[Little Soprano]

So my tank is currently setup, cycling. It's just a standard 10 gallon Aqueon kit with an Aquaclear 30 filter, Eco Complete, LOADS of Willow Moss and a lone Anubias Nana Petite. It's also filled with driftwood too. Only other additions to the tank will be some more driftwood to achieve the look I'm going for, along with more willow moss, one or two more anubias nana petites, fissidens, and pennywort forced to grow in a carpet like form. I do want to get a handful of nerites in there (planning on 5-6 of them, Petco seems to have some really nice looking ones lately).

Future Tiger Tank:

This will be my first true shrimp tank. My other tank has an Amano and two Bamboo Shrimp who sit on top of the heater in front of the filter spillway (lazy butts), so I'm really not very experienced.

I plan on going with Tiger Shrimps, most likely just starting out with 10 of them. Going to probably be getting them from Alpha Pro Breeders as the crayfish and plants I got from them, were packed so incredibly well, and in great health even though they were shipped in the dead of winter.

Currently I'm just using tap water:
Out of Tap Water Parameters-used test strips:
7.6 pH
120 ppm kH-6.7
200 ppm GH-11.2
Nitrate: less then 20ppm
Nitrite: between 0-1ppm

Thats straight out of the tap. I'm just using Tetra's water conditioner in a five gallon bucket, and then putting it in the tank. I'll probably end up keeping a few gallons of R.O. water on hand (LFS sells for .39cents a gallon), for tank topoffs to keep from the TDS going to high, but use tap water for water changes. I think my tap water is close enough to their parameters. I also have some left over natural sponge I attached to the intake of the HOB on my other tank, I plan on putting around the filter intake, though I was thinking of trying to find a sponge filter type spong to put over the intake, as the natural sponge is bulky, and if I'm gonna go with something bulky, might as well go with something that could work as a second biological filter.


I do have a few questions though..

How long should I let my tank cycle?
I was planning on 2 months or so to allow everything to stabilize and am also doing a temporary DIY CO2 system with Seachem's Aquavitro line to get everything growing well. Once I run out of yeast I plan to pull the CO2+fertilizers as I've heard they are bad for the shrimps.... this is true right? There is no copper in the Aquavitro line according to the bottles.

Is there anything I should do to get the tank ready for the addition of the shrimp bioload wise? Right now I just throw in a pinch of fish food, and theres also planaria in there because of that. I would love to add more then 10, possibly 20 or 30 shrimp, but I'm assuming its better to do in small bunches with a relatively new tank.

I see all these little breeding tubes on ebay sometimes, and was wondering what the purpose of these are? I think currently there are pretty good hiding spots among the moss and driftwood, but should I create other little spots like that in the tank?


Lastly..... Feeding dishes. Are these good for helping to keep the tank clean? I want to minimize vacuuming the substrate once the shrimp are in the tank. Would taking say a small glass ash tray, siliconing a suction cup to it, and attaching it to the side of the tank, work? This way I could remove it when they are done feeding or two hours or so after I add food, and it would in theory, reduce the amount of leftovers in the tank?



Oh.... Is there anything you've found plant wise, accessory wise, etc thats a must have? I currently feed my amanos and crayfish Hikari's Crab Cuisine and other then that they just eat at the algae.


Thank you in advance

 

[cjstl]

Planted tanks cycle quickly as long as you're not using ADA Aquasoil. With Eco Complete, you should be fine after a few weeks. There is a little sponge that fits over the intake of an AC20 that can be found for $2 - $3. I have a couple that I also use for Azoo Mignon filters. Should fit the AC30 and won't be bulky at all. Plenty of people on here run CO2 on their shrimp tanks with no ill effects. It may lower your PH a bit, but you have room to spare. I tend to use root tabs in my shrimp tanks. My ground cover plants are doing great, but I'm getting ready to start low doses of Flourish to get my moss walls growing better.

 

[Little Soprano]

Planted tanks cycle quickly as long as you're not using ADA Aquasoil. With Eco Complete, you should be fine after a few weeks. There is a little sponge that fits over the intake of an AC20 that can be found for $2 - $3. I have a couple that I also use for Azoo Mignon filters. Should fit the AC30 and won't be bulky at all. Plenty of people on here run CO2 on their shrimp tanks with no ill effects. It may lower your PH a bit, but you have room to spare. I tend to use root tabs in my shrimp tanks. My ground cover plants are doing great, but I'm getting ready to start low doses of Flourish to get my moss walls growing better.

If I can keep my CO2 running full time with shrimps that would be wonderful. It's just a DIY system coming out of an airstone running 24/7. The Koi thats in there wasn't going up for air last night, and I woud think his bioload is fairly close to ten or so fish. I do have a few root tabs in there, but no one is using them quite yet. I dose micros, iron, nitrates, and phosphates.

 

[sbarbee54]

Let your tank cycle for 6-8 weeks, so that bio film grows in well. It is not just about letting the NO cycle with shrimp tanks. You want a good bio film build up. Heck I can cycle tanks in 3 days if I wanted, but shrimp will not do well in them because no bio film or enough good bacteria build up.


Also get the planaria out they will kill shrimp. I dont know how you got that unless some of the plants you got had them. Use pancur and kill them.

And cjstl is wrong CO2 does have ill effects on shrimp. Shrimp need stable conditions and with CO2 conditions will fluctate. Not good for them keeps their stress level way up and they are more prone to bacterial infections and just dying. Now with RCS I would say go for it but not with tigers. Also make sure you keep your temps in check. Tigers like cooler water. 72* max I would suggest. As like CO2 fetz are not the most safe with shrimp either, just better to either do a planted tank or a shrimp tank. Use the DIY co2 and fert dosing to start the tank. Then do a large water change 3 days before adding shrimp and stop co2 and fertz.

Get a food dish as it prevents allot of bad things. Also you never want to gravel vac a shrimp tank. it will allow ammonia to spike some times and you could be sucking up babie shrimp


Read the sticky on here it will help a bunch and use the search function many topics on this.

 

[r45t4m4n]

definitely get a prefilter on our filter intake, I lost 3 of my shrimp to it the first day until I added something.

 

[cjstl]

Let your tank cycle for 6-8 weeks, so that bio film grows in well. It is not just about letting the NO cycle with shrimp tanks. You want a good bio film build up. Heck I can cycle tanks in 3 days if I wanted, but shrimp will not do well in them because no bio film or enough good bacteria build up.


Also get the planaria out they will kill shrimp. I dont know how you got that unless some of the plants you got had them. Use pancur and kill them.

And cjstl is wrong CO2 does have ill effects on shrimp. Shrimp need stable conditions and with CO2 conditions will fluctate. Not good for them keeps their stress level way up and they are more prone to bacterial infections and just dying. Now with RCS I would say go for it but not with tigers. Also make sure you keep your temps in check. Tigers like cooler water. 72* max I would suggest. As like CO2 fetz are not the most safe with shrimp either, just better to either do a planted tank or a shrimp tank. Use the DIY co2 and fert dosing to start the tank. Then do a large water change 3 days before adding shrimp and stop co2 and fertz.

Get a food dish as it prevents allot of bad things. Also you never want to gravel vac a shrimp tank. it will allow ammonia to spike some times and you could be sucking up babie shrimp


Read the sticky on here it will help a bunch and use the search function many topics on this.

OK, granted I only have neos and Amanos. But I much prefer CO2 over dosing with Excel. I also use the Fluval 20G systems on my two neo tanks. I just buy the 16G canisters and only run them for 4 - 6 hours per day. The little tanks last 3 weeks, about the same as the yeast mixtures. But I've read about tons of people using DIY. Some run an airstone when the lights are off and some don't.

I should also add that I'm not breeding shrimp to sell. I just like seeing those colorful little guys crawling around on lush, green plants. So if mine breed a little slower, that's OK with me. If they start dying off, I'll quickly re-evaluate my strategy.

 

[Little Soprano]

Let your tank cycle for 6-8 weeks, so that bio film grows in well. It is not just about letting the NO cycle with shrimp tanks. You want a good bio film build up. Heck I can cycle tanks in 3 days if I wanted, but shrimp will not do well in them because no bio film or enough good bacteria build up.


Also get the planaria out they will kill shrimp. I dont know how you got that unless some of the plants you got had them. Use pancur and kill them.

And cjstl is wrong CO2 does have ill effects on shrimp. Shrimp need stable conditions and with CO2 conditions will fluctate. Not good for them keeps their stress level way up and they are more prone to bacterial infections and just dying. Now with RCS I would say go for it but not with tigers. Also make sure you keep your temps in check. Tigers like cooler water. 72* max I would suggest. As like CO2 fetz are not the most safe with shrimp either, just better to either do a planted tank or a shrimp tank. Use the DIY co2 and fert dosing to start the tank. Then do a large water change 3 days before adding shrimp and stop co2 and fertz.

Get a food dish as it prevents allot of bad things. Also you never want to gravel vac a shrimp tank. it will allow ammonia to spike some times and you could be sucking up babie shrimp


Read the sticky on here it will help a bunch and use the search function many topics on this.

I have Hikari's Prazi Pro, it doesn't say it harms shrimps but I wasn't entirely sure, it says it kills flatworms. And I think it was from the last batch of moss. I have a baby koi in the tank right now, and I'm hoping that will help add to the biofilm in the tank. It's moving out in about 3 weeks or so, but I plan on putting a few of our Danios in there until a day or two before I get shrimp in the tank.

Currently the heater is unplugged and the tank is sitting at 68-70 degrees, but I plan on keeping it right around 70. My original plan was to remove all ferts/CO2 before the shrimp came anyway, I just wanted to get all the plants started. I purposely chose hardy, low maintenance plants for the tank. I set up this tank to be purely for shrimp, I did a lot of reading on water parameters and everything, just trying to make sure everything is set up for success is all. I remembered when someone told me to let the tank mature for 3 months, and thats exactly what I'm doing!

I picked up a tiny glass ash tray, and I've siliconed on a suction cup, so I can remove the container after each feeding, that should be good enough right?

I did use the search function, I've been researching a lot, I just wanted to confirm somethings, and also most of the time people don't like old threads getting resurrected. Very sorry.

EDIT: Been watching and the Koi thats in there has been picking them right off the glass, it's been searching the glass and then snatching them when it sees them. Maybe just letting him eradicate them would be a good method for now. Koi are absolute pigs, so if I can get rid of them naturally, would be awesome!!