Cherry shrimp tank substrate recommendations

[pcc]

Hi, I am a newbie as far as shrimp keeping goes. I want to set up a 20 gallon long planted cherry shrimp only tank and let it mature for 4 to 6 months before adding shrimp. I am looking for recommendations on the best substrate for cherry shrimp. Thanks for the help!

PCC

[Mmiller2001]

Pool filter sand looks nice. Caribsea jungle river is really nice also.

[nabokovfan87]

I really like the use case of the "chunkier" sand.  From Caribsea this consists of:

Crystal River

Typical Size: 0.5 – 1.0mm

Torpedo Beach

Typical Size: 0.5 – 2.0mm

Jungle River Sand

Typical Size: .5 to 1.5 mm

Carolina Creek

Typical Size: 1 to 2.5mm



The reason for this is purely because it's easy to siphon and it behaves like gravel.  It's fine enough that it works like sand and compacts, but it's dense enough to allow it to stay in the tank and be cleaned!

Here is the crystal river sand cleaning in my tank.  This is a technique Cory showed in his "how to siphon" video where you pinch the hose to spot clean the waste.

 

Before I forget... here is this as well.  Very useful no matter which substrate you select.

 

Welcome to the forums @pcc Happy to have you here!

[Lennie]

Dark colored substrates. Shrimp show better color on darker colored substrates.

I would go for something brown or black-ish as long as you wont be keeping black roses.

And to me, river sand is not dark enough. I have some shrimp on it and nope, it is not dark enough imo. They don’t show their exact color well.

 

 

 

[Andy's Fish Den]

All my shrimp tanks have pool filter sand in them. I find using a dark substrate such as stratum or eco-complete makes it difficult to see any of the darker colored shrimp. One time, I figured red would be easy to see on it, but they blend in pretty well. Maybe if you are just wanting to have a few in a planted tank one of those substrates would work, but I was trying to raise as many as I could to sell, and the dark color substrate made it harder for me to see and thus catch in a net. 

[RonBFree]

I have 7 tanks of different colored hrimp in planted tanks.  I put down a 1/2 layer of EcoComplete and then an inch of standard aquarium gravel.  I find any color shrimp easy to see when the tank lights are on.

[JettsPapa]

I have numerous tanks with shrimp.  The tanks with red or yellow shrimp have Black Diamond sandblasting sand as substrate, and the ones with blue shrimp have pool filter sand.  I would recommend the same.  Both options are more economical than aquarium specific substrate, and if you buy a good quality pool filter sand it will need little to no rinsing.

But you said cherry shrimp, so I assume you're getting red ones.  I would definitely recommend a dark substrate even if you don't want to use the sandblasting sand (it does need a fair bit of rinsing).