journal New kid on the block

[greenhorn]

Gday all, thought I should introduce myself as I have been lurking for about a month now trying to get as much info as possible on my new little obsession - shrimp!!

Thank you for all the knowledge shared on this site, it has definitely helped me get to grips on these awesome little animals. I have kept fish for about 10 years on and off, never been majorly serious with just a 3 foot community tank that originally held a skink for many years, one day I put some water in it and some fake plants and some random fish (a cichlid, some neons, a guppy, and an angel from memory - neons lasted about a week with the cichlid ) and through the years it evolved into having some real plants and a canister filter and some more appropriate tank mates. Then a couple of years ago my wife saw some cherry shrimp at the LFS and wanted to bring them home, I told her we better do a bit of research first before buying them as they will probably become dinner for the fish! Yep I was right, that didnt deter my wife though so with her birthday coming up I bought her a Fluval Ebi tank which had pretty much everything we needed to get started except the actual shrimp! After setting up and cycling it for a couple of weeks we went back and bought our first shrimp, 5 cherry shrimp came home and some java moss and an anubias on driftwood. After a couple of days watching their antics I got the bug as well haha theyre pretty cool critters!!! After a couple of months one of the females finally got berried and we had our first shrimplets!! Yippeee! All was going well for about 6 or 8 months and summer rolled along, we hadnt thought about it much at the time but 4-5 mid 30 degree days was enought to fry the poor shrimp into oblivion  We kinda gave up for a while and let the tank sit in darkness for ages until about a month ago we had a great idea to build a bookshelf in the entranceway to our house and have 4-5 nano tanks on it as a bit of a feature.

We rescaped the fluval and got some more cherries and had intentions of moving to something harder like CRS eventually in one of the other tanks. We had to get more tanks and my wife wanted to stick to the fluvals as they work and are pretty easy as you don't need to get much extra except livestock and plants. We went on the hunt to a few aquariums to see if they had any in stock, unfortunately we weren't having much luck until we spoke to the guys at subscape who mentioned that it is probably because fluval no longer produce them - bummer!! He said try looking online which we did and even then there wasn't a whole lot of local places that had them, a few had the "flora" version but none had the ebi. We decided to give the flora a go (same specs but instead of shrimp net and mineral supplements etc it has tweezers, a mini co2 set and some ferts) and try some carpeting plants for something different. We ordered 2 from AOA and found one on the other side of town in Glen Waverley. We also got some ADA Amazonia which is still cycling in one of the tanks, another one I used the fluval substrate which is up and running after a 2 week cycle and the last tank is still in the box awaiting the shelves to be completed.

The shelves should hopefully be done in the next couple of weeks (waiting for some hardwood panels to be manufactured) but I will post that once completed as well.

 

For now here are our tanks:

The original tank:

Cherries and CRS

Some residents:

Also have a dozen week old CRS shrimplets and another female berried so fingers crossed I can get them past the first month happy and healthy.

Cherries still haven't bred yet.

 

Tank 2:

Still cycling and needs to grow in a bit...

No livestock.

 

Tank 3:

Choc cherries, glass shrimp, ottos, chilli rasbora, clown killis.

Little bit of an algae problem at the moment but got a couple of ottos today so hopefully that helps.

 

Tank 4:

Cycling at the moment but hopefully be a breeding tank once I get some moss in there.

2 footer with some leftover bits and pieces and rocks out of the garden lol

Tank 5:

My community tank

Currently has neons, black widows, corys, ottos, peppermint bristlenose, glass shrimp, and a guppy.

I'm eventually going to rescape this and use proper soil/co2 but for now it does the job.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by greenhorn

[revolutionhope]

Thanks for sharing. Your tanks look awesome! #3 is my favourite :-)

[larrymull]

Welcome and good luck with everything.

[jayc]

Good luck with your plans.

Let us know if we can help answer any questions you might have.

[pineapples1]

Where did you find the chili rasboras and otos?

Also have you had any issues with the killis eating the shrimp?