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"Accidental" tank is now a shrimp tank


ChefConfit
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Added Blue Dream Shrimp to my "accidental" tank today!

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There are 16 in total. This is my 4th and if it fails final time trying to keep shrimp in the new house. I've previously tried blue dreams twice and amanos once. I was going to try red cherry shrimp but I found these from a Hobbyist for half the price my LFS charges.

My first attempt was with 10 blue dreams. About half died within a week, and the rest died while molting. Because of the deaths while molting I thought it was due to my soft water, so I added crushed coral to my HOB and a wondershell to the tank then waited a  month. 

Second attempt was 6 blue dreams. Once again half died in the first week. The other three survived about a month and a half then disappeared one at a time. The final one lasted to about 2 and a half months. Wasn't sure what the problem was, maybe lack of minerals for the early deaths and harassment by my fish for the later ones.

I redid the tank with a significant amount of crushed coral in the substrate and tried amanos next. The shop only had 3 left when I went in so I took them. They all died within 2 weeks. They were tiny and I think the fish were harassing them. 

This time I'm doing things different. It's a 10 gallon tank with just them, bladder and ramshorn snails. The tank was originally set up in August as a bare bottom tank to propagate floating plants then had substrate added in October (about 1/2 sand 1/2 crushed coral because that's what I had around) to propagate some stem plants. Hardscape was added in November when I added  some Cory eggs I harvested. More plants have slowly been added and a second batch of Cory fry raised in the tank. The HOB was swapped for a sponge filter almost 2 weeks ago and the second batch of corys removed over the weekend.

I'm hoping having so much crushed coral in the water will help with the minerals this time and since the only other livestock is snails predation/harassment shouldn't be a problem. I also started with more shrimp this time and some are fully grown.

Hopefully I have success this time and soon have a thriving shrimp colony. If it works out I'm planning attempt to introduce them to my community tank again. Probably in larger numbers so they can establish themselves before their numbers dwindle, then I might do them in my deck pond in addition to whatever fish I decide on.

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