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Hi all,

I am planning on starting a Nano planted shrimp tank with a 13 watt flourescent light. I plan for it to be a 2.5 or a 5 gallon open top tank with cherry shrimp and dwarf hair grass. I also plan to put in some microswords and four leaf clovers. I will be using rocks and small DW. The gravel i will be using is pea gravel. Anubias Nana petite will also be in use here, so that will be attached to DW.

So, does anyone have any advice? I would like to know from the experts too! I have read most of the logs, but the ones with 5-6 pages are just too much!

I would like to know about the behaivirs/breeding frequencies of the Cherries. Will they eat the algae off the plants? Any main advice on emergencies that will happen? Is there any emergencies? Thanks all!

Heres a plan of the tank

The gray are rocks, the black is the DW and the green is the hairgrass, carpeting plants, anubias, and other added plants. I hope you like it!

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Shrimp tanks are awesome!
I had a 7.5 gal. shrimp tank for about a year and a half. I started with 6 cherry shrimp, and when I took the tank down, I had well over 50 shrimp.
Cherry shrimp aren't all that picky about aquascape, and water quality is usually easy to maintain because the shrimp have virtually no impact on bio-load individually. What kind of filter do you plan to use? I used a small Fluval 1 Plus internal filter (basically a sponge on a powerhead) but any filter will work fine. I do recommend a sponge over inlet tubes so that baby shrimp don't get sucked up, and shrimp love to congregate on sponges picking at the tiny particles stuck there. Some will say that a heater is optional, but I always used one just to keep the temp stable.

Happy shrimp will release baby shrimp about once every 4-6 weeks, and the babies only take about 2-3 months to start breeding themselves. Once you see an egg clutch under a female's tail, you can expect the baby shrimp to be released in 2-3 weeks. So you can see how you can very quickly have a large population. The baby shrimp are fully formed mini-adults, so they need no special care or feeding.

Cherry shrimp will eat any and all detrius, including algae, but it's a good idea to feed them other things. Flake food, sinking pellets, they'll eat pretty much anything. While cherry shrimp are less delicate than other types of shrimp, I still thought it was a good idea to try to feed them high-calcium foods when possible. I used a pellet called Crab Cuisine by Hikari in addition to flake food, and occasional treats of blanched (boiled for a few seconds) spinnach or broccoli greens. If you have the inclination, or if your tap water is very soft, I'd also suggest a few drops (like, 2-3 drops only) of marine iodine and calcium supplements. Kent is a good brand that is usually easy to find.

I honestly can't think of any emergencies that might come up. Because the bio-load is so small, even with a large number of shrimp, it's rare for the tank to get out of balance enough to harm the shrimp. The hard part is actually going to be the plants. It sounds like you've chosen some pretty easy to care for plants. Be very, very careful if you decide to add fertilizers to your tank, though, because some contain copper and other things that can harm inverts. Do not add any fish to the tank except maybe otocinclus (I had a couple of these in my shrimp tank and they bred for me, too!). If there is anything I would say to add to your tank, I might recommend java moss on the rocks and/or wood. Baby shrimp love to hide in java moss, and it traps food particles making it easy for the baby shrimp to grab a meal.
Other than that, just remember to do your water changes. Because it's a small tank with a very small bio-load, you can probably get away with only doing cursory gravel vacs and small water changes, but make sure that you rinse your filter media every week or two, even if you don't do a full tank cleaning.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

Hi,

The only problem I can see here is growing hairgrass with that 13W light. The wpg rule fails badly with nano tanks. Plus the pea gravel is going to be a bit large for hairgrass too. I would opt for finer substrate.
All the best with your new setup!

-Mughal

Hey all!

Thanks for the replies! Im sure i will start it, if i can find a small group of cherry shrimp.......Anybody willing to sell?

I am now going to use either eco-complete or flourite as my substrate, as they have stocked it just a while ago. I just found out that i am going to use a 10 watt, instead of a 13, as the screw in flourescents are now stocked in my LFS too! I will position it slightly above the tank, with a lamplight. The WPG is going to be slightly off, i can tell. Just how exactly do you mean by it messes up horribly with WPG in Nano tanks? If i can, i will up grade to a 5 gallon with 2 10 watt screw in Flourescents.

Illustrae, i love the idea of a sponge filter with a powerhead. I will definately try this. The tank, if it is a 5 gallon, will be a house for fry of my fish. Only until they are large enough to be eaten. The only problem i see with a powerhead, is if the tube isnt big enough. What if i try to give it a UGF filter with a powerhead?

Thanx again guys, and i will definately, definatley do this! I wont rival with the logs though......... Maybe ill try, if i can start it within a month!

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Most 5g hoods will accomodate a 20w or even 25w pc bulb. You occasionally have to loosen the piece holding it but the only exception I've found so far are eclipse hex tanks. Those still hold a 15w bulb but the height adds limitations to both the plants and inhabitants. The problem is finding large daylight spectrum pc bulbs. I seem to randomly come across them in some stores with large hardware sections(Menards had a ton of different wattages). Most if not all fish stores I've been in have only carried 10w bulbs.

For shrimp make sure you have a good water conditioner( I like prime) especially that says it neutralizes heavy metals and cycle the tank first. Unless your very heavily planting the tank right from the beginning I'd add a little fish food(tiny tiny pinch of flakes or 1 chip off a shrimp pellet) until you no longer test at least ammonia but preferably have a fully cycled tank with no ammonia, no nitrites, and low nitrates. If you've got an extra guppy or something similar that would work too. Then do a gravel vac and water change before adding shrimp. Ammonia kills shrimp very quickly so best not to take any chances. You could lose your entire purchase just from underestimating the bioload of the shrimp and overestimating how much to feed them. They do need some type of sinking food but really don't eat much. After a shrimp tank is established and you get used to how much to feed them it's practically a no maintenance tank.

Cool this thread is great. I too am starting a two gallon Nano shrimp Tank. I currently have Ghost Shrimp, About 13 or so not realy sure

BTW I hope no one minds but I have a couple of questions.

What kind of plants would work well? Also will the shrimp eat Algae, or should I get some kind of Algae Eater like an apple snail?

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Unfortunately, lighting a 2gal. tank for plants is difficult, and the watts-per-gallon rule does not apply. You'll probably get an 8watt strip light with your 2 gal. aquarium, and even though that's 4 WPG, it's still only 8 watts of lights, and will not be enough even for truly low-light plants like java ferns and moss. (I recently tried this with a 5 gal. office tank, and even the moss completely died on me in just a week or two)

You can get a glass cover and a small compact fluorescent light that will give you plenty of light to grow anything you want. Satalite compact fluorescents make a 9 inch fixture for about $50. I have one over my 10 gal. and it's a good amount of light to keep most plants going.

Also, is this tank going to be filtered? If so, what kind of filter are you going to use? Many low light plants appreciate a bit of water movement so that detrius doesn't settle on their leaves and block what little light they do get.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

The tank is one of those self contained desktops, by Aquatic Gardens. It came with a UGF but I am not going to use it. I have a Penn Plax Smallworld cartridge filter that I am going to use in it, air pump driven. So would you suggest going with Fake plants in it?

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Hmm... give it a shot with some moss and a java fern, and if they do okay, then you're all set. If they don't then you know that you don't have nearly enough light for anything to survive.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...