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Shrimp biorb upgrade > 20 litre cube. Plant advice please!

aec34

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10 Oct 2020
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Location
Gloucestershire
I have a new shiny 20 litre Dennerle nano coming soon - advice on plants please!

I’m very new to all this, but have been learning some of the basics through keeping a few plants and shrimp in a baby 15 litre baby biorb. I had the biorb 10+ years ago with two small fish in it, and it didn’t end well as anyone who actually knows about keeping fish might have predicted…

BUT I resurrected it back in July this year as a shrimp tank. After fighting with v high ph, I’ve now got a happy little Anubias nana and some Java moss, a less happy (but reproducing) java fern, and for the last month some elusive cherry shrimp. [The shrimp are BRILLIANT btw.] The biorb is however now getting annoying for a whole range of reasons, so it’s already time for a new tank 😊

I’m not planning on running CO2, and water changes will be rainwater remineralised with SaltyShrimp Shrimp mineral (which is what I’m doing at the moment). Current tank is at 7.4 ph.

I’ve a dinky interpet 7.5w heater which I’ll move over from the biorb (to keep shrimp happy), + 6W led light comes with the tank.

Substrate is Dennerle Deponitmix 6 in 1 + shrimp gravel (coming with tank).

I’m after something pretty low maintenance, which will be a nice home for the shrimp (not planning on any fish). I’ll happily alter plant choice as needed for this set up. Hardscape will be bogwood, maybe dragon stone if I can find any.

Plant-wise I am thinking:

Stem plants: limnophila sessiliflora or bacopa caroliniana. I also really like the look of Cardamine lyrate, but thinking it will be too hard to keep under control in a little tank.

Floating: limnobium laevigatum

Flame moss (or another moss)

Some kind of small bucephalandria?

A crypt? Good because v low CO2 requirements?

A carpeting plant?

Does this sound like a decent selection? Is it too many? It feels like a lot of plants, but I’ve read that planting heavily at the outset is a good idea? Is there anything here which is likely to get very large very quickly? Having said that, any spare plants may eventually go in the biorb, especially after I’ve butchered it into something else when the shrimp have moved out (prob just no filter bowl with light, or something more wabi kusa-like).

Thank you!
 
Hi all,
After fighting with v high ph, I’ve now got a happy little Anubias nana and some Java moss, a less happy (but reproducing) java fern, and for the last month some elusive cherry shrimp...... water changes will be rainwater remineralised with SaltyShrimp Shrimp mineral (which is what I’m doing at the moment). Current tank is at 7.4 ph.
You can just ignore pH, it will always be ~pH8 when you have hard water. I live a bit to the S. of you (N Wilts) and Cherry shrimps enjoy life in our tap water (about 18dKH/dGH). It is actually soft water they don't like.

I use rain-water in the tanks, but I just cut it with some tap water, that supplies both dGH/dKH from the dissolved limestone (CaCO3) it has picked up underground. You are going to <"supply the other elements"> when you feed the plants.

Plant-wise I am thinking:

Stem plants: limnophila sessiliflora or bacopa caroliniana. I also really like the look of Cardamine lyrate, but thinking it will be too hard to keep under control in a little tank.

Floating: limnobium laevigatum

Flame moss (or another moss)

Some kind of small bucephalandria?

A crypt? Good because v low CO2 requirements?

A carpeting plant?
I like the <"Limnobium">, Bucephalandra & Cryptocoryne (I'd recommend <"C x willisii">) but I think you will get fed up with pruning a stem plant fairly quickly. I'd swap it out for a sub-surface floater, either of <"Ceratophyllum demersum or Ceratopteris cornuta">, they are much easier to control.

My tanks aren't very carpet friendly, but I'd use a relatively slow growing plant either <"Cryptocoryne parva"> or a moss. Because you have shrimps they will, to some degree, clean your moss carpet for you.

cheers Darrel
 
I have two 20l Dennerle NanoCubes that are Neocaridina shrimp homes (Painted Fire Red in one and Blue Velvets in the other).

One has Bacopa Caroliniana, an Anubias Nana petite which has grown quite large, an attempted Helanthium tenellum carpet (which never really took, but three or four individual plants have survived more than a year), and a piece of rope on which I sewed some sußwassertang which has grown into a very impressive bushy thing that the shrimp love. It takes up a quarter of the tank but provides a huge amount of surface area for the shrimp.

The other also has Bacopa and a sußwassertang rope, plus four small crypts which appear healthy enough, but haven't fully grown in, though I planted the tank in early May, I think?

I use these tanks as floating plant nurseries, they both have duckweed, red root floaters, and Amazon Frogbit, separated from each other with airline tubing.
 
Amazing, this is all so useful, thanks both!
(*googles Sußwassertang*)

It’s really nice to know that I’ve got the right home for the chosen critters this time.

@dw1305 that's good to know on the ph - I had the impression that 8 was too high for Neocaridina (tank was at 8.2 just after I set it up which started me fretting)
 
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