My 'shrimp' of a shrimp tank - MyFishTank.Net Freshwater Saltwater Aquarium Fish Forum

Orion · 11-14-2005, 09:15 AM

A few days ago I got my Cherry shrimp that Lotus sold me. They went into my 5 gallon tank (hence the 'shrimp' shrimp tank lol, yes bad I know). But this is where they will call home. It's a well established tank, I was thinking that it had been setup for close to a year. Nothing else calls this home other than the shrimp. Neat little fella's the shrimp.

They took right too the tank. None died in transit, and it doesn't seem that any have died in my tank, so the big part of the worries are over. I've even spotted a few molted shells laying around. A few females had gained good color to them just a few hours after being let loose in the tank, and all were showing some color by saturday morning.

But this is the tank as it is now. It has florite sub, and a 13 w PC over top. I've never added Co2 (and don't plan too) or ferts. But I may start doseing ferts very little. Mabey something around 2 or 3 mL a week. I don't want this to turn into an algae farm.

Most of the plants in there now are various species of crypts. There are three small dwarf sag. plants in the foreground on the left side, and Anubias 'coffeefolia' on the right. Also an Anubias 'nana' floating around in the back that Lotus was nice enough to toss in too. I just haven't placed it anywhere yet.

I would like to add lots of moss to this tank. I don't want Java moss because it will be too much trouble to keep it under control in such a small tank and for what I want it grows to large and long. I'm thinking mini moss. I want the moss in here to have the short, clean look of java moss when it is grown out of water. I would like to add a few pieces of driftwood and some interesting rock structures eventually.

Yes, on the left hand side I did throw in some java moss that was covered in hair algae just to make sure the shrimp had enough to nibble on.

I've not had time to sit down and take any pictures of the shrimp yet, but I will.

Lotus · 11-14-2005, 09:20 AM

Looks awesome

TLM4x4 · 11-14-2005, 10:53 AM

VERY nice Orion !

Orion · 11-14-2005, 11:11 AM

Thanks!

I'm glad you approve of your shrimps new home Lotus.

Thanks so much agian for them, they are great.

I should have mentioned before, my ulitmate goal for this tank is to make the appearance of it much larger than it really is. So far I think it's going pretty good, but I do have a small assortment of plants that I don't have right now that I do want to be able to put in it.

I don't really have another planted tank anymore, so I'm going to focus my time on this one. I've never really tried to do anything great with this tank, or any tank this small, so I figure it will be a fun learning experince.

Also I didn't mention that I do have a filter on the tank now. It's a small aqua-tech from wal-mart. I only have about a dozen of these lying around. And I'm using a 25w hang on heater.

But all the plants have a real good head start and are growing well. Most of the cypts in this tank started out as small plantlets quite a while ago that I saved out of other tanks. They have grown very nice. The large crypt in the middle (Cryptocorne spirallis) I was unsure of because of it's height, but I've been very pleased at how it has turned out. The only plant that I've had trouble with are the dwarf sag. It grew like a weed when I first got it years ago, but these haven't done much more than sit there in this tank. I'm sure that if I start to dose ferts that they will pick up quite a bit.