# New tank...what and how many



## Frederick (11 Oct 2012)

Hi all... just purchased a new tank, Aquastart 500.65ltrs. Now having planted it I will wait some time before populating it but the question is.....as I wish to install fish AND shrimp how many of which van I install. I would like the tank to be predominately a shrimp tank. With this in mind any advice will be  very helpfull.

Frederick


----------



## nry (11 Oct 2012)

If you have enough plants, you could add some livestock now.

65 litres is probably 10-12 smaller fish (tetra for example), perhaps the same for shrimp.

Mine is 65 litres or so and I've got 4 cory, 12 neon's and there will be around a dozen shrimp added in a week or two.


----------



## basil (15 Oct 2012)

Hi fredrick, if you want to keep shrimp IMO they are much better without any fish in the same tank. Even if you choose fish that won't eat shrimp, the presence of fish will make your shrimp nervous. Subsequently they will spend most of their time hiding and they certainly won't breed to their potential. You just won't get the same enjoyment and return so better to have shrimp only tank.  

Thanks mike


----------



## basil (15 Oct 2012)

And a 65l tank will house loads of shrimp as they put very little bioload increase on the tank. You could easily house 200 shrimp in a tank that size.


----------



## jack-rythm (15 Oct 2012)

Agree with basil here... 

You can have as many shrimp as you want buddy. get some photos up too. would like to see what you got


----------



## nry (15 Oct 2012)

I find shrimp poo almost constantly vs. fish....does this not actually give a higher bio-load than fish?


----------



## dw1305 (15 Oct 2012)

Hi all,


> I find shrimp poo almost constantly vs. fish....does this not actually give a higher bio-load than fish?


I know it sounds strange, but the visible poo is largely irrelevant. The bioload is really dependent upon the ammonia (NH3) diffusing from the gills of the shrimps. The amount of NH3 is dependent upon a number of factors, but important ones are to do with the metabolism of organism and the protein and sugar content of their food.  

Because shrimps are small, cold blooded (poikilothermic) and processing food that is low in sugars and proteins, they will be producing very little ammonia. Because the things they are eating are low in nutrients, they have to shred and eat a large volume of them to extract the nutrient they need, and that's why you get lots of poo. 

We often have this conversation on Plec related forums, where people struggle with waste and saw-dust production from "wood-eating" _Panaque_ spp., often leading them to use their canister filter as a syphon as well as biological filter, with predictably dire results.

cheers Darrel


----------



## jack-rythm (15 Oct 2012)

Cheers darrel, good not of info there  

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2


----------

