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
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.)
Update shot from week #2. I tied the hornwort together in a bunch with a plant weight (careful not to crush the stems or needles). It looks much better this way.
I will be looking for a DW piece tomorrow for the moss and ferns to grow on.
Thinking about using just tap water to do water changes instead of the water from my bigger planted tank. I don't think i need all that extra nutrient floating in the bowl water cuz the soil substrate already has everything the plants in the bowl need.
Also I couldn't find a small enough DW piece in the LFS. going to search around my property for some DW then...
Found a decent DW piece in my yard, soaking it right now to get it to sink.
also added a female shrimp into the bowl, we will see how they do.
I ditched the hornwort and I started to use tap water for water changes.
An update on the shrimp bowl. DW finally got water logged after i boiled it so i tied some moss and java fern to it and put it into the tank. shrimp love it. you can see both shrimp in this photo.
update pictures. getting slammed by algae but I have been tring to keep it at bay. I can no longer do a good cleaning of the tank because recently one female shrimp gave birth so I will wait until the babies are grown to start syphoning off debris as part of my cleaning. going to get a lot worse before it can get better i guess Oh and that female shrimp arrived already berried into this tank. I got to see how the babies are born.
the substrate plants are growing nicely. shey should eventually cover the entire floor.
thanks. shrimp babies are growing and getting more red. unfortunately cyano is also growing. itching to syphon it all out but cant for fear of getting the babies. can only really clean up the bowl once the babies grow up to be adults.
more cyano, but as always the babies prevent me from getting to most of it. babies are growing well now, there are at least 15 of them in there. plus the 4 adults.
I've been thinking about setting up a FW again..this time one with live plants, so I'm researching
Your little shrimp bowl is really neat, and those shrimp are very colorful!
Glad to see you here. Thanks, this bowl will eventually house crystal red shrimp if everything goes according to plan. But for now I will rear a few generations of cherry shrimp to test out the possibilities of this bowl =)
I got some free Shirakura shrimp food in the mail today (donated a photo of one of my corals to a seller, and he was kind enough to send me some food.) Received two packs of Ebi Dama (80g of regular food), one pack of Ebi Dama Special (30g of vegetable-based food) and one pack of Chi Ebi (20g of baby shrimp food.)
The baby shrimp and adults really like this type of food; i've never seen them gravitate to any other food quite like this shirakura stuff
they're supposed to eat anything, and I've been feeding mine various pellet and flake foods for fish, but they never really respond well and dont swarm over them like they did when they found the shirakura food lol. i can tell they really like the ingredients in that one.
But the dwarf shrimp's foods are supposed to be blanched vegetables, algae disks, and other fish foods you can think of. vegetables are very important though. Plus the shrimp can survive for a long time in a tank (or bowl) just by eating various deposits, microfauna, algae, and even decaying plant material.
There are well over 20 shrimp in here now. I do not know at what point I will move some back to the 40 gal, but I'm thinking after the little guys grow up a bit more. Then one of the big females and a big male are going back, and I will let the little ones grow more yet, before i move some of them over to the 40 gal. The max number of shrimp I intend to leave in this tank for breeding is around 5.
However this is going to be very difficult because the female that gave birth last time has been berried for the last week again, and may give birth yet again, before these little ones make it to being juveniles...These things really like to over populate lol.
I am feeding them the shirakura foods, they are liking them very much.
I am now able to take care of the cyano during each water change by syphoning it out. Any shrimp babies that I syphon out are now very visible and easily transported back to the bowl. With this method I was able to somewhat clean up the cyano in the tank.
I have decided to do water changes on this tank twice weekly. Will likely move that to maybe more frequently in the future.
I could really use some Amazon frogbit in here to shade the plants, but I will only have access to the plant in late spring.
The baby shrimp are now visible on the photo.
I moved out one male and one female adult out of the tank today. should make some space for the little ones.
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