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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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#54 ·
The bowl gets variable hours of light. i turn the light on whenever i wake up and off when around 10-12 hours have passed and i get back home. usually i dont let it go over 12 hours of light though. sometimes it does get less.

thanks justin, it really is.
 
#57 ·
Nice [STRIKE]nano tank[/STRIKE] bowl. Like what others have said, it's an inspiration knowing you can keep the plants and shrimps thriving.

By the way, how many shrimps are in there now do you think? And do you have any way to circulate the water?
 
#58 ·
@Kayen: yes, the maintenance is fairly little, tho its more than i'd like haha. it would be much less if there wer no shrimp.

@Squared: Water changes on this are 95% twice a week. The funny thing is about my reef, its the frag tank, but my main reef is actually smaller by 7 gallons :p The main reef is a 3 gal pico. You can find it on nano reef forums.

@Pinoy: Right now I am back to more than 20 shrimp, most are the smaller youngest generation, though a fair amount of the juveniles still remain (I have to catch those out of there soon) No water circulation, during water changes it gets lots of mixing but otherwise the shrimp can create their own currents for respiration.
 
#65 ·
The female is now berried. I notice that some of the juveniles are getting saddled now o_o
there are so many shrimp in here right now, I seriously need to move the majority out ASAP. idc anymore what generation they are, they're moving out x_x We gotta make room for the newest gen on that female.
 
#67 ·
yep i am the same .Newman.

The shrimp are moving to my 40 gallon planted tank as usual. I've never actually thought of sending them to anybody yet, partly because nobody wants cherry shrimp these days lol. If you're still in need of them, I can send you some this summer, when the temps get warmer.
 
#68 ·
I am slowly softening the water and lowering the pH in this tank. each water change I use a larger % of RO/DI water in my water change water. My goal is to get to about 2-4 dKH. To do that, as the final step I'll be using 100% RO/DI with a little dose of Seachem Equilibrium to get that KH up. Shrimp are doing ok so far.. I moved even more out today.
 
#70 ·
No CO2 on this tank! lol I wanted to keep it very low on the maintenance, and back when i was running DIY CO2 on my 10 gal iwagumi, I always hated replacing the reactors and evetually ruined the tank by waiting too long to replace them one time. For that reason i skipped CO2 on this tank.
Carbon source is not supplied by Excel since i dose nothing in this tank. It comes from the soil under the sand. Miracle gro for all my fert and carbon needs lol.


Side note: I should not have put my marimo into this tank because now everything gets covered in nice green fuzz. looks cool though, and the marimo ball itself has reformed from a little clump and is growing fine.

Shrimp are doing ok. more females saddled, the main female has been berried for a while now. I need to get more of them out but its hard to do w/o wrecking all the plants lol!
 
#71 ·
I removed about 30 more shrimp from this tank the other day...I removed all i could catch, including any tiny baby shrimp that accidentally went into the net. majority were smaller adult shrimp though.
The water is now real soft and pH is around 6.7 or so. The tank is just about ready.
 
#74 ·
CPOs are crayfish right? those get slightly bigger than these shrimp and i think would strain the system much more. they are cool little crustaceans but probably best for 10 gals or so.

I'll try to take a recent picture of the tank tomorrow after a water change and glass cleaning. the cladophora algae is very prominent on the glass and plants so it clouds the glass a bit. still a much much cooler algae than other lame types like the previous bloom of cyano.
The top of the moss was taken over by the lighter green colored cladophora but IMO it still looks cool and creates a contrast to the darker green moss.
 
#75 ·
here are two pics taken a few minutes ago to get an idea of what it looks like now. there's the marimo ball in the center of the bowl, but its hard to see it. its hard to see detail with this camera lol. but the glass also really does blur. both the cladophora and the imperfections in the glass.
 

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#77 ·
Crystal shrimp arrived today so I am planning another bowl project for the remaining cherry shrimp in this tank (later this second bowl will also become a crystal shrimp tank, possibly for selective purposes)

The second bowl will have its own thread and will be a wide and more shallow bowl than this one. still going to be at 1 gallon though.
Probably will not have plants, just rocks and sticks lol.
 
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