Whats Your Setup

[AusPleco]

Just wondering what sort of people have for their shrimp set up.
Mine consists 2 ft tank, amazonia gravel, a hailea 700 internal filter, small air driven sponge filter, a sword plant, a crupt plant, couple of anubias and nice decorative pieces of wood on it with moss growing off of it .

I would really like to breed CBS but need to save up for a chiller but think if i was to do that i would probably add shrimp sand or benibachi soil and just have the moss in it with no plants for a simple sort of look.

I used to have a nice little setup in my Aquastart 320 tank (now holds my fiancees ranchus) but one day i bombed the house for cochroaches and lost over 100 shrimp consisting of cherries and crystal reds i was heartbroken it was a massacre seeing them all bunched together in the corner twitching or colorless already dead

 

[jessonthenet]

For my setup I had an open top 17 litre tank with HOB filter and 9 watt basic light at room temp.

Plain chunky black gravel, cut off of mopani wood with java moss attached and cryptocoryne wendtii "green" taken from my large tank.

25 watt heater turned to lowest 20C, on as a precaution but cherry shrimp can withstand quite low temps. ph if I remember was around 7.0-7.2.

No co2 or plant food, mostly water top-ups due to evaporation and very occasionally a 10% water change.

Hob had ceramic rings added inside for more bacteria as well as a pre filter sponge mean't for a fluval edge added to the intake pipe. I would carefully remove the filter sponge usually once a week or fortnight and squeeze muck out in old aquarium water and it would collect quite a bit in a short space of time. Saved a lot of bother in a small space having the pre filter sponge. Hob's are a pain so nice to not have it getting clogged. I find hob's are brilliant for small setups. Great for oxygenating and easy to added surface area for bacteria. If I was to setup a shrimp tank again I would get a better tank with the hob all built in and was tempted by the fluval spec as it is 9 litre so even smaller than the previous 17 litre. Can't see why that wouldn't be as easy to run as the 17 litre, it is the size of the filtration and bacteria, living space doesn't matter for shrimp but water quality does.

Best setup I ever had for my shrimp was inside the fluval 405, so if you replicate that your shrimp will survive and multiply, lots.


@ Aus pleco :


If you want to replicate conditions for CBS then the water would be on the soft side and you would use some catappa leaves to replicate natural living conditions. Preferably lower tds as I hear others have more luck breeding them in purer water but I had pregnant crystal red shrimp in my water and it is not soft water and I am not sure of the TDS but assume it isn't great. It is strange how crystal shrimp come from very soft water but need calcium so you would have to provide that for them. There are quite a few products for shrimp now and a lot you can get from malaysia, taiwan depending on whether you trust the sellers. I was lucky as I got 30 good sized catappa leaves delivered from overseas for 3 quid with no catch so sometimes you are lucky, sometimes not lol.

I think a lot of products especially UK ones are a rip off especially calcium products for adding to shrimp tanks so just watch what you buy as there are a lot of tricks in the trade that cost nothing and are some of the most basic things : )

Also don't forget lots of moss but be wary about moss from overseas or anywhere really as stuff they spray plants with will take out all your shrimp never mind cockroaches.

 

[AusPleco]

Nice photos jess , I have never actually owned any CBS due to the prices i couldnt justify $15 each for low grade when i didnt have a chiller .

In my old setup i managed to breed some CRS had 3 shrimplets at one stage however they then disappeared. I had beliefs that the cherries may have eaten them as they were outnumbered like 40:1 lol. I am trying to hold off on starting anything new until i manage to buy my own house as i rent so then i dont have to worry about moving which i am hoping to do come december

Look forward to hearing about other peoples setups to