Leaderboard

Depends on what sort it is. If it's a powdered chemical, then ... NO! If it's like the Seachem purigen pellets you put in an aquarium sock somewhere in the filter, then ... ok. Purigen can be very effective at reducing Nitrates, but it doesn't cure the problem. Water change is the only safe and recommended way of reducing nitrates. What sort and how many fish do you have in the tank?

OMG how spooky is that, your heater failing at the same time as mine, at least you caught it on time? You don't really sound like you have too much of a problem by the number of shrimps you have and you haven't seen any dead ones. I don't believe in too many chemicals so wouldn't try the nitrate Minus myself. Your shrimp seem to fine with the 15 reading, and my cherries are fine in 50 reading. Are you doing any vacuuming of the substrate as the fish maybe causing the TDS to increase as they produce a lot of waste I believe and it is a small tank? Again, as everything seems to be going ok I wouldn't alter the amount of food as that can make things a lot worse. I assume you are keeping the tank topped up with pure RO water as the TDS will otherwise increase with the water evaporation. Sorry this is so quick but I think I have covered everything. Now I need to carry on sorting my own shrimp disaster........................ Simon ps I may not be on here much today, as I say I have my own disaster to sort out.

from what I've read when your 'establishing' a tank you cant add shrimp for at least a month because, 1 their really sensitive to the nitrogen cycle & 2 there isn't any bio film build up for them to feed of off. i would however leave it for about a month an a half atleast just to be sure. Fish wise some people say u need to leave the tank wit the filter running for 4 days but ive always added fish after 1 day and its been fine. but you CANNOT add them immediately encase there is something left over from manufacturing in the case of a brand new tank and from your cleaning in this case. with regards to substrate, I've heard a good way to get the nitrogen cycle started quicker is to take a hand full or a couple of substrate from one of your other tanks and place them in the new one once you have water in there. id also take this time to empty the water change amount from your other tanks to use as the starter water for the 'new' tank. id also use any plants you are intending on culling from other tanks in this one again to speed up the establishment of the cycle. another thing I've heard you can do is get a pealed shrimp from a packet your having for dinner and put that in the tank for a week with no live animals in there. wait until you have 0 readings on everything and its entirely fish safe... but I've never tried it. thanks for the info on the heater it does look like it could be suitable, i just need to check the height but the other dims are within range and i know there was some space in the height of my tank. James

Not sure if you have been following but my disaster was a total loss of all 100+ shrimps, very sad! Oh well, these things happen and the weather is at least warm enough now that it isn't such a drag messing about with water as it would be mid winter. I have gone for the shrimp king substrate this time, it says to just put it in the tank and ready to go, no washing needed or ammonia spike or anything. We will see how it goes but as I plan to start with ALL new water I will need to give the tank some time to 'cycle'? The packing says 3-5 cm so I don't yet know whether 1 x 4L or 2, but I bought 2 anyway so will aim for the upper limit in the hope that the more that's in there the longer it will do its PH buffering thing? 1 packet of 4L looks a lot smaller than I thought it would though................. I like the new heater I got as a spare, the shrimps will think they are Las Vegas, the first few lights are blue, then green then red, and it shows you what the temperature of the tank water is by flashing on top of the lights showing what temperature the heater is set at. I have got a thermometer as well for this time! This is the link: https://www.pro-shrimp.co.uk/aquarium-heaters/3293-aquael-ultra-heater-50w-5905546314701.html?search_query=aquael&results=98 I like these black flat heaters as they are less fragile (though they do still break) than the glass ones, and I have black backgrounds to the tanks so you can't really see the heater, only the lights when it is on! I had to turn down the betta tank heater this morning as well, I don't understand why I have to do that every year between summer and winter as you would think 26 degrees is 26 degrees winter or summer, but although set at 26 it was actually 29 degrees this morning, same setting in winter and the tank runs at 26 degrees??????????????? The temperature of 29 would be fine for the betta but there are cull shrimps in the tank so would rather not cook those if I can help it. With the new tank, don't forget you will need a height clearance of about 70 something (from the base) if you go for the one we were discussing before, 25L. If you are still getting that I can send you the video on how to remove the internal box if that is something you want to do, it is in german but you can see all you need to know to do it etc. If you are getting this tank then 3L of substrate is perfect quantity! Really pleased to hear you caught your heater early enough and didn't have to go through the devastation I have! Simon

The tank has 3 adult platys, and about 10 - 14 babys... im thinking about rearanging my steps and get the new tank before i get anything else.

If you want to avoid heaters being stuck on and overheating the tank or failing and not heating, then you need a Temperature Controller Thermostat. ITC-308 Digital Temperature Controller thermostat I have one of these, clearly the plug type is for AU since I'm in Australia. I use one of these for single tanks or in sumps. The thermostat is placed in the tank to keep track of your tank's temps. The controller controls power to the "Heating" or "Cooling" power plugs. You are no longer reliant on buggy heater thermostats. With this unit, you can use the cheapest heater and feel safe in the knowledge that it will never cook your fish or shrimps. Your heater is plugged into the socket labelled "heater". Preset the controller to turn on heating when temps are below, say 20deg C and turn off at, say 24 degC. You can plug a chiller or a fan into the socket labelled "Cooling" as well. I bought this off ebay from Inkbird https://www.ebay.com.au/usr/inkbirdau?_trksid=p2047675.l2559 They even have a wifi version now for control over your smartphone. A quick search on ebay for the keywords " ITC-308 WIFI Temp Controller Thermostat" brings up the same controller in various different plug types that will fit what you use in your own country. It costs roughly as much as a medium quality heater here in Aus. BUT it's cheap insurance knowing that I will never cook my fish or shrimps. To offset the cost of this controller, I can now buy the cheapest heaters off ebay and still be confident that I won't overcook the tank's inhabitants. Other uses: More over you can use it to control fish room temps as well, it's not limited to measuring water in tanks. Turn on/off AC or fans or room heaters. People use it for home brewing. There are so many practical uses. Note: there is a very similar temp controller called the STC-1000, but this unit requires you to add your own cabling. Whereas the Inkbird is a lot more convenient. Hopefully this helps someone and their pets.

Okay... If you want to avoid heaters being stuck on and overheating the tank or failing and not heating, then you need a Temperature Controller Thermostat. ITC-308 Digital Temperature Controller thermostat I have one of these, clearly the plug type is for AU since I'm in Australia. I use one of these for single tanks or in sumps. The thermostat is placed in the tank to keep track of your tank's temps. The controller controls power to the "Heating" or "Cooling" power plugs. You are no longer reliant on buggy heater thermostats. With this unit, you can use the cheapest heater and feel safe in the knowledge that it will never cook your fish or shrimps. Your heater is plugged into the socket labelled "heater". Preset the controller to turn on heating when temps are below, say 20deg C and turn off at, say 24 degC. You can plug a chiller or a fan into the socket labelled "Cooling" as well. I bought this off ebay from Inkbird https://www.ebay.com.au/usr/inkbirdau?_trksid=p2047675.l2559 They even have a wifi version now for control over your smartphone. A quick search on ebay for the keywords " ITC-308 WIFI Temp Controller Thermostat" brings up the same controller in various different plug types that will fit what you use in your own country. It costs roughly as much as a medium quality heater here in Aus. BUT it's cheap insurance knowing that I will never cook my fish or shrimps. To offset the cost of this controller, I can now buy the cheapest heaters off ebay and still be confident that I won't overcook the tank's inhabitants. Other uses: More over you can use it to control fish room temps as well, it's not limited to measuring water in tanks. Turn on/off AC or fans or room heaters. People use it for home brewing. There are so many practical uses. Note: there is a very similar temp controller called the STC-1000, but this unit requires you to add your own cabling. Whereas the Inkbird is a lot more convenient. Hopefully this helps someone and their pets.

Doh! At least we know what the problem is. So you should be able to reuse what you need from the old tank except for the heater of course. No need to disinfect the tank or filter media. I have a better solution. Give me a minute ... I need to find the material, so i can post it here properly. This is a must have item to avoid future issues like this with heaters. It doesn't matter what brand or how expensive the heater is, they all have a risk of failing and not heating or being stuck on and overheating the tank.

Ok, so its been 4 days and ive been doing a usual feeding regime of half a stick of shrimp food and a pinch of fish food that they eat withing 2 mins and i've been checking TDS and it has slowley been going up to, yesterday when it was reading 245 and then today it read 275. i did 2 water changes at 50TDS & 100TDS and my water perimeters are as follows:- TDS - 238 Temp - 27C PH - 7.5 NH4 - Unreadable N03 - 15PPM N02 - 0.1PPM P04 - 0.5PPM dKH - 3 dGH - 7 im currently in the process of a 0TDS change and obviously my heaters broken because my temperature has shot up and i now have my reserve heater in the tank. the old heater was just going through all the temperatures it could read and switching itself on and off which is why my tanks so hot, but would that have an impact on TDS potentially from greater heat generating greater biological activity? Also im in the market for a new 50W heater that cant be any bigger than 125mm x 25mm x 110mm (5' x 1' x 4.5') any recommendations? I just counted and i counted 5 adult shrimp and 9 shrimplets and the fish are fine so i dont think anythings dieing. i was wondering if i should increase the food i put in the tank but im obviously starting to have problems im thinking that would be a bad idea. im getting although not dangerous but certainly readable Nitrite spikes. Am i at the point of adding Nitrate Minus? and if so how should i dose it? as per the label? it doesn't say anything about containing Copper.

I had crystal red shrimp years ago but never had any success with them, and they all died off over a period of about 12 months. I think a number of factors caused them to die off, the main issue being that the tank wasn’t dedicated to the shrimp. I was using pressurised co2, fertilisers etc. to grow plants in a newly setup tank. In hindsight, I was making life hard for the shrimp (and myself ?) Things are going 100% better this time around, and I believe that’s mostly because I’ve put them in a well established, mature tank. The tank the shrimp are in now has been running for years and has had the same ADA soil in it for at least a few years. The soil no longer buffers pH as it’s so old. I just tested the pH out of curiosity and it looks like it sits around 7.0-7.2. People would typically suggest that pH level is too high, but the shrimp seem to be flourishing so I don’t worry. I use 2 HOB a style filters. One is a decent size Hagen brand filter and the other is a tiny AquaOne. I could probably get rid of the smaller one. I try to do 2x small water changes per week. I use a dechlorinator then leave the bucket of water to sit until the next water change. I use tap water and don’t have an RO unit. Pretty simple. I took photos of the foods I’ve been feeding. There are so many shrimp-specific foods available but mine seem to do fine on these. I took the feeding photo 5 minutes ago. I should mention I keep RCS in the same tank and they don’t seem to bother or have any impact on the CRS. I’m hoping the CRS population starts to take-off soon. Plenty of breeding happening and babies seem to be surviving so I can’t see why not. Thanks for reading

wow, sorry to hear that.

ok so now im wondering about feeding, with the baby fish i didnt do anything but use a bigger sized pinch and ground it up between my fingers so they could eat it. should i now do a whole stick instead of half or should i start using the Hikari First Bites baby fish food I've got?