suggestions for tiny tank

[Phill D]

I just traded my old 10g reptile dry terrarium to my friend for her old 2g aquarium. She used to keep her kid's betta in it and as for my terrarium i had no use for it anymore really. Just taking up 20 inches of space. 

 

Anyway. The little tank needs cleaning but is otherwise sound. except it doesn't have any hardware (pump, lid, light, etc) except for a magfloat. 

 

Does anyone out there have any ideas what i could do with it? I don't have good luck with shrimp in my water or i might go that route. I don't wanna jump through hoops getting my water parameters perfect for some skrimps tbh. Maybe use it for cultivating plants? Or is there a way i could use it to grow live food for my fish? I've never done live food before. Or maybe some other idea i havent considered 

[shkote]

Shrimp are pretty versatile and adaptable, especially Neocaridina shrimp. I believe there's a type of shrimp for everyone's water 🙂

You don't have to chase parameters for them. If you're worried about it you can always find them bred locally in your same water parameters, or at least close. Stable parameters are more important than perfect numbers. Plants and shrimp sound perfect for a little 2 gallon. 

[BrandyLaRae]

I was actually shocked at how interesting and entertaining my Mystery Snails turned out to be. 

Just a thought because you didn't specifically mention snails. 

Good luck!

[Phill D]

2 minutes ago, Lynze said:

Shrimp are pretty versatile and adaptable, especially Neocaridina shrimp. I believe there's a type of shrimp for everyone's water 🙂

You don't have to chase parameters for them. If you're worried about it you can always find them bred locally in your same water parameters, or at least close. Stable parameters are more important than perfect numbers. Plants and shrimp sound perfect for a little 2 gallon. 

Well i tried putting 5 ghost shrimp in my 5g planted and 3 died the first day. 1 the second. 1 remains. I know, ghost shrimp make up all kinds of subspecies and they die all the time because they're 39 cents. But, this weekend i got 5 red cherry shrimp for my planted bowl. 2 of those died the first day, 1 more today. 2 left. Fortunately its a male and female. So, idk why they kicked it but my assumption is my tap water has too much trace copper. Or, i know my substrace (i use a mineralized substrate thats also impregnated with bacteria) has trace copper in it for plants. So maybe that's it. I know shrimp are sensitive to that metal, but, exactly how sensitive? The water, especially in the bowl, is/was clean. When i tested the 5g the nitrite was 0, ammonia was 0.25-0.5 and nitrate was 20 or 30. I didn't test the bowl water though because they're filled from the same source and there was no decaying matter (at least visible) in there i would think are releasing nitrogen or ammonia. Only fertilizer i use is easy green 

[Phill D]

3 minutes ago, BrandyLaRae said:

I was actually shocked at how interesting and entertaining my Mystery Snails turned out to be. 

Just a thought because you didn't specifically mention snails. 

Good luck!

I like snails but i've never bought any. I actually prefer the tiny pest snails that hijack on plants. Back in the day i'd get those all the time and be like, woo free snails. Right now i just have a tiny ramshorn thats like 2mm long. If theres any others i cant see them 

[BrandyLaRae]

I'm having a bladder snail problem right now so I'm not very nice about pest snails right now. Hahaha

I'm wandering around the house mumbling "Kill 'em all!!!!!" 

Mystery Snails have really interesting behaviors so they've stolen the spotlight in our tanks. Whatever you decide I hope you have better luck than you had with your first shrimp. I loved our ghost shrimp!

[shkote]

They are sensitive to copper, but they also need traces of copper to molt properly. One thing that makes people give up on shrimp is quick deaths at the beginning.  Some just don't acclimate and adjust very well, especially adults.

I used to ship shrimp years ago, and would only ship young and juvenile shrimp because they're much hardier and can handle a bit more stress when acclimating. When you have die offs and only a few survive the transfer, then they breed, the colony that comes after is usually bulletproof to your water and that's when they really start taking off.  Right now I have an unfiltered, unheated planted 5 gallon at work with just ramshorn and bladder snails. I will add shrimp when it's a bit more established. Just curious, what are your parameters?

[Phill D]

Just now, BrandyLaRae said:

I'm having a bladder snail problem right now so I'm not very nice about pest snails right now. Hahaha

I'm wandering around the house mumbling "Kill 'em all!!!!!" 

Mystery Snails have really interesting behaviors so they've stolen the spotlight in our tanks. Whatever you decide I hope you have better luck than you had with your first shrimp. I loved our ghost shrimp!

I'm hoping my 2 living cherry shrimp make a new generation of superior skrimps. Also my single ghost shrimp is still kicking. He lives with panda corys, otos and a kuhli loach so they leave him alone. He did literally try to grab a wafer and drag it to the back of the tank to the hornwort to presumably hide and eat it. He made it halfway down the tank before the kuhli took the wafer from him 

[Kat_Rigel]

Keep in mind that its actually very easy to get RO water, if you wanted to do a tiny aquarium for shrimp. All of those water machines at the grocery store, for example, are fairly cheap RO water sources. With only 2 gallons, it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. Could be cool to try some caridinia!

But if you really don't want shrimp, you could try growing some plants. You would need a light and a timer though.

[Phill D]

Yeah i keep bottled RO water at home because i drink it at work. I need to be able to take drinking water with me and also have one of those zero filters that spits out something pretty close to RO. And occasionally have gallon jugs of distilled lying around. That could be a route but then i'd have to go about remineralizing it. The plants in my tanks do well enough on the tap water which, by tap water standards, is actually pretty clean. I don't use a timer on my lights though because my routine is so structured by necessity 

[BrandyLaRae]

I have one ghost shrimp left in my 5-gallon and I started with 6. I still don't know if my betta got them or if they got into the filter or what. I love to watch them eat. It's really funny to watch him dart in and take a couple morsels when the Mystery Snails are feeding haha.

[Phill D]

19 minutes ago, Lynze said:

They are sensitive to copper, but they also need traces of copper to molt properly. One thing that makes people give up on shrimp is quick deaths at the beginning.  Some just don't acclimate and adjust very well, especially adults.

I used to ship shrimp years ago, and would only ship young and juvenile shrimp because they're much hardier and can handle a bit more stress when acclimating. When you have die offs and only a few survive the transfer, then they breed, the colony that comes after is usually bulletproof to your water and that's when they really start taking off.  Right now I have an unfiltered, unheated planted 5 gallon at work with just ramshorn and bladder snails. I will add shrimp when it's a bit more established. Just curious, what are your parameters?

Just checked right now. For the shrimp bowl exclusively. Temp stays around 76, pH high 7s usually 7.6, nitrite right now 0.25, ammonia 0.25 (both could be slightly less i'm not good at discerning the color differentiation on these vials), and the nitrates are really high right now maybe 40-80. That's surprising because its double whats usually in my tanks that actually have fish (20ish) even though both have plants and are the same age. Might be because i put a mini algae wafer in yesterday to see if they would eat it. TDS is 299, but i see that as an ambiguous number. Didn't test GH and KH right now but in my 5g and my tap water tested at 100-110 for both. 

[Phill D]

18 minutes ago, BrandyLaRae said:

I have one ghost shrimp left in my 5-gallon and I started with 6. I still don't know if my betta got them or if they got into the filter or what. I love to watch them eat. It's really funny to watch him dart in and take a couple morsels when the Mystery Snails are feeding haha.

Yeah pretty sure mine died of natural causes but my kuhli loach turned their corpses into chiggen nuggets. He doesn't eat much though so i had to remove the leftovers later lol

[shkote]

Having ammonia and nitrite present in the bowl could be a possible explanation for the sudden deaths, shrimp are very sensitive to both. 

[Phill D]

6 hours ago, Lynze said:

Having ammonia and nitrite present in the bowl could be a possible explanation for the sudden deaths, shrimp are very sensitive to both. 

I was thinking that too. We're down to 1 cherry shrimp now in the bowl. Idk if it matters but these cherry shrimp i got were only half an inch long if that, so i assume very young. If their max size is closer to an inch. I might just wait until one of my tanks gets really seasoned (6+ months of getting mellow) before introducing shrimp to any of them again.