Planted Nano Shrimp Tank

[~firefly~]

Interesting...never seen these before. The blue ones look amazing (although I still like the red ones!)

I'll see what my LFS has (and can order) next time I'm in there...shopping for moss no doubt.

Thanks.

[homemadepopcorn]

Get 12, I saw someone do the math once and the chances of you not getting at least 1 m/f in the group is ridiculously small.

[~firefly~]

Tank is clouding up nicely this morning. I'll test the water today. I've been told the substrate will leech high levels of ammonia for a while, which is fine for cycling, but if too high I'll do a water change.

[~firefly~]

Blimey...ammonia is off the scale at 5.0+ this morning. I've just done a 70% water change to bring it down a bit, will test again this evening to see if it's made a difference or if it's so strong I need to change the water again. I hope no one ever uses ADA Aqua Soil and immediately puts fish in! It's lethal stuff at the start.

Lazy way of getting the water back into the tank without disturbing the substrate:



All the grasses have stayed put.



Anubia still looking ok...not melted in the horrific ammonia bath overnight.



The moss is spreading its fingers out already.

[~firefly~]

Tedious close up of the filter...looking a bit clean...



My wonky planting.



Looks ok after the water change.

[jp400motox]

Looks very nice. i use the siphon method to do water changes as well

[MandyK]

Oh yeah, I use that method to refill my small tank as well. I hate making a cloudy mess of everything.

[Gogi]

Not sure yet. I'd love Crystal Red Shrimp but I'm fully aware of how sensitive they are. If I don't risk it with them I'll get Cherry Red Shrimp.

Does anyone know how many is a good starter group? I was thinking 6 to 8?

I might throw in a couple of assassin snails if any pest snails turn up, and if I get any algae problems I might put a couple of otos in temporarily. I have ten in my other tank but I'm not convinced I will be able to catch

All dwarf shrimp are sensitive to water conditons.

Do NOT get assassin snails they eat shrimp too. Once I removed assassin from my blue pearl shrimp tank activity and breeding skyrocket. Whoever says assassin snails are slow has never seen them catch a shrimp that happen to walk over it. I have and its not for the faint of heart.

The more shrimp you have the safer they will feel. I would start with no less then 10.

[~firefly~]

All dwarf shrimp are sensitive to water conditons.

Do NOT get assassin snails they eat shrimp too. Once I removed assassin from my blue pearl shrimp tank activity and breeding skyrocket. Whoever says assassin snails are slow has never seen them catch a shrimp that happen to walk over it. I have and its not for the faint of heart.

The more shrimp you have the safer they will feel. I would start with no less then 10.

Good advice, thanks. No assassin snails!

[~firefly~]

Well, it's been more than a week since I set the new tank up. I did daily water changes until my ammonia was reading around 3-4 on my test kit, then I stopped, but continued testing to monitor how the cycle was progressing.

Today I was at around 1.0ppm ammonia and nitrites off the scale. Nitrates were around 18 so going up gradually.

I did some maintenance on the tank today. I know normally you're not meant to clean cycling tanks, but I don't want a serious algae problem so I cleaned the glass of brown algae and gave the tree stump a wipe. The gross slime it has been oozing all week seems to have stopped now.

There was a thick layer of oil on the surface, along with some large floating brown crud, so I skimmed that off (around 5 litres total) and then set about trimming the hair grass which had grown a good inch in places! I trimmed it down short at the front and only took a bit off at the back.

Here's the neat look post-trim (I forgot to take a before shot)



It's nice to see the roots really starting to take in the ADA substrate.