Help with a new Shrimp Tank

[Anjum]

It's time for me to figure this tank out. It's my longest running tank, at about 18 months old. It's a 10g half cylinder. It currently houses a bunch of ramshorn snails & most recently, two baby corydoras. When I tossed the two cory eggs in there, I DID not expect them to hatch. So that kinda complicates my plans to make this into a Neocaridina tank. I guess if I have to wait on shrimp, that's fine. But help me figure out what I need to do to get it ready for shrimp.

Currently in the tank:

A HOB w/ intake sponge & a small ACO sponge filter

2 pieces of driftwood, one that's been in a tank for a few months, the other is newer & has released a fair amount of tannins into the water (more than when these pics were taken)

a couple bigger rocks that have been in tanks a few months

A lot of pogostemon & water wisteria, and an ailing java fern, and lots of mixed floating plants. Also a huge pothos growing out the top.

chunky, light colored gravel

I run crushed coral in the HOB & there's probably some in the gravel too.

I'll have to break out the master test kit this weekend, but going off of memory of my last strip test, just a couple days ago:

pH - 7ish

Nitrite - 0 

Nitrate - barely registered, less than 20

GH - 4-5 degrees

KH - 3-4 degrees

Temp - currently at 75F

So my main questions are regarding filtration & substrate, but please let me know if there's anything else that jumps out at you.

There's a decent amount of flow in the tank. When I drop food in under the HOB, it floats along the lower part of the front of tank to the opposite side. There seems to be less flow in the back of the tank. Does this seem ok, or too much flow?

I want blue neos & I seem to remember they look better on darker substrate. Should I add some darker substrate on top? I don't want to take out all the gravel that's in there if I don't have to. 

Any other suggestions???

[lefty o]

im no shrimp guru, but the cory's should pose no problem to shrimp. if it were me, id toss some shrimp in there. its well established and stable, so pretty good odds of success.

[AllFishNoBrakes]

Agreed. Toss a few in and see how it goes! If it goes well, add to it. And then wait. The population will explode 

[Anjum]

On 10/28/2022 at 4:55 PM, AllFishNoBrakes said:

Agreed. Toss a few in and see how it goes! If it goes well, add to it. And then wait. The population will explode 

I'm so afraid to kill them! 😭 But yeah, I guess I'm about as ready as I'll ever be. I hope they breed prolifically! I want to farm out extras to my other tanks. 

[AllFishNoBrakes]

For my red cherries I started with 30, and sold a couple hundred of them. 
 

I’m looking to do blues next in my (now) empty 10 gallon 

[redfish]

We are setting up a 10 gal for shrimp.  Kids want blue neos.  I used Fluval Stratum for substrate.  It was really hard to get the water clear using Stratum.  I’m currently look for some rocks to help scape the tank.  We have some cholla wood and driftwood.   Will add some moss and other plants too.

 

I picked up 6 ghost shrimp for our community tank today as an impulse buy.

[Remi de Groot]

I have cory's in the tank with my culled shrimp. Population in that tank is thriving so it wouldn't be to much of a problem.

I've had the blues on both dark and white substrate. They get a bit lighter on the white substrate but pop out more then on dark substrate.
So i wouldn't change to much on the tank now. Because your current gravel is kind of bigger, small darker gravel will probably sink underneath it anyway.

Filter with intake filter should be fine. Don't need a lot of filtering with all those plants and shrimps.
Biggest thing to watch for is that you don't overfeed. Tank only has as much waste as you put in.
When i start a new tank with 10/15 shrimps mostly i only feed once or twice a week a really small portion.

If the shrimps go nuts on the food, add a little bit more next time. If they don't care to much they have enough food already.
You could remove the remaining food after 1 or 2 hours to keep the tank cleaner.

[JettsPapa]

I would use light substrate for blue shrimp, especially since you said your children want blue.  They're difficult to see on dark.  I use pool filter sand in my blue shrimp tanks.

See the discussion below for some basic information I typed up and saved.  You may already know most or all of it, but it might be worth taking a look.

 

[Anjum]

TL;DR: Is 66°F /19°C too cold for neocaridina shrimp to breed prolifically? 

Well, big day, I went to the co-op! Updates coming soon to my journal. But pressing questions right now about my new SHRIMP! Currently drip acclimating:

Things changed since I last made this post & the 10 gal I was going to use for shrimp now has 2 baby Corys & 3 male guppies. So in the interest of maximizing the breeding potential of the shrimp, I've decided they should go in this 5 gal. It's been sitting vacant with just snails & plants for many months. I just trimmed plants out of my other tanks & put them in here along with a mat of java moss I just bought. So it's stuffed, but I think the shrimp would appreciate that, no? 

My conundrum is heat/no heat? I've had the heat off & it stays about 66°F right now in the winter. I only have a preset mini heater for this tank, which keeps it around 78°F/25°C. I want them to breed a lot so I can farm them out to my other tanks, but I want them to be healthy too & not accelerate their lifespan too much. So what would you do? Or should I just lok for a small heater with a thermostat? 

 

[nabokovfan87]

On 10/28/2022 at 3:08 PM, Anjum said:

When I tossed the two cory eggs in there, I DID not expect them to hatch. So that kinda complicates my plans to make this into a Neocaridina tank. I guess if I have to wait on shrimp, that's fine. But help me figure out what I need to do to get it ready for shrimp.

Corydoras won't bother the shrimp and vice versa.

 

 

On 1/9/2023 at 4:18 PM, Anjum said:

TL;DR: Is 66°F /19°C too cold for neocaridina shrimp to breed prolifically? 

Try to keep it above 68.

On 1/9/2023 at 4:18 PM, Anjum said:

I just trimmed plants out of my other tanks & put them in here along with a mat of java moss I just bought. So it's stuffed, but I think the shrimp would appreciate that, no? 

The shrimplettes will for sure and that will increase your hatch yield.  Having a mass of plants floating is fine.  You don't need to have it packed in there or feel like you do need to.

On 1/9/2023 at 4:18 PM, Anjum said:

Black Rose?

On 1/9/2023 at 4:18 PM, Anjum said:

My conundrum is heat/no heat? I've had the heat off & it stays about 66°F right now in the winter. I only have a preset mini heater for this tank, which keeps it around 78°F/25°C. I want them to breed a lot so I can farm them out to my other tanks, but I want them to be healthy too & not accelerate their lifespan too much. So what would you do? Or should I just lok for a small heater with a thermostat? 

I would opt for 72 degrees.

[TeeJay]

Yes I think the 5 gallon should be plenty stable for the new shrimp friends. It's been established long enough to have good biofilm built up. Like others said I would opt for a bit of heat. In my apt my shrimp take does not have heat. But it stays 71-72 and I started with about a dozen then added another dozen about 3 months later and if I had to guesstimate I have easily 100 now. So for me personally 71-72 is the sweet spot. Just looking at the tank right now I have at least 8 females berried so it's been working really well for me. Amazon has a couple of real small bullet shaped heaters that are adjustable for about 20 bucks. @Guppysnail recently purchased one. Maybe she can tell how well it works.

[Anjum]

On 1/9/2023 at 4:37 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Black Rose?

Blue Velvet, from the co-op. Light isn't that good in that pic, better pics to come. 

I asked for 10, they gave me 12, plus I could see one teeny tiny shrimplet, so I got a baker's dozen 🤗

I'll look for that heater, thanks @TeeJay! 

[TeeJay]

On 1/9/2023 at 8:00 PM, Anjum said:

Blue Velvet, from the co-op. Light isn't that good in that pic, better pics to come. 

I asked for 10, they gave me 12, plus I could see one teeny tiny shrimplet, so I got a baker's dozen 🤗

I'll look for that heater, thanks @TeeJay! AquaMiracle Adjustable 10W Betta Heater Small Aquarium Heater Submersible Fish Tank Heater 5V/2A USB Powered Super Mini Aquarium Heater with Digital Display Thermostat, for up to 1 Gallon Tanks https://a.co/d/c3gszIt

 

 

On 1/9/2023 at 8:12 PM, TeeJay said:

 

 

I think this would do the trick nicely. I know it says for 1 gal tank . But for your purposes I think it would do well just to get those couple of degrees your looking for.

[Anjum]

One of them appears to be a female fanning her swimmerettes so I might have shrimplets very soon! 

[Lennie]

Congrats on your new friends, they be looking cute🙃.

I keep my shrimps with a school of sterbai corys (which are considerably on the bigger sized corys). They have never posed a problem for them, at least not noticably. They are really comfy around them and spending time together usually.

If I am not wrong, fanning may also be a sign of getting closer to molting time, cleaning themselves or even just chilling around. Shrimps are lil funny creatures. Even my bois do that. Once they are berried you would notice that easily(or maybe lil harder to see on blue ones, idk, I only keep orange sakuras in my tanks :D). Again, if I'm not wrong, they first molt before getting berried, but every molt doesn't mean there will be shrimps getting berried. Molting seems likely after trying to adapt a new water/environment I think.

When that's the case, your males will be likely to go Yipiieeee mode around the tank. 😄

Besides my other plants, I have floating jungle of elodea in my tanks and they love it! Huge java moss, dense elodea and floating salvinia are their top 3 in my tank. Pretty sure they will love your jungle dense planting. It is def great for the shrimp, people generally avoid that for a clear and simple look purposes.

I sadly cannot comment on the low temp part, but I keep mine on 26 C and they have been doing pretty good. Mentioning this as you are planning to introduce your future babies in hotter tanks maybe; I believe hotter degrees indeed cause them the have a bit shorter life span, even if hasn't seem to have any direct negative impact on their daily life. But I also believe, keeping the water parameters similar to the tanks you wanna introduce them in the future might be a better idea as shrimp, especially adults aren't the best to get used  to new parameters and they are considerably sensitive creatures.

Hope to see babies in the future!

Cheers,

 

P.S: sometimes  shrimps may have hard time to molt when introduced into a new tank due to different water parameters or big water changes. When they have a hard time during the molting period, they may seem like they are dead on the substrate which may not actually be the case. I would advice to be careful with that and not directly think they are dead, if it happens. You may want to observe it for some time and let it be. Please ignore the info If you knew it already!

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Lennie

[Remi de Groot]

On 1/10/2023 at 1:18 AM, Anjum said:

TL;DR: Is 66°F /19°C too cold for neocaridina shrimp to breed prolifically?

Lower temp makes the shrimps a little bit inactive and slows down the breeding a bit, but it's def still possible.
Got my shrimps at room temp. At night it's 16C/61F and during the day when at home max 18C/64,5F
Still got pregnant shrimp in most of my tanks.

Other thing i've read online is that the breeding proces slows down a bit in winter anyway, no matter what the water temp is.
This info comes from different facebook groups and forums tho and i haven't found any studies about it.
I think it was something about the baromatic presure in winter that was different and still beeing felt by the shrimps.

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Remi de Groot

[Guppysnail]

The AquaMiacle 10w is what I use in my Ziss brine shrimp hatchery. I like it. It holds stable temp. Be sure to let it sit in the water for 30 minutes before plugging it in so it calibrates as close to accurate as possible. 

[Anjum]

Thanks all! I'm going to go ahead & get the mini heater, just to help a little. 

Also thanks for all the extra info @Lennie & @Remi de Groot - I did not know a lot of that! I'll dial back my hopes of seeing shrimplets quote so soon & focus on just taking the best care of them.

I drip acclimated for over 3 hours yesterday so hopefully they're off to a good start. Our water comes from a creek & we have a lot of blue/gray clay in our soil, so I think that's why I have a little more hardness to my water than the co-op. But pH is around 6.5-7, and nitrates stay 0 in the 5 & 10 gal because of all the plants. I added some crushed coral to the filter & substrate, as well as a little of the nano banquet food blocks which have calcium. I gave them a tiny pinch of repashy last night while they were still in the specimen container & they went right for it. 

[Procrypsis]

FYI - You may have issues with guppies feeding on or nipping at your shrimp. My wife found out the hard way on that one...........

[Anjum]

On 1/10/2023 at 10:17 AM, Procrypsis said:

FYI - You may have issues with guppies feeding on or nipping at your shrimp. My wife found out the hard way on that one...........

yeah, that's why I opted to put the shrimp in the 5 gal for now. No fish in there, just snails & lots of plants. I may even take some of the snails out. Once I have plenty of shrimp, I won't mind putting them in other tanks. If they proliferate, great. If not, I'll always keep back some in a 'safe' tank.