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Bananariot's College 10 Gallons x3

9K views 96 replies 9 participants last post by  Bananariot 
#1 ·
So college at St. Bonaventure gets pretty boring when you don't drink or party hardy....since partying means getting wasted and since I have the asian glow, my face glows like a stop sign.

But it's all good since it means I can get more shrimp and whatnot. I took three ten gallons at home to fit around my townhouse apartment for college, nothing fancy no rimless or anything.

I just got into the planted tank and invertebrates about 3 months ago, so most of the tanks were revamped tanks that had fish. Sandy substrate, hopefully next year I'll have more plant friendly substrate.

10 gallon #1

Aquatic Life: Cherry Red Shrimp and Caridina Babaulti
Plants: Flame Moss, Xmas Moss, Chain Swords, Banana plant, Java Moss, Moss Ball

This tank is gonna get overhauled soon with most of the Red Cherries being moved to the third tank. It's gonna get CPO's with a rocky layout from my local river :) The moss is gonna get rescaped too

10 gallon #2

Aquatic Life: Red Crystal Shrimp, Snowball Shrimp, Malawa Shrimp
Plants: Phoenix Moss, Banana plants, Chain Swords, Moss Ball
Hmm I'm thinking of adding more red crystals, there are only 7 but they seem to be living well

10 gallon #3


Aquatic Life:Tiger Shrimp, Orange Shrimp, Bee Shrimp, Red Cherry Shrimp
Plants: Baby Tears, Anacharis, Chain Sword, Vallisneria, Dwarf Sagittaria

Ok this tank has been through a lot, it was abandoned and then covered with algae. This was then home to 2 BN plecos and then became clean but covered with poop. This was then sucked out and then covered with fluorite. Then I began planting. Probably should have restarted it and dry started it. Oh well. Now its a shrimp tank with a marina breeder box medium. The baby tears came in the latest and with exams and all I sloppily put em in with a tweezer and put rocks on them in hopes they'll carpet.

The main tank is going to get the cherry shrimp, bees, and tigers. It's a Tibee experiment . The oranges are going into a large marina breeder when I get it.

Lame photos from my iphone but uhh yeah maybe I'll invest in a camera over the summer.
 
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#2 ·


Some neon greens from Mord, GREEN AND HUNGRY :bounce:

Crystal Red going for a ride on some duckweed.

Male CPO flexing his muscles for the camera. The coexisting experiment with the cherries lasted for all of 10 seconds. Cherries got relocated to outside tank.

Male and Female CPO from Mord! Mord never disappoints. Soon to have new tankmates, gonna try and get some Mosquito Rasbora (Boraras brigittae)
 
#3 ·


CRS BERRIED? I have 5 in the tank as an experiment to see if they would live, surprise surprise, after about 2 months I have a berried one! I doubt the eggs will hatch though :( My ph is above 7 with no way to drop it.

If they do hatch I'm curious to see what comes out, I have caridina babaulti with it so maybe they hybridized? If not I might get more CRS!
 
#4 ·
The townhouse apartments are off campus housing I guess? Are you an undergrad or a grad student? During my undergrad the largest tank you could have was a single 10G lol.
 
#5 ·
On campus housing lol. Its a small school I guess they prefer my tanks over hardcore drugs. Like its on the right side of our campus that are all devoted to housing. Next year I get my own room for a 6 person townhouse....gonna try to either setup a nice 20 long or a 12 long. Shrimp racks ftw lol
 
#7 ·
I live 8 hours away from my house in Stony Brook. I'm figuring it out but I think I'm gonna get plastic tubs and put my tanks in them and fill in the remaining space with packaging peanuts. The cray tank I'm gonna minimize and bring all them back in like a 5 gallon hex. All are gonna be sealed on top with plastic wrap prolly.
 
#8 ·
Whoa you live in Stony Brook? I went to undergrad there as a Physics major lol. I graduated last year lol!!

And wow.. you live actually much much farther to your house than I thought. My parent lives in NJ and it was only a 2.5hr drive to Stony Brook. Now that I'm in UConn it's a 4hr drive back home to NJ. Sounds like a rough trip on a weekend haha. Guess you don't go home often.
 
#10 ·
HAHA no way! Did you know that cop that would park in one of the houses's driveway off of Stony Brook Rd? That cop was a ninja... got my friend twice speeding on that road.

Yea.. driving through the city is real bad. I have to pass by on my way from CT to NJ as well. I cannot STAND traffic so I always travel from 12am to 4am. Zero traffic lol.
 
#11 ·
Haha the cops are pretty lenient compared to the ones here at my school. I get away as long as it's under 50 mph. I got ticketed for 42 in a 30 here in the village near my school.

Haha yeah actually a lot of the ppl that live in the community are cops, I can think of like 4 families so you gotta be careful. Key is the quota has to be met at the end of the month so they start cracking down round then.
 
#12 ·
So I'm interested in your tank water. Are you using the Walmart vending water for all your tanks? Will you consider an RO/DI unit while in college? I'm gonna get a unit this month to hopefully encourage my babaulti's to breed.

Btw, what year are you haha? I'm 1st year PhD student :p
 
#13 ·
I'm using the culligan brand water machine, 5gal a time. It's $1.28 to refill 5 gallons so I just do that instead of shelling out for a RO unit. Also my chem department has multiple units....I haven't asked to see if I could use it yet lol.

2.5 gals each for my 2 shrimp tanks, my crays get tap. The tap here is ridiculously hard, the stains are ridiculous.

I'm a 3rd year undergrad at St. Bonas studying chemistry, G.W. medical program.
 
#14 ·
So how often do you do water changes then? How long have you kept the shrimp? I feel like you've probably already paid for at least half of an RO/DI unit already :X!

How did you get into shrimp :p?
 
#15 · (Edited by Moderator)
I started in January........I started using R/O water like in february/marchish I've paid for maybe 4-5 water changes lol so its still under $10.

I got into shrimp after I got bored of fish. I used to be a monsterfishkeeper in high school with arowanas (all 3 that are legal lol), red tail cats, shovel noses, gars. Also bred sting rays (motoros). I mostly bought them young and cheap and raised to sell. Had a 110 gallon and 125 gallon setup.

I sold off my 125 when I went to college and began gettin an interest in small tanks. I started breeding GBR's and Roseline tetras. Then came the cory phase......I had tanks just filled with them and I bought some cherries as tankmates.........
 
#17 ·
Haha oh I see. I figured you kept the shrimp for a while so the vending water costs might've been in the $40's already haha.

I see. I was never a huge pet person but I always like to stay busy. And after undergrad I didn't have time to play sports anymore as I was cooped up most of the day at home/in the office doing research (I run models so I'm online 24/7). That's how I started with shrimp first lol. Never kept anything before them so I killed off maybe 100 RCS when I first started :(. Dang.. I was so bad back then lol

I don't think I'm ever going expensive shrimp until I have my own house.
 
#19 ·
Aren't RO/DI units in the $200 range? I figured that's a LOT of water changes till then :proud:

All of my tanks were converted fish tanks, that's why they're sand substrates and such.

That's also why I started with lower grades cause I didn't think I could support the higher grades without FSS, Akadama, ADA....the buffering substrates....but thankfully the 7 CRS have been thriving and some got berried.....so they got me thinking maybe I can challenge myself.

I'm selling off my snowballs and regular cherries :\ They taught me a lot but I want to make room for some new challenging guys.

I got a shipment of PFR's coming in cause I like the solid red but other than that, I have OEBT's coming which I'm gonna put in my snowball tank. Hopefully they will keep to themselves and avoid breeding with my crs and babaulti. The PFR's are going in my regular tiger/bee tank in the living room
 
#20 ·
You can get a portable RO/DI unit for $65 :). That's the one I'll be getting until I get a permanent house.

Dang, wish you lived closer lol. I can always use fresh RCS DNA in my cherry tank :p!
 
#21 ·
idk if I'm even gonna sell them anymore, I might just give them to my lfs because ever since I moved them to the soft water tank, carelessly I admit, they've lost their color. Some faded to blue while others turned translucent. Maybe the substrate color also triggered it
 
#26 ·
Sorry I meant snowballs lol. Your snowballs turned blue ish?

The school sinks should have a threaded part that you can hook the RO/DI unit up to. It easily unscrews as well. It's actually really simple. You hook one part up to the sink. There's two exit tubes, one is waste water and one is the pure RO/DI water.
 
#32 ·
I want to get tiles/ walls with ss mesh but I end up spending most of my money on shrimp! lol.....

I started with plastic mesh but I really do like SS better. Overall I think it's easier to deal with compared to plastic cause it sinks.

I'm hoping to find some stainless steel mesh locally so I won't have to use my card all the time to get some fissidens on it. I have fissidens randomly floating in clumps cause I dont have mesh for it yet.
 
#31 ·
Hehe as long as they don't say anything to me, I plan on having a 20 gal or 29 gal + a 12 long next year :x. Dunno if I'm gonna change my filter setups though with canister or just run more sponges cause I end up going home for breaks for a month during dec-jan so I have to move back and forth every 3 months basically
 
#33 ·
Oh that's a shame. I really want them breeding cause if I know they will breed, I'll be more confident with my OEBT's that are coming in. Eventually I want to switch over to mostly 4 shrimps: OEBT, Golden Crystal Bee, PFR, Green/Orange.

Perhaps Red Tigers too but that'll have to wait till their price drops below 10 per. I don't want to pay a ton for shrimp that are just red tigers when they breed just as easily as tigers.
 
#34 ·
I feel for tiles SS mesh is much better since it sinks himself. However... for walls I like plastic mesh since I don't like covering the entire back wall. And suspending SS mesh off of suction cups seems less safe than suspending the much lighter plastic lol
 
#35 ·
I like the carpet effect more because I never see my moss walls develop nor do they grow that fast for me. However I'm tempted to setup a fissidens for the wall with CO2 to see what happens. I just never get the moss to fill the whole entire mesh wall which then looks ugly
 
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