Back when I first was getting into CO2 I had rainbows, australian, dwarf neons, turqouise, a beautiful Boesamani, and a few other kinds. Unfortunatly I was having problems with O2 levels at night and had a couple mishaps. Lost about half the fish in my tank. The rainbows were of the first to pass. After both mishaps I had only 1 neon left and 1 [ugly lookin] madagascar rainbow. I decided then never to take the chance with them and never replaced them, fearing the possibility of a low O2 event again. But since then things are much better, never have any problems since upping the light, co2, and dosing dry ferts dialy. Maybe I will bring them back, they were my favorite species next to loaches.

I have dwarf neon rainbows in my high light tank, the entire trick to keeping rainbows with high levels of CO2 is surface agitation. They respond very fast to excessive CO2, but only when theyre lacking in O2 in the first place. If you can provide enough surface movement, and are turning off your CO2 at night, rainbows can survive very high levels of CO2 during the day.

Interesting. In your opinion do you think they would eat cherry shrimp? I'm planning a new tank with rainbows and cherries.

Hi,

My Bosemanis will eat Duckweed and also eat brush algae that is floating free in the water column....

I have also seen them eat other bits of plant debrsi (H.difformis esp).

I would not trust them with anything that can fit in their mouths......esp the bigger males.....However females are not any less aggressive come feeding time

They are eager feeders and will strike at anything dropped into the water and will investigate EVERYTHING that comes within range lol

I have cardinia shrimp in my tank and the rainbows go nose to nose at times with them when they rest near a shrimp, but don't bother them IN ANY WAY, so Iwould think the cherrys are okay.

Well the cherries get up to only about 1" long at the most, and they are pretty expensive for their size...but I have had lots of different rainbows in the past and I love them. I'm setting up a 33gal tank and I'm not sure how many I should throw in there for a nice school. I like the Red Irian Rainbowfish (Glossolepis incisus) but I know they can get big.

How many should I get with a pretty heavily planted tank?

By the way, I'd like to grow some nice foreground plants like Glossostigma and some dwarf hairgrass and dwarf baby tears (Hemianthus callitrichoides) for a change in my new 33 gallon that I'll be setting up.

I usually like a good bustle of bottom feeders like corys and a few clown or yoyo loaches. However, since I'm growing a lot of small delicate foreground plants I don't want the bottom feeders to mess around the gravel alot as I know they would do and disturb the growth. I'm sure after the plants get rooted fine it wouldn't be a problem?

I also have noticed that sometimes clown loaches take bites out of more delicate leaved stuff like my hygros that I use to grow.

Opinions on any bottom feeders that would be more compatible? I do like SAEs a lot but as they get bigger they tend to eat more from the surface and mid-level of the tank instead of on the bottom or algae. As you read above I am planning to get 10 or so cherry shrimp so that might be the solution for bottom cleanup?

of coz rainbow will eat cherries.they ate my amano shrimp too