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Newman's Shrimp Bowl

167K views 654 replies 110 participants last post by  Newman 
#1 · (Edited)
Newman's Shrimp Bowl


I started this 1 gal bowl on November 5, 2010.
Equipment:
1 Gallon Glass Bowl
1" layer of Miracle Gro's Organic Choice Potting Mix
0.5" layer of white playsand.
Ikea LED Light

Plants:
Dwarf Sag
Pygmy Chain Sword
Dwarf Hairgrass
Java Fern
Duckweed
Water Lettuce
Taiwan moss

Inverts:
Yellow Shrimp

Current FTS:


Updated Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb47C5IJI9w

A Look Into The Past:
Pics from Nov 5. It was very cloudy from the soil and sand. The bowl sits next to my 10 gal reef. Once the bowl gets an actual light fixture and shrimp, it will be moved to a coffee table where it will look nicer.

The next day I did a few water changes to clear it all up. That next set of pics was on Nov 6.


On Nov 12 I did my weekly water change and added some hornwort and removed the bulky java fern. later I replaced it with a few smaller ones. The last picture is the update of Nov 12.

I moved one male cherry shrimp into this tank to test whether the bowl was yet habitable by animals (the plants were growing well). This happened on Nov 14. I originally planned adding the shrimp much later, after the tank was full with plants, but I guess my curiosity got the better of me. He's been in there for 4 days now. seems ok.

Tomorrow is water change day again, so I'll snap another weekly update pic after the water change.

My current goal is to find some sort of small but vertical DW piece that can accommodate the mosses and the java ferns in this bowl (I do not like having the moss clump loose like that and the java ferns planted in the sand.)

Any feed back is greatly appreciated!
 

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#241 ·
That's a nice looking CRS crown you got there.

You are correct on the temp. Shrimps grow faster and breed quicker in the 75-77 range. However, that temp range also speeds up their metabolism and shortening their life. I keep all my shrimp tanks at 75ish. I'd rather have lots of breeding versus a long life shrimp that only breeds a couple of times.
 
#242 ·
can you imagine that these (four) new juveniles were free? they came from someone who i helped on a reefing forum.

As far as temp goes I hope to have the bowl's temp around 75F in the winter...but we'll see.


I checked my post office again but they said they didn't ever get the box, so all hope is lost on those crystals that niki sent me :(
the replacement order probably shipped today. should get here soon.
 
#243 ·
Replacement order did not arrive that week. its hopefully getting shipped this week......


I got a TDS pen from Liam on this site. nice tool. I used it to take readings from all my FW tanks. readings were as follows:

Crystal Shrimp Bowl - 150ppm
Cherry Shrimp Cube - 440ppm
40gal Community - 550ppm
 
#247 ·
I have been using Seachem Equilibrium to re-mineralize the water so far. my issue with it was that it has no iodine.

I thought you told me once that you set your RO water to 100ppm via the Mosura product? do you still do that in water changes or have you changed to re-mineralizing the RO to 150ppm instead?
 
#250 ·
My water is a little weird because there's a big rock and wood in there. My water actually test at 190-200ppm. However, I put in 100 to 150 water in to drive the existing hardness down. In your bowl I'd go with a straight 100 to 150 it doesn't have to be exact. Recently I've been putting in 100ppm water for my CRS. I've been playing around with it.
 
#248 ·
Hey, Newman! Thank you so much for the inspiration. Here is a link to mine! My Shrimp Bowl
 
#251 ·
i see. i tested my bowls water today, after a water change yesterday, and came up with about 168ppm. looks like i need to dial down on the equilibrium...
I only change around 30% of the water now, but i sometimes do it more than once a week because i usually need to siphon out some food before feeding fresh stuff.

The juvenile crystals are looking so good, I think some may actually be SSS grades!
 
#252 ·
I have been talking about my cherry cube lately but have never posted any pics of it. here it is, I started it a few months ago.

Its a barebottom cube with some DW wrapped in java moss, marimo fragments, an almond leaf fragment, and the few cherry shrimp that survived in my 40 gallon community for the past 2+ years.
Recently one of the females bred (but died soon after...) so now i have quite a few baby shrimp hiding about.

This isn't meant to be a display tank of any sort unlike the Shrimp Bowl right next to it. Its simply meant to breed my remaining cherry shrimp and maybe grow a bit of moss. This cube used to sit on a window sill and be lit only by sunlight but since the cold temps have started, i moved it into my room and it's now being lit by the shrimp bowl's ambient light. It's enough for the moss.

Right now the tank also has one newborn platy fry who is going to be raised here until he is large enough to go into the community. I will move him out also before he is able to eat any shrimplets, right now he is the size of a shrimplet lol.

This cube has no filtration other than weekly WCs and the moss.
 

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#255 ·
I like it. Is it all glass?
 
#257 ·
Looks like nikki's replacement package will be shipping this week. i though it got lost again last week, but have now been notified that it hasn't been shipped yet.
I will hopefully be getting some A grade crystal shrimp soon!
Why would i be excited over A grades? because I think they will do best in my bowl; they are supposed to be less sensitive and picky about their water conditions.
Can't wait to get these guys, have them grow and breed in my bowl; I feel like the SS grades are at a standstill. only one baby born/raised successfully in the past 7 months is pretty lame...
 
#258 ·
I forgot to ask. Do you do any maintance work, besides water changes? Like Ferts or anything?
 
#260 ·
I do not do any maintenance besides the weekly water change and weekly feeding.

i do not want to put any extra salt in the tank for fear that it would raise my pH way too high. since i have very low buffering capacity, the salt might effect my pH too much.
Though essentially what I'm doing is adding types of salts when i re-mineralize the water (Seachem Equilibrium). its good for plants, but once i get the Mosura Mineral Plus additive, i'll switch to that instead. it should have everything that crystals need in their water.
 
#261 ·
Weekly feeding? Feeding the shrimps? What does the Mosura/seachem suppposed to do?
 
#262 ·
yes i feed my shrimp weekly at least. usually i just throw in a shirakura pellet after taking the old one out...because they usually never finish it, unlike my cherry shrimp who always eat everything until its gone lol.

Those are RO water additives, designed to re-mineralize the water. The additive adds stuff like calcium, potassium, magnesium, and other useful stuff. its also raises GH.
 
#263 ·
The taiwan moss was getting out of control again so i took the DW out and trimmed the moss again... also vacuumed up all the gunk in the middle of the tank and changed about 40% of the water.
Dwarf hairgrass is still in there, still green, but is not visible because of the chain swords and dwarf sags. java ferns were also still there.
 
#264 ·
I was notified that nikki did ship the crystals this week and that they will arrive this Saturday...the problem is that she sent about 20 of them! extremely generous, even if they are A grades.
Now I don't know what to do with them all!
Some will definitely go into this bowl, but I have no clue what to do with about 10 extras of them?
should i just put them all in the bowl and hope they all grow up to at least young adult size, when i can sell some and reduce their numbers? I realize I'll have to test my water regularly now and do more frequent water changes to keep nitrates at 0...no idea what will happen on that note.
I have no other cycled tank that can be run as softwater. my cherry cube is packed with cherries right now and is very hard water that the crystals wont like...
I do have lots of extra taiwan moss lying around, but i don't think setting up another temporary bowl would help them because it wont be cycled, even with the moss...

So my best bet is to just put them all into the bowl, i'm guessing...?
what do you guys think?
 
#265 ·
Is there some reason that you can't keep the cherries in softer water?

Slowly switch the cherry cube from tap water to RO water. Put all of the crystals in your bowl for now but start doing water changes to change from tap to RO in the cube and when it stabilizes then switch over the excess CRS.

The cube should be small enough to make using RO water possible - atleast in the short term.
 
#266 ·
my cherries die in soft water. back when i converted my bowl from tap water to softwater, i left a few cherries in the bowl to see how they would do. I converted very slowly over the course of more than a month (doing water changes with the softer water) but eventually my cherries just died in the bowl...
adaptable as they are, they couldn't take a pH of less than 6.5
 
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