New tank and shrimp

[DEL 707]

It's an Aqua Nano 40.
55l.

[Crabby]

I reckon you could get away with 10 neons, maybe a few more

[sdlTBfanUK]

I have a mix of 10 fish, 6 ember tetra and 4 neons in my 30L. The embers are a bit smaller but you have a larger tank so as Crabclaw above, 10 seems about right!

Simon

[DEL 707]

Might have made a lil mistake.

Amano and cheery shrimp went into the tank fine yesterday after about 3 hours of acclimitising.

Come down this morning and the tank as just a whirlwind of activity, so decided to try out the new shrimp food I gave them. I should REALLY have read the instructions 1st, I've put in about 4 times the recommended amount of food!
After the initial feeding frenzy (wish I recorded it), everything has gone quiet. Everyone is just chilling down the bottom of the tank.

Tried to remove as much food as I could with my tweezers, but think I'll do my water change tonight when I get back, rather then wait till Tuesday and see if I can hoover up the remaining food.

Edit - On a side note, those amano are giants compared to the cherry shrimp!
Also looks like I had a successful molt, yesterday morning, before the extra shrimp arrived, I noticed what looked to be the left overs off a shrimp and since they were all accounted for, I'm assuming there was a molt in the night.

Edited October 27, 2019 by DEL 707
amano

[sdlTBfanUK]

It is usually fairly easy to tell the difference between a molt and a dead shrimp, a molt looks like a ghost and is clear like glass, whereas a dead shrimp usually goes pink and doesn't go clear?

I usually base feeding on half of the manufacturers recommendations. I hope it all works out fine! Perhaps don't feed for a few days? Good idea to vacuum some of the excess food up if you can?

You were wise to not get too many Amanos as they will be the more dominant over the smaller cherrys!

Simon

[jayc]

9 hours ago, DEL 707 said:

Come down this morning and the tank as just a whirlwind of activity

You might have witnessed breeding behaviour. Look out for a berried shrimp.

[DEL 707]

Further problems unfortunately.

Did a 50% water change on Sunday and turned my CO2 back on today, had it on really low.
Tested my PH and it's dropped down to 5.7, KH is 0, GH is 6.

Not sure what's gone on, I did my normal water change, RO water with Salty Shrimp GH/KH+, I did top it off with a little straight RO, but I would say that it was less the 5% of the water change.

I've turned off my CO2 to see if my PH rises, but why has my PH dropped so low and where has my KH gone?

Is this something to do with my tropica soil?

[sdlTBfanUK]

Wow, that's a huge water change, I wouldn't do more than 10% per week myself now the shrimp are in there, I only do 20% in the tanks with fish as well as shrimp? Shrimps don't produce much bioload so don't need much water to be changed!

The soil will reduce the KH and PH from my experience (your original post was PH5.8 so that is about the same) but as a real guess changing so much water may have caused the problem if some shrimp have died, did you drip in the 50% new water. CO2 is very risky though so unless it is REALLY a must I would leave that off, same for fertilizers? The soil will eventually lose its ability to buffer the PH but that may be a long way off yet, especially using RO water it will take longer as that has a low PH to start with! 

If you did such a large water change to try and get the parameters better then you shouldn't do that once you have the shrimps in the tank as cherry shrimps will adjust well to different parameters, even outside their ideal parameters but by mixing 2 waters with different parameters would be too much for them. Only do about 10% each week and slowly add the water. The shrimps will do better with stable water parameters outside their normal range than quickly changing parameters every time you do a water change!

Cherry shrimp are usually fairly easy and adaptable so hopefully you haven't lost any/many?

Simon

[DEL 707]

Still chugging along, sorted out my PH and finally got some green neons in the tank.

Do love watching the shrimp, espeically the amano, they're so active, well, greedy. I'm sure I saw 1 suplex another other a pellet.

How often do shrimp molt? Saw another 2 big amano molts this morning (all accounted for).

Also, any idea what's up with this cheery shimp? I can't tell if it's some kind of white stripe? Definately not seen it before.

And these have appeared on the side of the tank...

 

[sdlTBfanUK]

Good to have an update!

Do the white spots on the glass move at all, do you have snails? I can only see blobs, but I get similar that are assassin snail eggs though they are a bit smaller I think?

The white mark is about the place where the moult starts I think so it may be related to that and if so hopefully it will be a successful moult? Young shrimp moult often as they are growing really quickly, but I a not sure how often adults moult?

Simon

[DEL 707]

14 minutes ago, sdlTBfanUK said:

Do the white spots on the glass move at all, do you have snails? I can only see blobs, but I get similar that are assassin snail eggs though they are a bit smaller I think?

They don't appear to be moving.
I do have 2 nerrite snails in the tank.

[sdlTBfanUK]

Nerite snails are bigger than assassins so maybe they are snail eggs, that would be great!

Just keep an eye on them and see if they move from where they are for now, unless someone else thinks they are something else?

Hope the neons are doing well and it will make the tank more interesting to watch!

Simon

edit - just read up that the snail larvae need brackish water so I guess that won't work, on the plus side, I guess you can never get over-run that way!

Edited November 10, 2019 by sdlTBfanUK

[DEL 707]

Had a bit of trim of the plants today.
The cheery shrimp, were going crazy over my hand, used to have that problem with cleaner shrimp, didn't think fresh water shrimp were like this.

[jayc]

LOL, did you have bioflim on yer fingers?

 

[DEL 707]

Excuse the blurry pictures, but by chance, could these be eggs??

2 of my cherry shrimp look like this, very "plump" around the back.

[Crabby]

I can’t tell with the first one, but the second definitely looks berried to me.

[sdlTBfanUK]

They both look berried to me! The eggs start yellow and then change colour as the yolk is used up so they are at an early stage! The eggs of mine go grey as they mature and they are microscopic and clear coloured when newborn so there maybe a period where the eggs have gone and you can't see the shrimplets, until they colour up a bit and start roaming/venturing out and about?

Thats a very nice snail also!

Simon

[Zoidburg]

The things on glass could be limpets.

 

Didn't see this thread before (I don't visit the forum too often) but would have suggested not adding any KH to the tank and going for tigers instead. The KH disappeared because the soil absorbs the KH. You have low pH because the soil is releasing tannins, humic acid and/or fulvic acids. By adding KH to the tank, you are causing pH fluctuations and potentially TDS fluctuations as well. This can sometimes cause havoc to the tank inhabitants.

If you wanted to exhaust the substrate (make it so that it no longer lowers the pH of the water), I would have recommended doing this prior to adding any livestock.

 

Sorry if I may have repeated anything, just kind of skimmed through some of the post.

[DEL 707]

Excuse the blurry pictures, but....

BABY SHRIMP!

Merry Christmas, one and all. ?

[sdlTBfanUK]

Great to get pictures and an update and assume from the photos it is all going well and hopefully you are getting plenty of shrimplets to watch!

Merry Christmas to you too.

Simon

[jayc]

Woohoo!

Great to see your progress since the first post.