# My First Shrimp Tank (nano)



## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

Long time aquarist, but first time shrimp tank owner that I set up over the holidays.

Hardware consists of a 3 gallon tank which I blacked out in the back, Finnex 10" Stingray LED supplemented with a JBA AL-30 LED clip-on, AZOO Mignon Filter 60 (with original sponges and added Seachem Purigen), and a National Geographic 25w preset compact submersible heater.

The meat of the tank consists of Fluval Stratum, some lava rocks (for BBQs bought from Canadian Tire  ), Sudo Starpet mini ceramic cubes and a small piece of Cholla.

I've planted mostly s. repens in the tank, but also have some loose subwassertang, phoenix moss and a small marimo ball and amazon frogbit at top.

Pics are from last week when I was testing out with a few cheap wild cherry's. The s. repens leaves were brown with a lot of algae and the wild cherry's cleaned them all nice and green within a day or so. They were doing well so I recently added some red and pumpkin over the w/e, an apple snail and horned nerite snail, and some random misc small unidentified (to me) plants here and there.


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## Atom (Sep 17, 2014)

Neat little tank  I was thinking about using those same lava BBQ rocks too from Canadian Tire in my shrimp tank so it's great to see someone else with the same idea.


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## Splak (May 1, 2013)

Will the lava rock alter your parameters?
Love the tank


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## Atom (Sep 17, 2014)

Splak said:


> Will the lava rock alter your parameters?
> Love the tank


I was wondering the same about the lava rock, but apparently it's safe. The majority of it is volcanic glass and might be composed of the same stuff some volcanic soil substrates (e.g., Fluval Stratum) are made of.

Completely speculation though  The best test would be to put it in some water and measure the change in parameters over time.


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

i read that natural lava rocks are inert and safe not to alter your water. i took a chance as i couldn't find anything else readily available and interesting in small size/quantity. i've ordered a PH meter so i'll check the water when it arrives. but eventually i hope to find some Manten stones or similar to add. any one know a source for small pieces in the GTA?

i also thought lava rocks would be good since it is quite porous and would provide a good host for beneficial bacteria to grow within. maybe even crush some of it to smaller size and use it as bio filter media. also because it is so porous, i would like to try and seed moss growth on some since the moss should easily take foot on it.

anyhow, here are some pics i took yesterday with the updates i've done over the w/e.


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## Atom (Sep 17, 2014)

Where'd you get that little glass dish?

Also, lava rock would be great for the moss to attach to. Take a look at this aqua scape that started with lava rock as well (scroll through the photos using the circles at the bottom of the pictures to see the progression).

http://tropica.com/en/inspiration/layout/Layout104/18303

Looks like there's some shrimp in there too.


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

it's actually a tea light candle holder that i'm using as a dish. LOL i picked it up at Michaels art/craft store for a dollar or two.

i saw a thread on another forum, but for the life of me can't seem to find again. the person took phoenix moss and took a meat(?) grinder to the moss. then put the moss on large pieces of lava rocks and put them in i believe it's called "emersed" set up till the moss took to the rocks before putting them in an aquarium.


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## Atom (Sep 17, 2014)

Good idea :O

That seems to be the way to go with all these moss set-ups. People grind them and smash them into rocks or tie them on with some fishing line then emerse the set-up for a couple weeks. I'm not patient enough to do that, but the end result looks amazing.

Looking forward to seeing how your layout progresses


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

i came home to find that something had chowed down on two of the s.repen plants! almost all the leaves are gone from one, and the other one is very sparse looking. 

i'm assuming it's one of the snails, and my suspicion is the apple snail. guess i'll have to relocate it to another tank and see.


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

*Pumpkin BERRIES!!!*

Discovered one of the two pumpkin CS i have is berried!!! 

Pumpkin BERRIED video!!!

fingers-crossed i'll soon have pumpkin shrimplets!!!


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## j.thomson (Mar 28, 2014)

awesome looking tank... whats that snail looks awesome!


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

THANKS! so far, so good.

which snail are you referring to? i had two in the tank. the first pictured is a lavender/burgundy apple snail. as mentioned it was munching my s. repens, as well as bulldozing everything. so i took it out and placed it in another tank. the second snail, which is still in the tank is a horned nerite snail (yellow/black stripped).

there's been a few deaths, i've lost one pumpkin from almost the get go. it looked dead in the bag but was still somewhat alive so i added it to the tank still. it would move around very slowly and it would (best i can describe) stroke out and slump there for a while. one time it was swimming to the surface and i saw it actually stroke out mid swim and float lifeless upside down back to the bottom. LOL, it was the funniest and saddest thing i've ever seen! after a few days, maybe close to a week, it went missing and presumed dead.

also lost the 3 red cherries from the same batch i got from shrimpfever over the past few weeks.  the remaining two pumpkins are still doing well. best news being that the berried pumpkin mother is still carrying. *fingers still crossed*. here's a video of it and you can kind of make out the eyes of the shrimplets in the eggs! 

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Tl3g3itjwVX1RnlJ7X45rKF8UDQhFDLi3LncLMEWF1g?feat=directlink

i added a whole bunch of yellow (with some gold backs) cherry shrimps picked up off here, again a few deaths but the majority seem to be doing fine. i got way too many for the nano tank so i had to shift the majority of the less colourful or overly large ones to another 10gal tank i have running.

i've removed most of the original s.repens out of the tank as they are slowly still being torn apart for food by the shrimps. i've replaced with some baby tears. these were clippings i got that didn't look like would survive at first, but have finally started to root and grow. as well, the shrimps don't seem to care much for eating these. must not taste too good compared to the s.repens. 

also add a DIY moss hut, using some craft supplies and mini pelia, as well as an anubias nana. you'll see in the pic that the shrimps did a little munching on a couple of the anubias leaves as well. *sigh*


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## j.thomson (Mar 28, 2014)

ah that worries me i didnt think that shrimp would munch on anubias like that... cross fingers that wont be happening in my tank lol


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

the damage seen was done the first few days or so when i initially dropped the plant in. it doesn't look like it's gotten too much worse the last few days and it seems they are laying off it now.  it's isolated to only a couple of leaves so maybe they were damaged/weak in those areas. this was also the case with two other anubias i dropped into the other larger tank where i offloaded the extra yellow shrimps into. so i think the anubias is safe from being devoured, but i'm keeping a watchful eye.

on another note, so far i'm two weeks into my half gallon, no tech shrimp bowl that i've set up at work! 

there's two wild cherry and two yellow cherry shrimps.


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## itsse03 (Dec 29, 2015)

Happy Chinese New Year!

it's official! I have new baby "MONKEY" pumpkin shrimplets!!! 

a day or two ago, i noticed my berried pumpkin no longer had her eggs except for one still stuck to her swimmerets. i desperately looked around the tank to see if they had hatched, with no success. i assumed they had probably been dropped. 

this morning, i found some odd "bug" activity in my mini pelia hut and on some phoenix moss attached to a lava rock right beside it. i thought they might have been either daphnia, planara or white worms that has plagued my tank recently. but upon closer (really closer) inspection, to my pleasant surprise i found two shrimplets!!! and then i spotted a third on some bare lava rock at the back of the tank. 

i took some video just to document i had indeed seen what i saw and wasn't mistaken. LOL and yes, in the last video, there's a planaria crawling across the front of the glass, which was probably as big as the shrimplet. 

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/jf5MSLQwcLoq2pIdD-ZWrtRSi8eqnADQWJA2dfFvzVk?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/RwhKo7rUA0FVmTo7jNmoe9RSi8eqnADQWJA2dfFvzVk?feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/6_kk7iCzXg6BY0yaG3fIy9RSi8eqnADQWJA2dfFvzVk?feat=directlink


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