# Neocaridina Shrimp and substrate



## Robert Fletcher (24 Jan 2018)

I know there is a number of threads on this topic but most answers are a bit generalized. I will therefore ask a direct question. Is Dennerle substrate such as New Scaper's Soil or the NutriBasis 6 in 1 OK for the shrimp. The tank will be low tech. I would like the shrimp to breed.

If the is not suitable or a better on recommend I would appreciate it.

Robert....


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## zozo (24 Jan 2018)

Shrimps in general are little very sensitive creatures easily poissened.. Therefor they should only be added when the tank is fully established. This takes time depending on the substrate used it takes less time with an inert substrate than it would with a mineralized/fertilized substrate. 

But in the end when a tank is fully established or cycled as many call it, in other words for short done with leaching ammonia's and or nitrites and al plants are happily and healthy growing than all substrates are suitable for shrimps. 

Any trendy named substrate mainly based on growing plants with Scaper and especialy Nutri in the name is likely fertilized. These are the soils requiring the most attention and time to determine if it is established enough to add fish and shrimps.

Establashing/Cycling a planted tank is rather an ongoing debate without end and a lot of different opinions. Personaly i think when it comes to this, patience is a virtue.  
https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/do-i-need-to-cycle-a-planted-tank.48450/


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## Chubbs (24 Jan 2018)

Fluval Stratum is what I have now but also had fluorite black sand. Both have been excellent for plants and shrimp. My favourite is Stratum out of the two.


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## Edvet (24 Jan 2018)

I managed to kill a tank ful of shrimp with one careless dose of micro's  ( chucked in a dose wwithout calculating it)


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## Robert Fletcher (24 Jan 2018)

Chubbs said:


> Fluval Stratum is what I have now but also had fluorite black sand. Both have been excellent for plants and shrimp. My favourite is Stratum out of the two.


Thanks do much for your reply I have been reading up on the Stratum one negative that has come up is Stratum is very light and a challenge for roots and also it crumbles. What is you experience.

zozo I have no intention of putting any livestock in until the plants are actively growing and will do their job of filtration.


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## Chubbs (24 Jan 2018)

Robert Fletcher said:


> Thanks do much for your reply I have been reading up on the Stratum one negative that has come up is Stratum is very light and a challenge for roots and also it crumbles. What is you experience.



Only had Stratum in my tank for 6 or 7 months now. It was difficult to plant some plants at first but after a couple days it eases off. Now it’s no different to planting in sand, the lightness is still there but no where near as awkward. Two things I must stress, don’t mix it and DONT wash it. If you wash it, you’ll cause it to crumble and your tank will be a dust storm for days (see YouTube for examples of people doing it wrong.) Just dump it in your tank and once ready slowly fill with water. Photo taken not long after filling it up, removing old substrate and Stratum in its place.





 The water will be a bit dusty but this will go after an hour, my water has been crystal clear ever since.

Tank now:




Literally hundreds of plants in there now and as you can see no rooting or staying down issues.

It’s worth noting that Stratum lowers and buffers your PH. My Ph even with co2 is always 6.8 now, day or night. Again, this was another reason I went for Stratum.

I’d still shop around, I found Stratum quite pricy. I needed around 5 bags and they were £30 something, each. But I would buy it again. I like it, it looks nice and my plants look amazing, obviously there are other factors at play, but I always had issues with compaction with sand. This, no problems so far and still going strong.


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## Robert Fletcher (24 Jan 2018)

Chubbs said:


> Only had Stratum in my tank for 6 or 7 months now. It was difficult to plant some plants at first but after a couple days it eases off. Now it’s no different to planting in sand, the lightness is still there but no where near as awkward. Two things I must stress, don’t mix it and DONT wash it. If you wash it, you’ll cause it to crumble and your tank will be a dust storm for days (see YouTube for examples of people doing it wrong.) Just dump it in your tank and once ready slowly fill with water. Photo taken not long after filling it up, removing old substrate and Stratum in its place.
> 
> View attachment 112873
> 
> ...


Thank you very much for that. I think all these soils are pricy. Must check my local LFS they have their "winter sale" on, however it looks like its a closing down sale but not announced. 
I do like your tank, I was looking for the shrimp I am wondering if the fry can survive with the fish. Was that a SAE or Flying Fox? In my community tank I have put 5 amano shrimp in but very rarely see them and never all 5. To see any you have to be up in the middle of the night with a flash light.
I think you have convinced me on the Stratum.


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## Furgan (24 Jan 2018)

I have 2 shrimp tanks, a scaper 50L which has denerele grey gravel (inert), this mostly has moss in the tank and a couple of excess plants I had over from the following. The shrimp are fine everything is growing and the shrimp are having shrimplets and I’m happy with the tank.

My 2nd shrimp tank is a 170L cube and it’s in the making, I sold off my discus and other fish as I wanted to go more planted. With the discus profit I have bought Ada Amazonia and planted heavy with dwarf hair grass and bucca Carolina and rocks with moss and more. But this tank is in dry start mode since dec 1st and has sat in the middle of our dining room slowly growing. 

I’m lucky as I have very soft water and low TDS (42) out the tap. But I will take a long time setting this tank up and I want to take it slow and get things working before the new shrimp go in. As I’m looking at making this a yellow king king tank I’m going to add some neos culls from my other tank when I think I’m ready, before the YKK, but I’m still a fair bit from that. One day she will get flooded.

My point was it all depends on what you want to do, do you want lots of plants for the tank that will need soil. Or will you go moss, and plants that grow on rock/wood. And your water if it’s hard then any active soil will have a reduced time where it works as it’s always fighting to buffer. 

Your doing the right thing researching and asking questions so what ever you end up doing I’m pretty sure it will be the right thing.

Best of luck and take your time (it’s hard)


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## sciencefiction (25 Jan 2018)

The substrate is irrelevant. Neocaridina are quite hardy and will do well in any sort of set up, and will breed, as long as there are no predators. And even if there is, if you first let them establish a big colony, then add fish, the colony will survive.
I find them the best substrate cleaners of all critters, not so much algae eaters but detritus eaters...But they'd try cleaning the glass too, although not very successfully..

I don't find them sensitive at all. Mine have survived appalling conditions when they hitchhiked in the wrong place, not intended for critters.  Then again I don't dose ferts very often and don't inject CO2 in any tank....Once established, shrimp are very much like snails. You can't get rid of them. I sometimes want mine gone as I can't clean the substrate ever without siphoning hundreds of shrimp at the same time.  They're in all my tanks bar one so I hope they're doing a good job of maintaining the substrate for me  My first shrimp tank is 5 years old and still running the same way I set it up, never hoovered the substrate in there. Hundreds if not thousands of shrimp came out of that colony and spread all over my other tanks, including occasional plant bowls on the window, breeding in them and surviving 12C temperature in winter...

I can't vouch for any other type of shrimp as I haven't kept them, but when it comes to neocaridina, they should be hardy unless there's seriously something wrong with the tank.


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## Konsa (25 Jan 2018)

Hi
First of all I am not questioning the above posts and tbh I agree with them.
My latest experience says otherwise unfortunately.Neocardina shrimps although very hardy will not breed well in soft water with low tds values.
My 36l dirtied tank is more than a year old and Im yet to see lots of  a baby shrimp in it.I had few berried females but they seem to trow the eggs all the time or have only few eggs in them.The eggs a fertile as when separate them they hatch.My tds is arround 145-160  with about a 1/3 of ei dosing going in ans 50% water change.Doubt that I have water quality issue as ottos beed in that tank.
If your water is soft stay away from the active substrates and go for inert sand and gravel and make sure your tds is arround 200-250 at least.
Regards Konsa


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## Furgan (25 Jan 2018)

Konsa said:


> Hi
> First of all I am not questioning the above posts and tbh I agree with them.
> My latest experience says otherwise unfortunately.Neocardina shrimps although very hardy will not breed well in soft water with low tds values.
> My 36l dirtied tank is more than a year old and Im yet to see lots of  a baby shrimp in it.I had few berried females but they seem to trow the eggs all the time or have only few eggs in them.The eggs a fertile as when separate them they hatch.My tds is arround 145-160  with about a 1/3 of ei dosing going in ans 50% water change.Doubt that I have water quality issue as ottos beed in that tank.
> ...



The water out the tap is the biggest thing that needs to be looked at for the Robert and the soil options will be different for this and also how he would like to plant the tank.

If it’s just neo shrimp and he didn’t want to grow any plants other than moss then he can just use any gravel. 

If plants is a bigger plan then some sort of soil, actual soil or fertilised soil would be a option.

Konza it might be worth while rescuing the % of water changes 50% is a lot for shrimp as although they are very adaptable they don’t like big changes in water. I tend to do 10-20% every week or other week and making sure I match the TDS using mineral powder and also try to match the water temp with aged water.

My water is soft but I increase the TDS to 200 and keep it here and I have had a lot of success over the last 6 months and currently have 5 berried females soon to drop.


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## Konsa (25 Jan 2018)

Furgan said:


> The water out the tap is the biggest thing that needs to be looked at for the Robert and the soil options will be different for this and also how he would like to plant the tank.
> 
> If it’s just neo shrimp and he didn’t want to grow any plants other than moss then he can just use any gravel.
> 
> ...


 Hi I agree with U that substrate choice its very deppendant on the source water .
As for the big waterchanges as long as TDS is not fluctuating dramatically dont thing the shrimp mind as in other thanks I had with Aquasoil and harder water was doing daily waterchanges for months and they breed like rabits in there.Its just that tank that is troublesome.The only difference is that it has soil under the gravel.I  have tried it all from NO3 reduction to less waterchanges but is just not happening.I must admit I never increased the tds using a mineral powder suplement .
But no worries have 3 other tanks and there is all fine
Regards Konsa


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## Furgan (25 Jan 2018)

I have to increase my TDS as my tap is 42 TDS and the gh and kh is very low so that gets increased a little so it’s a bit harder for the shrimp.

Regarding the TDS changes I have just heard from a lot of youtubers like marks shrimp, flip aquatics and LR bretz that it’s very important to keep the TDS level with water changes and this is esp important when introducing new shrimp to tanks as the difference between bag water and tank can be massive and then the shrimp need to be drip acclimated over many hours depending on the difference l.


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## sciencefiction (25 Jan 2018)

Furgan said:


> Konza it might be worth while rescuing the % of water changes 50% is a lot for shrimp as although they are very adaptable they don’t like big changes in water.


 
I've been doing 50-70% water changes on shrimp tanks for the last 5 years. Absolutely no issues.

There would be a problem, however, if one's tank water is significantly different than the incoming water. Mine has nearly identical TDS.


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## Chubbs (25 Jan 2018)

When doing a water change the only thing I’ve found they don’t like is vast temperature difference. Otherwise I’ve gone as far as 80% (had to change a tank connector) with no issues. But a temp change and I’d loose a couple within an hour. So now when refilling I have it slightly lower than tank temp to simulate rain.


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