food to prevent them from going hungry.
That said though, if you are looking to actively breed your shrimp then you really should be going with a shrimp only tank if possible.
Even tiny fish species such as galaxy rasboras will often try to eat baby shrimp and due to the small size of the fish, they are easily able to get to most places in an aquarium where the baby shrimp will be able to get to leaving the baby shrimp with no place to hide.
Can Galaxy Rasboras Live With Shrimp?
Galaxy rasboras can be an excellent tank mate for all species of shrimp with many people within the fish keeping hobby being able to keep galaxy rasboras in their tanks that also have shrimp in them without issue.
The galaxy rasbora is one of our default recommendations for a fish species to live in a tank with shrimp as they are a peaceful fish that won’t try to eat your shrimp.
With the popularity of keeping cherry shrimp, neon yellow shrimp, and blue shrimp in aquariums on the rise due to their bright colors making them a great option for a clean up crew in an aquarium that is your main display tank, we only expect the popularity of shrimp to keep on rising.
In addition to that, shrimp only tanks are also becoming a very common way to get into the aquarium keeping hobby with many people scaling up their shrimp tanks after a couple of months to larger sizes while also adding fish to their tanks too.
Due to this, we only expect the popularity of galaxy rasboras to increase due to the excellent reputation that they have amongst the fish keeping hobby as a shrimp safe tank mate.
If you expand your selection into the other species of shrimp safe rasboras then you can build out a beautiful shrimp tank with both your shrimp and your fish species having bright, beautiful colors to catch the eye too, just be careful if you keep multiple shrimp colors and they start breeding!
Do Galaxy Rasboras Eat Baby Shrimp?
Galaxy rasboras can and will eat baby shrimp if they are hungry and go foraging for food so they are not a good option for a shrimp breeding tank.
Even with baby shrimp though, anything over a week or so in age can still be too large for the average galaxy rasboras to eat so a large number of baby shrimp in a tank with galaxy rasboras will usually survive anyway.
We have seen a number of people on social media say that if you add shrimp hideouts or shrimplet grass to your aquarium, your baby shrimp will be safe from being eaten by your galaxy rasboras but this is not the case.
The majority of galaxy rasboras are small enough to easily follow baby shrimps in to shrimp hideouts to eat them if they wish.
If your galaxy rasboras go foraging, their natural instinct is often to navigate to any grass in the tank anyway so shrimplet grass can actually attract a hungry galaxy rasboras to your baby shrimps hiding spot.
In our opinion, the best way to protect your baby shrimp from becoming an easy meal for your galaxy rasboras is to make sure that you keep your galaxy rasboras well fed to prevent them going off and looking for alternative food sources.
What Size Aquarium Should You Use To Keep Galaxy Rasboras With Shrimp?
You can usually keep galaxy rasboras and shrimp together in any tank that is a minimum of 10 gallons in size but larger tanks can be better options if you do plan to keep larger numbers of galaxy rasboras in the tank.
Galaxy rasboras and shrimp will usually just go about their business in their areas of the aquarium reducing the chances of any conflicts for territory in smaller tanks making a 10 gallon aquarium perfect.
If you are new to the fish keeping and shrimp keeping hobby then we would always recommend that you start off with a small 10 gallon tank for your galaxy rasboras and your shrimp.
This helps to keep your costs as low as possible while letting you build up your base skillset such as maintaining steady water parameters before you upgrade to a larger, more expensive tank.
Once you have developed your initial aquarium keeping skills you are able to add additional aquariums or upgrade to a larger tank and really get creative though.
We have seen some excellent tank setups online going over a number of different ways that shrimp have been integrated into a tank with galaxy rasboras as well as a range of other shrimp safe fish species with the tanks looking amazing.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over keeping galaxy rasbora and shrimp in the same aquarium as each other to an end. We hope that we have been able to help as many of our readers as possible better understand how in most cases, galaxy rasboras can be an excellent fish species to keep in an aquarium with shrimp. As we have touched on earlier in the article though, galaxy rasboras can eat baby shrimp so they are not a good option for a shrimp breeding tank but most people will breed their shrimp in a shrimp only tank to remove potential predators anyway.
