Paulthewitt
Member
Hi All
As is often the case with me, when i get 'into' something, I don't do things by half! - The amount I know about the make up of gold balls from when I played at uni is quite shocking!
Anyway - having got one small tank at Christmas(the Fluval Spec - journal in my sig) with Orange cherry shrimp in it, I decided to get a bigger one and settled on a 60cm tank as a balance of size, etc... not to mention the floor it will be kept on.
However, in my search I found a tank which was for sale at a price that was too good. - A 50x30x30cm - 45l tank. This came with lovely velvet blue shrimp, some celestial pearl danios and an endler. So I bought this.
But I still wanted a 60cm tank with more volume as I would like to keep some Apistos and forktail rainbow fish and don't want to keep them in anything smaller. Anyway - I now have exactly that. So I have 3 tanks. So I have to decide exactly what to do with them all. My plan is as follows:
1) Rescape the 45L tank into a moss only/heavy tank with a view to breeding the velvet blue shrimp. It came with a nest of Java Moss - so My main idea would be to reuse that.
2) Scape the 60cm tank with a view to this being my main/favourite tank. Move the orange shrimp in here along with fish - hopefully the shrimp survive and I will give them plenty of hiding places.
3) Fluval spec - Pretty much continue as is as far as scape goes. I may remove the dwarf hairgrass as it isn't exactly thriving. but isn't dying off either. However, with the orange shrimp gone into the other tank, my hope is to make this a combined baby shrimp tank. When I notice a berried shrimp - orange or blue - move them in here, once laid move them back. Once babies are big enough to see and colour, move them into the appropriate main tank. The idea being that this tank will have no predators, so will help me have a higher survival rate, but that shrimp will be moved out before they can interbreed. I imagine the orange shrimp ini the main tank will not grow huge in numbers due to the circle of life, but the blue shrimp I would like to be able to sell to help fund/soften the blow of the costs of the hobby.
So the main question from all of this is about the 45L tank and rescaping it into a moss (mostly java) based scape. Looking on the internet I cannot find much/anything in terms of moss only scapes where you can see how it was made. I have found a few end products that look good, but thats all. It is entirely possible that when searching on here I have been rubbish of course! but if anyone can point me in a direction that would be great.
I am hoping to maybe do a moss carpet from java moss, then cover some stone and branches in moss for the scape, with maybe a little flame moss or weeping moss for effect - make it super shrimp friendly, but also very low maintenance (hopefully), with just a few small fish to make it more interesting. It has a oase thermo 50 internal filter at the moment, which whilst ugly - seems to work well. I have a Oase filtosmart thermo 100 I could use instead?
Suggestions and ideas please - either on scaping tips and possible links to previous journals if you know of them; but also on my 3 tank 'baby farm' solution - or whether it is just better to have 2 tanks and not faff about so much!
many thanks
As is often the case with me, when i get 'into' something, I don't do things by half! - The amount I know about the make up of gold balls from when I played at uni is quite shocking!
Anyway - having got one small tank at Christmas(the Fluval Spec - journal in my sig) with Orange cherry shrimp in it, I decided to get a bigger one and settled on a 60cm tank as a balance of size, etc... not to mention the floor it will be kept on.
However, in my search I found a tank which was for sale at a price that was too good. - A 50x30x30cm - 45l tank. This came with lovely velvet blue shrimp, some celestial pearl danios and an endler. So I bought this.
But I still wanted a 60cm tank with more volume as I would like to keep some Apistos and forktail rainbow fish and don't want to keep them in anything smaller. Anyway - I now have exactly that. So I have 3 tanks. So I have to decide exactly what to do with them all. My plan is as follows:
1) Rescape the 45L tank into a moss only/heavy tank with a view to breeding the velvet blue shrimp. It came with a nest of Java Moss - so My main idea would be to reuse that.
2) Scape the 60cm tank with a view to this being my main/favourite tank. Move the orange shrimp in here along with fish - hopefully the shrimp survive and I will give them plenty of hiding places.
3) Fluval spec - Pretty much continue as is as far as scape goes. I may remove the dwarf hairgrass as it isn't exactly thriving. but isn't dying off either. However, with the orange shrimp gone into the other tank, my hope is to make this a combined baby shrimp tank. When I notice a berried shrimp - orange or blue - move them in here, once laid move them back. Once babies are big enough to see and colour, move them into the appropriate main tank. The idea being that this tank will have no predators, so will help me have a higher survival rate, but that shrimp will be moved out before they can interbreed. I imagine the orange shrimp ini the main tank will not grow huge in numbers due to the circle of life, but the blue shrimp I would like to be able to sell to help fund/soften the blow of the costs of the hobby.
So the main question from all of this is about the 45L tank and rescaping it into a moss (mostly java) based scape. Looking on the internet I cannot find much/anything in terms of moss only scapes where you can see how it was made. I have found a few end products that look good, but thats all. It is entirely possible that when searching on here I have been rubbish of course! but if anyone can point me in a direction that would be great.
I am hoping to maybe do a moss carpet from java moss, then cover some stone and branches in moss for the scape, with maybe a little flame moss or weeping moss for effect - make it super shrimp friendly, but also very low maintenance (hopefully), with just a few small fish to make it more interesting. It has a oase thermo 50 internal filter at the moment, which whilst ugly - seems to work well. I have a Oase filtosmart thermo 100 I could use instead?
Suggestions and ideas please - either on scaping tips and possible links to previous journals if you know of them; but also on my 3 tank 'baby farm' solution - or whether it is just better to have 2 tanks and not faff about so much!
many thanks
