[doncityz]

Does a shrimp tank need high pH setup (like a cichlids tank)?

I read somewhere someone mentioned that the pH should be a little bit on the high side. Normaly adding some crush corals in the filter box can achieve this, so I wanted to add some to mine, but want some opinions from experienced guys/girls here.

Thanks.

 

[diwu13]

What shrimp will you be keeping? Most neo shrimp will find a suitable environment between 6 and 7 pH.

 

[mordalphus]

Almost all shrimp prefer a pH at 7 or below

 

[sampster5000]

The only shrimp that do well in higher pH are sulawesi shrimp. For them it is recommended to add crushed coral or limestone to the set up.

 

[tbarabash]

The water coming out of my tap where I live is HAAAARD with a ph of about 8.0 (eco complete nor fluval stratum will buffer it down any lower) depending on runoff from the river and what day of the week it is it seems.. I have a ton of cherries in that that are breeding like there's no tomorrow and have 6 tiger shrimp hanging out in there doing just fine. Have had them for a few weeks now and haven't seen any signs of reproduction yet but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Even though I know I shouldn't have, I've bought CRS a few times and usually they last for a while but slowly die off. I would preferably buy one of those huge water cooler bottles of distilled water to keep and have a lower ph tank to have some CRS but there's really no place to put one of those in my condo right now and my wife wouldn't be too happy about that anyways

 

[GeToChKn]

You can add things like driftwood, Indian Almond leaves, and some peat to a filter to naturally soften your water. Granted, it will tint your water yellow/brown a bit but will lower your pH. The other option is to restart your tank with an activated soil that will lower the pH. The cherries seem to be doing ok, but I think that's rather high for the tigers. FYI, eco-complete is inert and won't lower pH. For a pH of 8.0, I don't think the fluval is strong enough to make much of a difference either.

 

[tbarabash]

I have quite a large DW/moss tree in my tank.. I knew about the peat but didn't have a good place to put it in the fluval nano filter that I was using however I recently upgraded to an eheim 2213 so I've got tons of space to shove some in there so maybe I'll try that. The carbon pad that came with the eheim should nullify the tanins from the peat would it not?I knew the ph might have been on the higher side but I didn't want to not grab some as they were being sold out fast from my LFS. I was just going off of the info on planetinverts about them:

Water Parameters
The Black Tiger Shrimp prefers colder more alkaline water. Breeders typically keep the Black Tiger Shrimp at a pH above 7.2 and temperature in the 70F - 74F range. It is reported that this species does not do well in the same water parameters as required by the Crystal Red Shrimp. Clean water of course is a must as with all hobby shrimp.

8.0 is higher than 7.2 so that is how I justified it haha. I'm not sure why this whole time I thought eco buffered.. I knew it was inert but had that stuck in my head. /shrug

 

[jasonpatterson]

It really depends on the species of shrimp you've got. My tap water has a pH of 8.5, and the only shrimp I've been able to get to breed in those conditions were the neocaridinas (cherry and yellow, specifically) and ghost shrimp. I've read that ghost shrimp prefer basic conditions, but I don't have any evidence of that to back it up. They and the cherries have done very well, the yellows less so, but are still fairly prolific.

As a comparison, in approximately a year in the same tank, I had a single bumblebee shrimp out of 20 adults berry, and she dropped her eggs the next day. There are shrimp that prefer high pH for certain (the sulawesi shrimp) but they have fairly picky water quality standards and are fairly expensive.

Your best bets are cherry shrimp, yellow shrimp, and ghost shrimp, assuming you want a high pH tank. If you don't have a high pH already, you should be able to handle most shrimp species, as long as your other water parameters (hardness and the like) are in the right neighborhood.