• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

20g new red cherry setting up help please

If you are only keeping cherries then that should be all you need. As long as you have a gh reading of around 5, to help with moulting, you will be fine. Cherries are extremely easy to keep.
 
You could use plain tap water if he only wanted to keep cherrys, one of my friends keeps them in a pH of 8.1 GH of 8 and KH oh about 5 and there fine. They breed aswell, but from what i've read he wants to keep Crystal Red Shrimp and they are a lot more picky about parameters especially the higher grade ones.
 
Yes you right, I want to keep Red cherrys first (exacly yellow but thet are the same) and in few months timeplaning to keep them togheter with Red Crystal.
 
If the long term plan is CRS then get yourself a decent active substrate, like Ebi Gold. It will help buffer your water and keep it stable. Cherries can survive in pretty much all conditions so use them to practice on, try and keep your tank parameters what they would be if keeping CRS.

If you use an active substrate with RO and some sort of re-mineralisation then you won't be far off, its a good start anyway. Once you get the shrimp bug, which you will🙂, you can then start looking at a more advanced set up capable of keeping higher grade CRS.
 
They do look brighter agains a dark substrate, he could always cap it was an inch of something he likes.
 
Can I set up tank with normal gravel and later add some special one dedicated for Red Crystal with no harm for Cherrys which already live in tank?
 
You might aswell just use no substrate for cherrys even though it does help you dont need it and there wont be much point wasting money on a substrate if your buying another for crystal reds.
 
Ive got black gravel for fish tank already, just wondering if I set up evertthing now and later add just special one for Red Crystal on top of regural gravel it wont harm yellows living there. Thanks for help everyone.
 
Dincho; do you know of any UK stores that supply EBI or Shirakura Red Bee Sand ?

mitchelllawson said:
You might aswell just use no substrate for cherrys even though it does help you dont need it and there wont be much point wasting money on a substrate if your buying another for crystal reds.
Click to expand...
Saying you 'don't need substrate' is misinformation. Of course you need a substrate, especially for shrimp. 🙄
 
I've have no substrate in my cherry tank for about 40 days, buying Akadama soon.
 
I don't no, but try to get ebi gold over red bee sand. After 12 months the red bee sand stops buffering the water, ebi gold should last 18 months but i have never had a bag last less than 24 months. In the long run its much better going for the ebi gold.

This is where i get my ebi gold: http://www.aquamoos.de/product_info.php ... pSoil.html
The problem is it costs about £25 for shipping, i always order about 5 bags at a time to spread the cost. I have heard that www.hobbyshrimp.co.uk will stock it but the site says "coming soon" so i'm not sure how long until its available over here.
 
You only need these shrimp specific substrates if you're using RO water as they'll buffer the PH and give you a good GH. If you're using tap water they'll stop buffering within a few weeks rendering it pointless spending all that money! Akadama is real cheap and inert, so you could control PH by using other methods such as alder cones or cattapa leaves etc if needed.
 
Shrimp substrates can be used with tap water, it is how i started. Using tap water will shorten the lifespan of the substrate, but not as short as you are suggesting. They will last around 12 months with tap water, 2-3 years with RO water (from my experience) This does not include fluval stratum though, the stuff is useless with or without tap water. Akadama is good but the diarrhea colour always put me off! It is good at buffering the water but last no longer than a shrimp substrate, so its best to use whatever you can get cheapest.

Cattapa leaves can lower the ph but only if you use large amounts of them, its not good to rely on them to buffer the water. They are best used for their tannins and medicinal qualities. There are products that can buffer the ph, Soft Water, Fulvic Grain, Humic etc but you can't beat a good substrate. It keeps you ph below 7, kh at 0 and gh at a good level, its expensive but not as expensive as replacing shrimp when they die due to wrong water conditions.
 
Sentral said:
You only need these shrimp specific substrates if you're using RO water as they'll buffer the PH and give you a good GH. If you're using tap water they'll stop buffering within a few weeks rendering it pointless spending all that money! Akadama is real cheap and inert, so you could control PH by using other methods such as alder cones or cattapa leaves etc if needed.
Click to expand...

It's a good point and one that i missed the point of completely when i was new to shrimping. I put ADA Amazonia into my tanks purely because i was told to use an active substrate in my shrimp tanks.......at the time i didn't realise quite why I was adding this expensive gravel!!

I think now, as i understand water parameters a little more that i could have probably managed with a bog standard inert gravel i was fortunate enough to have water out of the tap very close to where it needed to be for the shrimp i wanted to keep.

So, my new crs shrimp tanks will be set up using standard gravel and not active substrates.........watch this space!
 
Hi! Thank you all for help! My tank is nearly ready. I used gravel which I had in my previous fish tank and two internal filterd, which were mature already. Add Tmc re mineral and GH11 and KH7, ph 7.5. Just wondering how much water changed should I do to lower it to conditions for Red Crystals. 90litres tank.
 
chop81 said:
Hi! Thank you all for help! My tank is nearly ready. I used gravel which I had in my previous fish tank and two internal filterd, which were mature already. Add Tmc re mineral and GH11 and KH7, ph 7.5. Just wondering how much water changed should I do to lower it to conditions for Red Crystals. 90litres tank.
Click to expand...

Loads! Your ph needs to be around 6.4-6.6, KH 0 and Gh 4-6. Even if you do large water changes with RO water its unlikely your parameters will stay low enough for CRS, you have nothing in there to buffer the water. You live about 15 miles from me, which means your tap water is shockingly hard! Your best off keeping the setup for cherries.
 
Hi! Yes our water is like liquid rock, but Ive got RO filter but used TMC remineral acording to instruction and my paramets are a bit higher then should. Now Im thinking about fulvic grain from benibachi just not sure how big is this bag. Do I need to do water change before use fulvic grain
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top