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Co-op Sponge Filter and Shrimp Breeding?

LeafJelly

By LeafJelly,
in Fish Breeding

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LeafJelly Apprentice

LeafJelly

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Hey! Has anyone bred shrimp while using the co-op coarse sponge filter? I have a fine sponge filter in my breeding sponge tank, but it clogs up fast. I thought I should stick to the fine sponge filter the keep the baby shrimps shrimp safe,  but I visited a local store that's a coop retail partner and the worker there told me he had sucess breeding shrimp with the co-op filter! I would like to switch out my current filter for the co-op one, but I want to know if anyone else has success too before I do it. I don't want to end up killing baby shrimps in my already breeding shrimp tank :0!

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Guppysnail Grand Master

Guppysnail

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I use the coop coarse on all my tanks. I also use the coop coarse prefilters on jobs and canisters. My shrimp breed like crazy. They love to release babies in the coarse material.  It collects lots of yummies for the babies to eat until they are large enough to come out and about. 

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Cinnebuns Grand Master

Cinnebuns

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On 10/13/2023 at 10:45 PM, LeafJelly said:

Hey! Has anyone bred shrimp while using the co-op coarse sponge filter? I have a fine sponge filter in my breeding sponge tank, but it clogs up fast. I thought I should stick to the fine sponge filter the keep the baby shrimps shrimp safe,  but I visited a local store that's a coop retail partner and the worker there told me he had sucess breeding shrimp with the co-op filter! I would like to switch out my current filter for the co-op one, but I want to know if anyone else has success too before I do it. I don't want to end up killing baby shrimps in my already breeding shrimp tank :0!

I have. I had 2 in my 10 gallon. It is nice that the shrimplettes can use the area to hide but tbh, I replaced them. The sponges are TOO coarse and don't pick up fine material and detris. I got to the point where I had to do a ton of vaccing to clean which means more water changes which is never good for shrimp. I replaced 1 of the 2 filters with a fine sponge and within a day alllllll of the detris that I was battling cleared up. I still put the coarse sponge in there for them to hide in but it's not hooked up to a filter so not functioning as such. I love the filter for other reasons and I love ACO but I have learned I do not like how coarse the sponge filter is. It just doesn't filter very well.

Edited by Cinnebuns
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TOtrees Mentor

TOtrees

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I'm in agreement with @Cinnebuns. Love ACO, love new products that are CLEARLY designed with user experience in mind, love the forum/environment/hobby/care etc, but the sponge is too coarse for my use. I find uses for it, but it's not my go-to for filtration. Personally, I like the Hydro Pro sponges. 

My user experience with the ACO sponge filters is that if you clean them after a few weeks of use, or even a few months, even in a mulmy tank, you don't get a lot of debris out of the sponge, meaning it's passing right through. Chemical filtration is still happening, and is good, but mechanical is not awesome. I recently had one ACO sponge that I pulled after like 6 months in a tank, and it did include a lot of mulm. I think that the mulm itself, once a little bit starts to get trapped, starts to narrow or constrain the effective pore size so the dirtier it gets the more it traps. But I don't like keeping that much detritus in a sponge (at least not on purpose). 

All that being said, making decisions is all about being informed. If you're informed about the risks (or my/others' opinions about them) concerning large pore size, and you still go with the ACO sponge in your shrimp tank, I don't think there are any hidden downsides. These sponges DO make great habitat for baby and small shrimps, and they DO work great/fine as biological filters, and they DO provide all the other benefits of sponge filters including aeration/movement. 

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TOtrees Mentor

TOtrees

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On 10/16/2023 at 5:34 PM, Rube_Goldfish said:

How do you clean a coarse ACO sponge filter that you know or suspect has shrimplets in it?

If you can't coax them out, my answer would be very lightly, and very gently. which means its probably not worth doing, unless it's really mulmy, in which case a gentle swishing in a bucket might get the worst of the mulm out. But i wouldn't squeeze it. 

I've never tried this but I've always wondered, if you manage to connect running water (pump, tap, whatever) to the top of the uplift tube, could you run a sponge in reverse and blow debris out that way? If this worked, it could also be a tank refilling baffle (although there are already a million effective solutions for that issue). 

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Maximus Community Regular

Maximus

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On 10/21/2023 at 11:11 AM, Cinnebuns said:

That's my exact issue with it. It doesn't clog because it doesn't trap material therefore it's not filtering very well. 

I see, with my sponges I noticed them filter better as they get more clogged, so I rarely clean them. They will gather bits and probably slowly at first, but after it's done that for a while it should start to catch finer and finer particles.

 

The alternative I've seen is to wrap some finer sponge around the outside of the coarse one, to filter smaller bits 

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Cinnebuns Grand Master

Cinnebuns

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On 10/21/2023 at 1:13 PM, Maximus said:

I see, with my sponges I noticed them filter better as they get more clogged, so I rarely clean them. They will gather bits and probably slowly at first, but after it's done that for a while it should start to catch finer and finer particles.

 

The alternative I've seen is to wrap some finer sponge around the outside of the coarse one, to filter smaller bits 

I've completely replaced my sponge on my ACO filter with a different sponge. 

On 10/21/2023 at 1:13 PM, Maximus said:

The alternative I've seen is to wrap some finer sponge around the outside of the coarse one, to filter smaller bits 

This sounds like a cool alternative. It might work better to have the coarse on the outside and the fine on the inside. I wonder if there's a way to do that. 

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Matt B Experienced

Matt B

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I've got one of the aquarium co-op's nano sponges going in this 3.7 gal.  I haven't cleaned it in 4 months and the way things are going, I may never clean it... maybe if it fully clogs and even then maybe not. :classic_laugh:  If it ain't broke don't fix it!    I don't gravel vac and only do tiny water changes.  The shrimp love this tank! :classic_biggrin:

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Cinnebuns Grand Master

Cinnebuns

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On 11/8/2023 at 6:22 AM, Matt B said:

I've got one of the aquarium co-op's nano sponges going in this 3.7 gal.  I haven't cleaned it in 4 months and the way things are going, I may never clean it... maybe if it fully clogs and even then maybe not. :classic_laugh:  If it ain't broke don't fix it!    I don't gravel vac and only do tiny water changes.  The shrimp love this tank! :classic_biggrin:

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Not "needing" to clean it is exactly the problem though. That's because it's not trapping anything and therefore isn't filtering anything. Call me crazy but I like a filter that filters. I love the inner workings of them but the sponge is nearly worthless in my opinion. 

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Matt B Experienced

Matt B

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Decided to go ahead and clean 'Nano Nermy' the sponge filter!  :classic_laugh:  He was way over due for a cleaning!   It was amazing how much gunk was in it! :classic_tongue:  No shrimp in it, it was to clogged for anything to get in it!  I poured all the 'stuff', on a lavender bush outside, sence I've been doing this, it grows and blooms all year round! :classic_biggrin:

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nabokovfan87 Grand Master

nabokovfan87

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On 10/13/2023 at 8:45 PM, LeafJelly said:

Hey! Has anyone bred shrimp while using the co-op coarse sponge filter? I have a fine sponge filter in my breeding sponge tank, but it clogs up fast. I thought I should stick to the fine sponge filter the keep the baby shrimps shrimp safe,  but I visited a local store that's a coop retail partner and the worker there told me he had sucess breeding shrimp with the co-op filter! I would like to switch out my current filter for the co-op one, but I want to know if anyone else has success too before I do it. I don't want to end up killing baby shrimps in my already breeding shrimp tank :0!

Hey hey, welcome to the forums.

I don't know what you mean by "had success" or what you're currently running, but I would recommend not swapping filters unless you're running into issues.  Here is a link to my journal to the post where I showed the last time I was running the ACO filters.  The course sponge is nice because the shrimp can use it as a hide.  The issue is that shrimp can get stuck and can die from that.  It just really depends on the individual and your preference.  I would suggest something like dragon stone or just getting shrimp hides.  They have some really cool ones available.
 

 

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