fire aim ready

980 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by brian5280, Sep 22, 2012

brian5280

Discussion Starter · Sep 16, 2012

I have decided to leap in to the planted aquarium hobby by turning my guppy "pond" into a planted bowl. I have a 2.5 gallon bowl without heat or filtration that I have kept for the past year with wisteria planted in rocks, floating frog bit and 10 guppies that turned into dozens. Without even thinking about looking for a forum or any information online. I thought it would be fun to grow more plants and find something more interesting than feeder guppies to keep. I went to the lfs and bought a bag of eco complete and anubis nana, several dwarf sag, a clump of hornwart and a ludwigia. I dumped in an inch and a half of substrate, stuffed the sag and ludwigia into the soil and tossed the other two plants in.

Now I have a couple of questions.

1. Was my plant selection really bad? I haven't seen many posts from people who use hornwart or ludwigia in a bowl.

2. How long does it take for a bowl to cycle typically before you can add shrimp?

I was really looking for something "easy" compaired to the reef tank I used to keep so hopefully I can get thing going without buying a pile of test kits and supplements.

Thanks!

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Diana

· #2 · Sep 16, 2012

2.5 gallons is very small.
Anubias nana is great, and dwarf sag, but I think the other plants get pretty big, so you will be pruning a lot.
That is OK, though, at first, all the pruning is removing the nitrogen the plants have taken in from the shrimp.

With that well planted tank I would call it cycled if you are going to start with the easy shrimp. Plants will remove the waste just fine. The more delicate shrimp may be better in a tank with a more developed group of microorganisms.

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Newman

· #3 · Sep 17, 2012

imo 2.5 gals is a decent size for shrimp. its rare to even find a bowl like that. my biggest bowl is about 2 gals i think (i dont use it for anything yet).

you can try to use any plants really, w/e works best. for me, root feeding plants and mosses worked best.

I dont recommend anything outside of Neocaridina genus. crystal shrimp are slightly frail - likely because of the temperature unstability between summer and winter seasons.

if you go with Neos you wont need all the top notch equipment like test kits and such.. you can just estimate and go slow. your bowl will be ready eventually.

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AquariumNoob

· #4 · Sep 17, 2012

Im worried since its a 2.5G bowl with "dozens" of fish in it.. without filtration, other than a few plants. Im worried that the shrimp would be too sensitive to handle the water quality that those feeder fish manage to live in (IE Feeder goldfish are damn near invincible. Theyll live in water most fish cant survive in. They may seem nice and happy, but its bad enough to kill most shrimp in the blink of an eye).

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brian5280

Discussion Starter · #5 · Sep 18, 2012

I got rid of all the fish when I got the plants so no need to worry.

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Knotyoureality

· #6 · Sep 18, 2012

Without the constant fertilization from fish waste or high light levels, I've found most plants I've put in my planted vases grow slowly enough that pruning isn't an issue. Without water flow, however, you do have to make sure nothing too fine leaved is used--gunk tends to build up and cause problems on them.

Current plant list in my mini shrimp vessels (ghost or cherries--ranging from 3g down to a 4.5" diameter planted wine glass with 3 cherries)

xmas moss, java moss
frog bit, duckweed, guppy grass, hornwort
crypts: several varieties
cardamine lyrata (my goto--does beautifully for me)
bacopa
hygro. "bold" and "sunset"
baby tears/ dwarf baby tears

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brian5280

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 22, 2012 (Edited)

well it looks cool, even if it doesn't have any shrimp yet.
Cardamine lyrata looks really cool. I will have to keep that one in mind if any of my plants give up on me.

http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/pHosting.php?do=show&type=f&id=11837&title=imagejc.jpg

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