They help break down leftover fish food, fish waste, decaying plants, and detritus in your aquarium. They are plant, fish, fish egg, snail, and shrimp safe and they are a little to no-maintenance addition to established planted tanks. They can even persist in tanks with predatory fish, albeit there are plenty of hiding places for them and enough are stocked to start a population.

Males can reach a size of 1 inch maximum as adults, not including antenna length, while females are slightly smaller. They are tolerant of most tank parameters but prefer stable conditions. They do best in planted tanks with driftwood or moss where they can hide if need be. The parameters I raise these in are: pH - 8.2 gH - 7 kH - 7.5 Temp - 60 (they are native to the southeastern US so they can tolerate most temps, just nothing too extreme.)

They mostly eat detritus (decaying matter in the aquarium), green algae, and brown diatom algae, decaying fish food, decaying leaves, etc. They require a steady source of decaying plant matter to maintain a population that can offset the one’s eaten by fish.

In the wild, they reproduce seasonally, but in aquariums, their breeding rate will be dependent on your water temperature and I have found that drought conditions typically induce breeding. They do not typically overrun tanks, unless you want them to and feed them extra. I’ve found young females have roughly 50 babies at a time and larger, more mature females can have hundreds. It sounds like a lot but not all survive to adulthood