My first shrimp tank - Journal

[JohnnyBear]

Hello fellow shrimp keepers!

I've learnt a lot from lurking in this forum and immensly enjoy reading other peoples' tank journals, so I'm here to try and start my own and hopefully get feedback on how I can improve on this wonderful hobby.

Short Introduction
I was a ex-monster fish keeper, stopped for about 8 years during my NS, and recently restarted the fish keeping hobby. Have housed anything from Arowanas to Bichirs to Rays in my tank previously. Have always been fascinated with shrimp keeping as I enjoy the science behind maintaining certain a water quality and it was only recently when I saw an UP-AQUA nano tank on sale, did I decide to get my feet wet with this hobby.

Tank Set-up
UP-AQUA Nano acrylic tank with miniture IOS (dimensions: 14'x7'x8' with the IOS compartment taking up 2')
"Classica" HOB filter (rated 120l/hr or less)
China-brand clip on LED lights
CRS Haven shrimp soil (They were the only store I found who sold small bags of soil)
CRS Haven "Mineral Snow" as the base
Unknown flora I just happen to pick from the LFS

No Sponge filters or aerators, as I believe these things will eventually hasten the rate of evaporation. It is for this reason as well, that I did not use a fan to blow into the tank as well. The overall volume of the tank is low (I calculated ~10L), after being displaced with stuff like soil and the IOS pump, makes it very hard to maintain a constant water parameter.

Hopefully water agitating from both the outlet of the IOS pump and HOB filter will be sufficient for the concentration of dissolved oxygen in the water. (Please correct me if I'm wrong here.)


Water Parameters
Ph @ ~6.4
Ammonia @ 0
Nitrite @ 0
Nitrate @ <0.5ppm
kH @ 4
Temperate @ 25°c to 27°c average depending on weather

Tank cycled for 2 weeks using media and "matured" water from my main tank. Used some CRS Haven products that they claimed could hasten the cycling time, though I am skeptical of any such products.

My shimps
12 Yellow Shrimps
7 CRS of unknown grades
(Bought whatever was alive in the shrimp tank in one of the LFS I frequent)

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That's all I have for now. Hopefully when I wake up tomorrow there will still be shrimp alive in my tank and not all of them have decided to become ninjas and jump out!
Please excuse the poor shots. I have very little experience taking pictures of my own fishes, let alone miniature shrimps!

-JohnnyBear

[JohnnyBear]

Woke up this morning to realize that there was a small gap between the IOS compartment and the hole where the outlet pipe came out from, because the heads of 2 of my yellow shrimps where stuck halfway inside the gap! Tried to gently pry them out but they kicked deeper in the gap instead... The end result was 2 dead yellow shrimps by the time I managed to clear them out. Used a gasket meant for shower head flexible hoses to seal the hole after that.

Went to C328 today since it was near my job site for today and bought some java moss and a marimo moss ball to finally be able to finish the aquascape that I want. Also itchy fingers and bought 2 bags (10 pcs) of their yellow shrimps in the end...

Attached is my tank and layout, as well as some shrimps chilling by the moss ball!

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[JohnnyBear]

Just found 2 dead CRS and another dead yellow.. Test water parameters and it is more or less the same from 2 days ago.
Will continue to monitor and possibly do a 10-15% water change if I find another dead shrimp..

I actually expected that more than half of the CRS might not adapt quickly enough as without a chiller and such a small volume, the temperature does tend to fluctuate a fair bit. Didn't expect to see a dead yellow though.

[ntan]

Hi JohnnyBear! any updates on your shrimp tank?

[JohnnyBear]

Hi JohnnyBear! any updates on your shrimp tank?

Hi ntan! I think I found out the problem to my setup, and that is I forgot my main tanked was dosed quite heavily with aquarium salt (~0.3%) when I used for the days leading up to introducing the shrimps to the tank. I suspect there is still a lot of residual salt in the water as I've only did a small 15% water change prior to noticing the mass death of my shrimps.

Had another 5 yellow deaths and a full wipe of the CRS population.. before I came to this conclusion. Have been doing a 10% daily water change since Sunday, in an effort to try to dilute the concentration of salt.

Reintroduced another 10 Sakuras into the tank on tuesday and did not have any further deaths till today, in which a single pregnant female mysteriously died. Was fine in the morning when I left for my site and then dead at 3pm.

I am starting to understand just how hard it is to maintain good water parameters in a tank that only has ~10L of water.

Am actively looking for a 2nd hand 3ft tank with or without partitions to give my current and future shrimps a better living environment. Controlling TDS and KH is proving to be quite a challenge, especially on hotter days where the water in the tank evaporates at an astonishingly fast pace.

Here's a picture of a Sakura chilling near one of the survivors!
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[ntan]

Thanks Johnybear for sharing, was still thinking if i can copy your setup for my own newbie shrimp tank haha..

[JohnnyBear]

Thanks Johnybear for sharing, was still thinking if i can copy your setup for my own newbie shrimp tank haha..

It is my own inexperience and stubbornness that is leading to the instability in the water parameters and shrimp deaths.

However, I believe many cube tanks hold more than double the volume of my current tank, which is only ~10L or even less after you factor in the amount of water that is being displaced by the driftwood, which takes up a good 5-10% of the space inside the tank. Don't forget, my tank is pretty narrow and short, only 7 inches deep and 8 inches from base to top whereas cube tanks are like 12 inches for both depth and height.

In hindsight, I really shouldn't had bought my current tank and saved up a little more for something much more spacious instead.

One thing I would suggest though, is to go C328 and buy a big packet of cherry reds instead of any other exotic variant of shrimp. Your wallet will thank you. My backside was itchy and I ended up throwing away a good amount of money just to kill off those yellows and CRS.

[JohnnyBear]

Update

Out of impulse, I decided to do a 50% water change for my tank on National day. I used an air hose for both the siphoning and refilling of the tank and noticed that the shrimps really like to swim / jump around the hose when fresh water was coming in. It was puzzling since I always assumed shrimps do not like going near currents of any kind.

To my surprise, the pregnant Sakura that I bought actually decided to give birth right after the water change! At first I thought they were some weird floating debris or parasites, but on closer inspection, I realized they were actually shrimplets! Didn't expect them to be so small or white in color... like tiny ants in my tank.

Question

Today when I went to my tank in the morning, I noticed that nearly 50% of my shrimp and the shrimplets were hanging out near the top of the tank. They were literally all clumped up together like peak-hour MRT crowd. One shrimp even had its tail fin sticking out of the water. And the shrimps that were at the bottom of the tank were darting left and right like crazy as well. Left for my site inspection and came back 5 hours later, and all the shrimps were back to normal......

Would like to ask what could be causing this strange behavior.

[ZacNg]

It could be because of the huge water change causing a swing in water parameters. Shrimps will become stressed out, lucky for you none of them went up lorry. By the time you came back from your site inspection, they were most likely acclimated to the new parameters that's why they went back to normal.

[JohnnyBear]

It could be because of the huge water change causing a swing in water parameters. Shrimps will become stressed out, lucky for you none of them went up lorry. By the time you came back from your site inspection, they were most likely acclimated to the new parameters that's why they went back to normal.

Thank you for the insight bro.
The strange thing is, the water change was done on National Day (Saturday) and their weird behavior was only exhibited today (Monday). Is it normal for shrimps to have a delay to their reactions of the water parameters?

Thanks again in advance!

[Urban Aquaria]

The strange thing is, the water change was done on National Day (Saturday) and their weird behavior was only exhibited today (Monday). Is it normal for shrimps to have a delay to their reactions of the water parameters?

That sort of surface clustering behavior and frantic swimming could also be indicative that some toxic chemicals may have somehow entered into the water, usually from spray pesticide/cleaning solutions/deodorant/perfumes that were used in close proximity to the tank... the shrimps then become disoriented and stressed, and most of them will try to get out of the water at the top. Maybe can check to see if anyone used chemical products around the area.

Alternatively, it could also be due to shortage of dissolved oxygen in the water so they naturally move nearer to the water surface where there is more oxygen content.

Am actively looking for a 2nd hand 3ft tank with or without partitions to give my current and future shrimps a better living environment.

That'll will really be an upgrade... from 10L to 182L tank!