# Shrimp Tank - Journal



## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

Look what power outages do!


Crystal Red Shrimp – A beginner’s blog

DISCLAIMER: I am a newbie to both crystal reds, and planted tanks. My approach may be completely wrong.

At the beginning of June 2011 I set up my first planted, and crystal red shrimp tank. This is what I did.

SETUP – June 2011

Hardware: 15G Tank, Ehiem 2213 Filter w/ sponge prefilter
Substrate: ADA Amazonia I
Additives: Mosura Mineral Plus (MMP)
Other stuff: Home Depot TDS Meter, API Master Test Kit
Plants: Hygrophila polysperma, Limnophila sessiflora, Rotala rotundifolia, Riccia flutains, common duckweed

Cycling: 
I set up using distilled water re-mineralized with MMP to a TDS of 120PPM. It took a little over 3 weeks to cycle. At one point I had 8PPM ammonia. Nitrates spiked to 20-40PPM since I was extremely lazy and never did any water changes during the cycle.

There were two important decisions I think I made here. One was substrate choice and the second was water choice.

ADA Amazonia I came highly recommended through research. Many people used it with good results. There were cheaper options available but the cost difference was minimal. So I invested in a little more expensive substrate to hopefully make my CRS keeping experience more enjoyable. 

Distilled water re-mineralized with MMP was my second important choice. There are several reasons why I chose distilled water. Distilled water would exhaust the ADA less than if I used GTA water. It allowed me to tailor the water to my specifications. I would not need to worry about any change in tap water. More importantly, I could easily match the TDS and have a similar mineral content to water removed during any forthcoming water changes. 

STOCKING – July 2011

I did a large WC to remove the build up of nitrates to 10PPM. I also added a mineral rock from theshrimplab.ca and 22 CRS S/S+, and 2 CRS SSS CRS at the beginning of July. I did not suffer any initial die offs. I did a 5 hour drip at 1 drop per second:

My nitrates spiked back to 20ppm. I believe this is what caused a few shrimp to die over the upcoming days. I also did several small water changes that probably added to the problem. At the time I was feeding Shirakura Ebi Special, and Borneo Wild Grow. I stopped feeding this in favour of Shirakura regular on advice of a friend. 

In order to remove control the nitrate I added Hygrophila difformis, Salvinia natans, and amazon frogbit. I also changed the media in the 2213 to a thin layer of efhimech, followed by coarse sponge and a mixture of Seachem denitrate and substrat pro. Over the next two weeks my nitrates steadily decreased without my intervention to 0ppm. It’s difficult to discern if it was something I added, or if the ADA’s ammonia leech had slowed to a deficit to my plant load. 

Towards the middle of the month I noticed some of the females were starting to get berried. Total from arrival to berried was approximately 3 weeks.

August 2011

I had suffered no deaths for a couple of weeks until one of my berried CRS died. Although annoying, this provided me with a good learning experience. First I got to try artificial hatching and if successful I would get to see the egg development first hand.

Artificial Hatching:

Having never even had shrimplets it was my first attempt at artificial hatching. I carefully removed the eggs from the dead females body being extremely careful not to break them and touch them. I hung them in a net in front of the filters spray bar. They were about 6” away, and about 1” under a horizontal spray. I checked the eggs every day and watched carefully as eggs developed. They started as a dark orange color and eventually got lighter with the orange being pushed off to one side. In about two weeks I saw the first eyes develop on the eggs and in the next 24 hours I had successfully hatched 16/16 eggs on Aug. 9th.

Moving on, the riccia, salvinia, and ambulia drove me insane so I tried to take most of it out. The ambulia sent out runners and made things so dense. Riccia attached to everything, and the salvinia made everything have a green hue. 

August 16th

Added 10 SSS CRS . 

And here are some photos!


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

hey good job man, tank's looking great.

keep us updated. How many of the 16 hatched made it to adulthood?


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

CrystalMethShrimp said:


> hey good job man, tank's looking great.
> 
> keep us updated. How many of the 16 hatched made it to adulthood?


I don't really know. Its hard to say since everything berried at approximately the same time. I think these were the first to hatch though. Of the larger babies that decided to come out today there are between 10-12. I'm not sure how many other are in the tank though. I noticed they hid for like 10 days after I released them.


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## Alexpatrascu (Jun 13, 2010)

Nice David, everyting looks great.


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

*update*

Sept 1st

Put this off for quite a bit since someone "borrowed" my camera. By borrow I mean my sister stole it out of my room to take pictures of her son's first haircut and hasn't returned it yet. So unfortunately I don't have any photo updates.

The parameters have been quite stable. pH 6.0 , 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and 0-5ppm nitrates. Tank temperature has been kind of wonky. It ranges between 23-25C depending on the day. Some days I leave an icepack in a Styrofoam box that sits around my canister to chill it.

I've been testing a few new products that I bought from Ebi-Ken. Namely, his Kou, Shou, and Ei product for the last two weeks. You can see the shou balls in the pictures in the first post. They are the large grey spheres at the fore of the tank. The kou is a sea mud powder and can't be seen. I've only added a scoop so far. My motivation for using the kou/shou combination is because I am going back to school this week and will be leaving my sister to tank sit. The products will hopefully make tank parameters extremely stable in my absence. The cost of the products was $33 + shipping. I will say I am quite happy with the products. I have had none die and what appears to be very high baby survival rates!

Speaking of the babies, I read good reviews about several products that are used as food supplements for babies but decided to try Ei ($20+ship). After opening up the package to a "fantastic" fragrance (smells like vomit) I scooped about 1.5 spoonfuls in. It disperses quickly and absolutely all the shrimp go crazy. Once I got over the smell I was quite impressed with the product. I've heard of other people having low baby survival rates, and deteriorating water conditions because of powdered baby food but I didn't experience this at all with Ei. Maybe its stupid beginner's luck but I can easily count 20-30 babies at any one time in the tank. In about 3 weeks some of the larger ones are about 7-10mm in size. I feed one-two spoons every second day. I'm quite happy with the product save for the smell. I wish it came in a different packaging but that's about it.

My feeding regime over the past two weeks has been quite erratic. Since I am super lazy and read that I could just freeze some organic spinach to feed I decided to try. They seem to like this better than boiled spinach and it saves me lots of effort. I basically just pop in a frozen leaf. It thaws instantly in the tank and as soon as it sinks they're all over it. I wanted to test how much food I could put in before my water deteriorated. I was comfortably sitting at 0ppm nitrates, and fed every day either spinach, or shirakura regular until I got a reading above 0. It took like 4 days before I got a faint 5ppm reading. I did this in addition to the Ei feeding regiment.

I'll try to get my camera and snap a few pictures before I leave.

-David

PS. Is anyone a Queen's alum / student? Homecominggggggggggg weekend?


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

Various photos from today. Tank shot, a few baby shots, and a SSS baby.


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## Alexpatrascu (Jun 13, 2010)

Nice grades David...love your crown.

I'll have to snap a few pic of my babies soon.


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

nice baby photos.

how often do you change your water and do you vacuum?


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

Haven't changed water since July. Strictly top offs with distilled water. I don't vacuum.


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

Been trying to get my CRS onto blanched spinach but they don't seem to like it. They try at it but then they just walk away, they seem to like the cucumber a lot more.


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## CrystalMethShrimp (Apr 27, 2010)

Mine were the same with dandelion leaves. 
So you treat them as a father would with a child whose a picky eater.

Starve them for a week.
Then they all went after it.


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

sister sent me pictures

now to go troll the library with my diff eqs book.


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## splur (May 11, 2011)

Is that mineral rock? Where did you get it?


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

CrystalMethShrimp said:


> Mine were the same with dandelion leaves.
> So you treat them as a father would with a child whose a picky eater.
> 
> Starve them for a week.
> Then they all went after it.


Same thing with my turtles. I adopted them and they were overfed pellets like 5x a day and wouldn't eat their veggies. No pellets for a week and the floating lettuce seemed pretty good. lol.


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

splur said:


> Is that mineral rock? Where did you get it?


Yes. Its from Ebi-Ken

Diff Eqs is dumb.


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## dchow (Oct 30, 2009)

*update*

So I've been off from Queen's for a bit but never decided to update this.

Notes:

-Sister took care of shrimp for me. She did a pretty snappy job. My population has more than doubled in the time from Early September to now. There are at least 80 that are 1cm+ each and an unknown amount of babies. For about a week in early December she said about 1 died/day. They were the older generation. Tiny nitrite spike from the dead bodies likely caused a couple more deaths. Lost something like 7-10.

-Removed the rotala since that shit drove me crazy.

-Haven't cleaned algae/biofilm off front of tank since the shrimp seem to enjoy it.

-Feeding regime, water top offs etc haven't changed. Still pest snails. Makes me want to redo tank after this semester.

Other: ammonia/nitrite/nitrate all 0ppm


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## Bwhiskered (Oct 2, 2008)

Try blanching some snow peas then freeze them. I thaw a pea in warm water and split it open and throw the peas in a pleco tank and put half of the shell in my 10 gallon CRS tank. They eat half a snow pea everyday.


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