Hello nathaniel, after reading you journal, really wanted to start my own shrimp tank and have finally manage to convince the boss to let me start my own nano... Just purchase my self a 30l Dennerle tank - complete set... Come With pretty much all you need to start. Am considering a dsm to attach moss and start a hc carpet... Tank will be shrimp only and will try low tech for a change hence the dsm (and TBH never tried dsm so want to give it a go) other that hc carpet will likely be ferns and mosses... Might even give your fissiden stone technique a go... This will be my first shrimp only tank, so is there any advise you could offer to a newby like myself... Cheers in advance.
That's great news mate, glad it helped somewhat!
Yeah there's a few things, Start off with Cherry shrimp if you have not had shrimp before. You will have a bit more margin for error with cherries, and once you get used to shrimp behaviour and preferences you could take on CRS which are relatively easy to maintain once you know how.
Buy a cheap TDS measure so you get to know about your water, if it's too hard for certain
Species, you may need to look at an RO filter.
Water changes are little and often.
aim to change 10-15% of water per change, Ideally 2-3 times a week. This should help in breeding.
Concentrate on the shrimps.
In a shrimp tank, they normally tend to take centre stage as oppose to plants and amazing planted setups, although not all. Some maintain both hard plants and shrimp together, but if your fairly new to keeping plants you may find it a juggling game, as they aren't a massive fan of co2 when little oxygen is available in the water column.
Add leaves such as catappa leaves, mulberry leaves, banana leaves or catappa bark etc. this has numerous benefits to shrimp including : antibacterial properties, provides food for shrimp, biofilm for baby shrimps, hiding places, lowering Ph very slightly.
Buy some sort of feeding dish from Aquarium plant food, and always feed on top of the dish. This should keep your substrate from becoming covered in food and breaking down which could cause problems . Lift out dish after a couple of hours and discard leftovers.
Hope there's a little bit of information you can pick out from there lol
😛
Cheers,
N
