My 'shrimp' of a shrimp tank

Orion

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#1
A few days ago I got my Cherry shrimp that Lotus sold me. They went into my 5 gallon tank (hence the 'shrimp' shrimp tank lol, yes bad I know). But this is where they will call home. It's a well established tank, I was thinking that it had been setup for close to a year. Nothing else calls this home other than the shrimp. Neat little fella's the shrimp.

They took right too the tank. None died in transit, and it doesn't seem that any have died in my tank, so the big part of the worries are over. I've even spotted a few molted shells laying around. A few females had gained good color to them just a few hours after being let loose in the tank, and all were showing some color by saturday morning.

But this is the tank as it is now. It has florite sub, and a 13 w PC over top. I've never added Co2 (and don't plan too) or ferts. But I may start doseing ferts very little. Mabey something around 2 or 3 mL a week. I don't want this to turn into an algae farm.

Most of the plants in there now are various species of crypts. There are three small dwarf sag. plants in the foreground on the left side, and Anubias 'coffeefolia' on the right. Also an Anubias 'nana' floating around in the back that Lotus was nice enough to toss in too. I just haven't placed it anywhere yet.

I would like to add lots of moss to this tank. I don't want Java moss because it will be too much trouble to keep it under control in such a small tank and for what I want it grows to large and long. I'm thinking mini moss. I want the moss in here to have the short, clean look of java moss when it is grown out of water. I would like to add a few pieces of driftwood and some interesting rock structures eventually.

Yes, on the left hand side I did throw in some java moss that was covered in hair algae just to make sure the shrimp had enough to nibble on.



I've not had time to sit down and take any pictures of the shrimp yet, but I will.
 

Orion

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#4
Thanks!

I'm glad you approve of your shrimps new home Lotus. :) Thanks so much agian for them, they are great.

I should have mentioned before, my ulitmate goal for this tank is to make the appearance of it much larger than it really is. So far I think it's going pretty good, but I do have a small assortment of plants that I don't have right now that I do want to be able to put in it.

I don't really have another planted tank anymore, so I'm going to focus my time on this one. I've never really tried to do anything great with this tank, or any tank this small, so I figure it will be a fun learning experince.

Also I didn't mention that I do have a filter on the tank now. It's a small aqua-tech from wal-mart. I only have about a dozen of these lying around. And I'm using a 25w hang on heater.

But all the plants have a real good head start and are growing well. Most of the cypts in this tank started out as small plantlets quite a while ago that I saved out of other tanks. They have grown very nice. The large crypt in the middle (Cryptocorne spirallis) I was unsure of because of it's height, but I've been very pleased at how it has turned out. The only plant that I've had trouble with are the dwarf sag. It grew like a weed when I first got it years ago, but these haven't done much more than sit there in this tank. I'm sure that if I start to dose ferts that they will pick up quite a bit.
 

Orion

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#12
The light is a 13w compact flourecent that I stole out of an old reading lamp. I just mounted the reflector, end cap, and bulb holder under the hood and ran wires to the ballast that sits behind the tank.

Thanks Lotus, truthfully these three are what was decent out of 90+ photos.

:)
 

NoDeltaH2O

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Feb 17, 2005
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#13
Awesome shrimp tank Orion! Your piece of nature is great!

So do you think they will eat off of the algae completely? My shrimp thrive off of algae, and they keep the tank clean as a whistle.
 

Orion

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#14
Thanks delta. I like it. ;)
I guess they will take care of what little algae is in the tank. I didn't get them for aglae control, so I never really thought about it that much. I did add some hair algae from another tank just to make sure they would have enough to eat because I've never had any algae problems in this tank. It's almost spotless.

And in addition to algae, now they have some crypts to munch on as a few of them decided they were going to melt after I moved them literally only a few inches back from where they were. Weird crypts man. lol
 

Orion

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#16
Thanks Balloon. All the cyrpts in this tank were taken from other tanks as small plantlets. They have grown very well. I had a small problem when I moved them a little bit with crypt melt, but thankfully that didn't last long and they are showing signs of new growth ever so slowly.

To be honest I don't remember the exact species. Pardon my spelling, but I belive it's either a lutea or walkerii. And the one on the right is the other. lol Not a big help I know.

I belive I have some better shots of the shrimp, but I've not had time to go though my camera and upload them onto my computer to really check them out. Hopefully I'll be able too shortly. Mabey today if I have time.

I'm in the process of redoing the tank agian. I took the riccia and tied most of it down to a stick of drift wood. Doesn't look like much now. I also tied some java moss to a rock.

I'm also going to try something a tad different. I'm going to order some bio-media called matala. I'm going to use this to (try) and create 'rock' structures and different looking items in the tank. Moss or any plant that doesn't require to be planted should adhear to it very well. Someone mentoned using this stuff to me a while back on another forum and I've been wanting to give it a try. It should be a fun experiment.
 

Orion

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#19
I can't belive how well the riccia is doing with no Co2. It was very green till I slacked off on the ferts and it started getting just a little yellow. I added more this week and it's already getting much greener. I've been noticing that it even pearls a little bit.

I took out the anubias nana as it was getting pretty big and added four anubias nana 'petite' from my 75 gallon that haven't been doing so great. Hopefully they aren't too far gone and will bounce back.

I finally have baby shrimp! I noticed that most of the females that were carring eggs didn't have them anymore, but that was weeks ago. I finaly spoted a young shrimp the other day. It's no wonder that I haven't been able to see any. Those guys are tiny! I've been able to spot 4 at the same time, but who knows how many more are in there. These shrimp hide and blend in so well, you wouldn't think that I had anything in the tank most of the time unless I'm feeding them.