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Hey everyone Im new to shrimp keeping but I've been keeping/breeding African cichlids, rainbows and others for atleast 15years and decided to setup a small tank in my office. After doing alot of research my one question is regarding Calcium and I know its important for shrimp to have to molt and thrive. Is there certain amount of Calcium in the water where I dont need to add in like wonder shells etc? Or is wonder shells, shrimp king food or cutle bones something you should do once a month or something? I do know live plants use Calcium as well. Also im just getting the tank ready for shrimp I have live plants, dennerle nano substrate and have some cpd's for the tank where im going to let them live for a few months and then have the shrimp go in once there fish poop and bacteria for them to graze on

Hi. I'm new to shrimp keeping. I have a nano tank (25l) with a few orange cherry shrimp, I also have one Betta and 6 pygmy cory and two spotted Ramshorn snails. (The Betta is completely non aggressive to anything other than his own reflection) My problem is with the KH, My Tap water regularly measures 1-2 KH with TDS of 80ppm GH of 2-3 PH 6.8/7 with 0 copper. I was concerned that there would not be enough minerals for my shrimp to moult etc, I added a water equaliser buffer and my KH rose to 5, GH rose to 6 however my PH also went up to 7.8 which is to high for my Betta and my Cory. Since adding some of the buffered water to my tank my PH has been between 7.4 and 7.8 day to night - it didn't used to swing so much - but my KH has again dropped to 4 I am still at 225ppm my GH is 5 Can anyone advise me what is best? When I didn't use any buffer my tank and just used Prime in my tap water my PH remained between 6.6 and 6.8 Tank temperature is 24.5 as that's about as low as I can go for my Betta What would other people do and am I trying to keep the right type of shrimp or is there another that would be better suited to my tap water (once treated) or should I not try to have shrimp at all? The tank is planted although there hasn't been much growth from anything other than my mosses and something (I think snail) is eating new growth on the java fern. There are plenty of hiding places for the shrimp and they are quite shy obviously, but getting bolder. Tank seems fully cycled (it's been running 2 months and was started with bacteria from my pond) as I have 0 nitrite 0 ammonia all the time Nitrates have been on the high side at 20ppm (water changes done at this point) but have now started to stabilise at 5ppm I have a bio filter and sponge filter and airstone (too much oxygen?) All running on lowest settings. Any help or advice please

Thank you Simon, it's nice to know someone has successfully kept Betta and shrimp!! And always better late than never in my book ? My boy is a fairly shy one. I'm not sure he's ever had live food, so I think this may be the difference, he happily takes protein treats, loves stealing shrimp pellets off the bottom (in between the Cory's muscling in) and his Betta food - 3 varieties I'm going to wait a few months and check that my tank is completely stable, then get some babaulti. If they are in any way threatened by lūc-tankstalker then I will pop them in with the cherrys. Thank you everyone, I'm sure I will be posting more as the journey develops. ??????????????? Just for you Simon - didn't realise I had a full shot of Lûc... (And everyone else in the forum really I guess!! ? )

Hi there! My name is Zolo, i am originaly from Greece but i live in England for the past 5 years! Only recently i became a proud shrimps owner and i couldn’t be happier! Although as a total noob i have no idea about the sex of my shrimpos ? At the moment i got 1 vampire shrimp, 3 cherry shrimps, 2 amano shrimps, 3 blue shrimps and a yellow one! I wish i could upload them but the total size says 0.98MB. Sorry i don’t use nokia to take pictures ???

Hey guys new to the wonderful world of shrimp keeping, my tank has been cycled for about 3 months now and start of December I got my first shrimpey's! I choose blue jelly's as they are beautiful ? a month in and I have about 3 sets of babys swimming around!! They are all super clear right now getting slightly more blue each day, but there's an odd guy in the bunch..one of the biggest infact is completely see through orange in colour!! No clear no blue but orange..he's got such character and is often doing zoomies around my tank ? but yeh couldn't seem to find any info out there so thought I could consult the community thank you for any opinions on this lovely little oddity Struggling to get pic uploaded because of size issues will try update with pics tomorrow

Looking to get red cherry shrimp or yellows not sure yet. Im using tap water currently waiting for a TDS meter but my GH is 5. PH is 7.4

Hi Fishkeeper, you wont need wonder shells nor cuttlefish bones. But you will need a GH test kit and a TDS meter. Let's measure what your water parameter is first before we meddle with it. Meddling with water parameters we don't know about can lead to an opposite outcome. What is your water source? Tap water? And what sort of shrimp are you keeping? In general, we want to keep your water parameters to 150 - 180 TDS and GH 4-6. That is considered healthy for shrimp. Calcium will be between 72pppm and 107ppm. Lets deal with the remedy after you find out what your tank's parameters are.

Thanks Jay, as I said in my previous post he's non aggressive to the shrimp. They swim right past his nose and he ignores them. You can see him in the background and the shrimp are completely un fazed ? Ps. This was before i decided to separate them.

Hey Zolo! If you want to upload some photos, you can try uploading to the gallery. There isn't a size limit on photos added to the gallery, as far as I am aware. Or, if you like the information you see here, you could sign up for a platinum membership to help out the forum - that way you have a higher upload limit, along with a few other great features. In terms of trying to work it out yourself, you can tell the sex of a neocaridina (the cherry shrimp, and the yellow and blues) shrimp with q a couple different signs. Shrimp are sexually dimorphic, so you can tell the difference between males and females simply by looking at their colour and body shape. Females are larger, and can be more colourful, but it isn't a surefire way to tell, as you can get some males with amazing colour as well. Females do have a thicker (and deeper, essentially) abdomen, as that is where they carry their eggs. Males are thinner in this area. You could get lucky, though, and get some females that are already holding eggs. Female shrimp hold their eggs in two places - one for when the eggs are infertile, and another place once the eggs are fertilised. The infertile eggs are held on the top of the shrimp's 'neck', and if you see that, it's called a saddle. A saddle will usually be a yellow or white colour. Fertile eggs are held in the 'stomach', and the female shrimp will juggle them around to keep them from developing fungus. Hopefully that helps. I don't have any experience with sexing vampire or amano shrimp, unfortunately.

Possibly, but I will let you decide if you want to risk shrimp with a betta. I don't want to be the one that sends other people's shrimp to their deaths.

@jayc I have now moved the neos out of the Betta tank, it seems a shame there isn't a way to have shrimp in a community tank. I did read that caridina babaulti prefer warmer temperatures and similar pH GH kh to mine, is this correct and if so is there a chance they would co exist with the Betta? Many thanks

Thank you so much yet again, perfect explanation. ?

Cherry shrimp are ok at 24-25, but they do better at 22degC. And since it's winter where you are, it shouldn't be too difficult. The Betta won't tolerate 24 for very long, and they should have at least 26 degC. People keep neocaridina and caridina together by "compromising". They keep water parameters at the lower end of the neo and the upper end of the limits for caridina. Which is somewhere around ph 6.8 - 6.9 and TDS around 180.

Thank you so much. I will look to separate them. I will let my tank slowly revert to normal readings. I have another nano tank spare. I thought I had read that cherry's were ok at 24.5 but I'm guessing they prefer it colder than what people list? Thanks for the advice on GH, I thought it was calcium carbonate that shrimp needed but reading your reply it is calcium sulfate (and magnesium) Now I just have to try to catch them (once I've set up and checked that new tank is cycled) Funnily enough my oh has now settled to 7.2 for two days kh 4 GH 5 TDs 210 this morning. The shrimp were out first thing which is unlike them ? but I know they will be happier in a tank of their own. One final question how do people manage to keep mixed types of shrimp together I've seen people with neocaridina and caridina together? Thanks again you've been a great help. ?

As you have discovered, adding buffering minerals has increased KH and pH. KH is tied to pH, increase KH and pH will also increase. The parameters didn't change on it's own. Somebody changed it. Make sure you stop that person from adding stuff to your tank. ? Then make sure you do your regular weekly water changes to get the parameters back to it's original readings. It might take a few weeks but it should go back to normal as long as your tap water parameters don't change. Betta's don't go with shrimp as you have found out. When you optimise the tank parameters for one, the other will suffer. I would strongly suggest getting another tank to separate them. Or only buy Fish / Shrimp for one tank that live in the same environment. There is nothing wrong with your original water parameters for shrimp. If you wanted to just raise GH, then you need Calcium Sulphate & Magnesium Sulphate at 3:1 ratio. This can be found in most RO remineralisers GH+. "water equaliser buffer" is not the same thing, which raises KH and GH. Good luck

IMO try keep gH above 3. Don't touch kH Στάλθηκε από το Mi A3 μου χρησιμοποιώντας Tapatalk