# Care to see my el natural 20 gallon low tech shrimp tank? lots of pics



## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

Here is my tank about 89 days since set up.

My goal with this tank is to get back into fish tanks after a long hiatus and to go as low maintenance and low tech as possible. It's got just about 2 wpg and a heater.

It's a bit of a mess as I planted without much thought to aquascaping beyond putting the tall in the back and short in front. I'm still battling potassium deficiencies and learning the ins and outs of keeping plants. So please forgive the "holy" leaves.

I quickly became enamored with shrimp and all my fish choices quickly revolved around the lil guys.

I was very worried that a NPT set up wouldn't work as the shrimp forums all say that they need sparkling clean water and required filtration. I hope my tank gives hope to NPT enthusiasts that they can keep cherry shrimps without much trouble. The cherries really are hardy and I wasn't sure if they were tough but unhappy. I'm glad to say that they are very active, have good color/size and breeding like crazy. So, I'm going to say they are happy.

If I had to guess without getting technical, I'd say the plants provide all the "filtration" the shrimp need.

I've posted the details of the tank in other posts, but if you have any specific questions go ahead and ask.

Here is the matriarch of the bunch. I call her Big Red and she started out almost without color and developed into this dark red with every molting. She is almost a brick red compared to the bright red of the others. You can just barely see that she's carrying a clutch of eggs:


Here are some females with a saddle of eggs forming:



Here are some "berried" females carrying the fertilized eggs:



Here are some juveniles:





Here is a shot with an adult for scale:



This is a shrimp fry and a cory hastatus fry.


Here is my snail, J. Edgar Hoover. I love watching him. He's so alien like:


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## helenf (Mar 24, 2008)

Looks great!

I've just set up a 5 gallon NPT for shrimp. Never occurred to me that it might not work - the plants should keep the water better for shrimp than all the filtration in the world, assuming I can get everything balanced right.


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

Thanks. I was talking to some guys in the local plant club (CAGA) and they were not able to keep shrimp in their tanks. It worried me b/c they knew a lot more than I did.

Now I get to pay them back for all the free plants with some shrimp.

I spotted another new hatching yesterday. Jeez! These guys breed faster than guppies!


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## mommyeireanne (Oct 24, 2007)

Your tank has filled in well and looks good. I wonder if the holey problem is snails. I had some hangers on that ate my plants. I am not knocking all snails, but I had to pick those bad boys out! They ate everything, from softer sagitaria subulata to my tough anubias. I only knew it was them because I saw them do it: very small snails (1-3 cm) with sort of football shaped shells. I have MTS now and have kept Pomacea bridgesii apple snails, for added clean up. Neither has ever harmed my plants. I also got some (what I thought were) giant red ramshorn snails that munched a bit. I just picked out the snails that ate my plants. You may also want to check out JE Hoover on this website. If you can't ID him, you can send pics to the site owner, who will. Of all the apple snails out there, only Brigs are considered planted tank safe, most all of them will eat plants (voraciously). I know snails are a controversial subject, here, but this was just my personal experience. 
Now, share with us the secret to your RCS success! I have not had breeding RCS and wonder if my water parameters are to blame. (pH off the charts) My silly Yamato/Amano shrimp _are_ breeding, though it'll do them no good. Go figure. But the people I know, locally, who are successfully breeding shrimp are starting with RO water, and do high tech tanks. Could you tell us your water parameters? Do you use tap water? Thanks for any info.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Great Pics! I love seeing the Cory babies and baby shrimp together. This is one happy tank!

Folks, one potential problem with keeping (and especially breeding) shrimp is metal toxicity. All invertebrates are sensitive to zinc and copper, which are fairly common in tapwater. Copper kills adult brine shrimp at 2 ppm, but egg hatching will be reduced 50% by 0.006 ppm and virtually stopped by 0.06 ppm. Zinc is less toxic than copper, but still kills.

Bottom line: you'll never be able to breed shrimp if your tapwater contains heavy metals.

Yes, you can use R.O. (reverse osmosis) to remove metals from your tapwater and make it safe for shrimp. But the easiest and cheapest way to fix the problem is to add metal chelators (my book, pp 14-18 ) to your tapwater. Chelators can be pure EDTA, old aquarium water (contains DOC that naturally chelates heavy metals), or an aquarium water conditioner that neutralizes heavy metals. These chelators will bind the metals and render them harmless.

Other than invertebrate's greater sensitivity to heavy metals, I suspect that shrimp have the same basic water parameter needs as fish.


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

Thanks for the kudos. I'm not sure if the snails are the ones destroying my plants but I suspect it's more of a nutrient deficiency since the growth has been greatly reduced since I first set up the tank. All new growth results in very tall stems and very thin spread out leaves. The deteriorating leaves started with pin holes; would snails do that? I haven't seen J. Edgar eating plants and I keep the tank pretty well fed. There are so many plants and critters that I feed pretty liberally without much thought. I hope it's not the nuisance pond snails b/c that would be a nightmare trying to get them all out. My gf said to borrow my dad's clown loach after pulling as many shrimps as I could out of the tank. I'm sure the loach would enjoy eating the shrimp as much as the snails but this just seems like I'd be making another problem.

I use tapwater and top off from a room temp Brita pitcher we have for drinking water. I'd say about 1 gallon every week. When I do water changes it's about 4-5 gallons per change treated with stress coat for chlorine. I also dose the water at that time with a teaspoon of "snail milk" which I think has minerals, iodine and other stuff that is good for snail/shrimp shells. I have only done around 4 water changes since set up, and one of them was b/c I put in one of those "vacation feeder" thingies. I regretted it as soon as I left b/c there is so much plant matter in the tank, my guys would have easily survived 2 days without feed. So I changed the water when I got home b/c I was paranoid the vacation feeder was poisoning my tank. I don't ever suck out the gravel b/c it's schultz aqua soil which would get sucked out.

When I last checked my water the ph was pretty neutral at 7 and zero ammonia. I still have not gotten a nitrate/nitrite tester kit. I keep the temp around 78-80 degrees. No flow. No filter. When I did a much needed trim, the temp on the thermometer went up 2 degrees so it's closer to 80 now. All the dense growth must have been inhibiting the convection flow. Whenever I have my hand in the tank, I can feel it's much warmer at the top and cooler on the bottom and some actual "cold" spots near the plant roots but none of the fish or shrimp seem to mind as they transition back and forth without much fuss and don't seem to prefer one to the other.

I also believe that 3 of my original cory hastatus died in the tank as I have not spotted more than 3 in the past few days and I've seen the shrimp eating fleshy bits of something mysterious. I mean they are really shy anyways but it's been a long time since I saw the entire school. So, you could say that the biofilter/ecosystem in my tank is enough to handle 3 dead fish and not skip a beat.  crazy.

I guess I really don't take any special care to the tank at all. I learned just enough from this forum to be "dangerous" heh 

Do you want to know anything more specific?


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## mommyeireanne (Oct 24, 2007)

Thank you. I was looking for pH and GH if you had it. I'll assume you have harder water if you add snail milk. I may try to bring my pH down with a mix of RO water, both my GH and pH are high. 
I'm sure you are right about the potassium. If you've always had the same snails and it's a new problem, with changes in plant growth, probably not snails. I was hoping to save you the trouble of dosing something. 
I add de-chlorinator. The label says it will work on heavy metals, too. I toyed with the idea of only letting my water sit since I found out our town uses chlorine, not chloramine. But I still add it. I used Excel for a week, and lost one shrimp the first time. I'd had them more than 6 months prior though, and no Cherry babies. 
I do have a question about water parameters and plants, but I'll stop 'hijacking' your thread  Keep us updated!


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

Don't assume anything about my tank... hehe. I'm just free wheeling it so adding the snail milk has nothing to do with any measurements I've taken with my water. I added it on the recommendation of the guy that I bought the snail from. He said it's good for shrimp too so I just put some in. 

My only concern about correcting the potassium has been that people in the shrimp forums report deaths when dosing their tanks and since it's kind of ok now, I'm really hesitant to disrupt anything.

The shrimp are way more active now than the first few months. They used to hide in the java moss a lot and come out a little bit to feed. But last week the activity has been increasing each day. They literally swarm the entire tank from top to bottom now. Even the smallest fry are out and about with out a care in the world. The guppies ignore the fry and the few times I've seen them get curious, the shrimp quickly dodge out of the way. They are also doing a lot of free swimming in open water. I actually saw one of the adult males grabbing food out of the water column as he was swimming. All this I take as a sign of good/decent water quality as shrimp are often the first to die if something is off. The proverbial canary in the coal mine. 

I wonder if the population density will get so high the hatchings will slow down.


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## will5 (Oct 26, 2005)

yum said:


> Thanks for the kudos. I'm not sure if the snails are the ones destroying my plants but I suspect it's more of a nutrient deficiency since the growth has been greatly reduced since I first set up the tank. All new growth results in very tall stems and very thin spread out leaves. The deteriorating leaves started with pin holes; would snails do that? I haven't seen J. Edgar eating plants and I keep the tank pretty well fed. There are so many plants and critters that I feed pretty liberally without much thought. I hope it's not the nuisance pond snails b/c that would be a nightmare trying to get them all out. My gf said to borrow my dad's clown loach after pulling as many shrimps as I could out of the tank. I'm sure the loach would enjoy eating the shrimp as much as the snails but this just seems like I'd be making another problem.


I can tell you for sure that the apple snail you have is a brig and is not the one who is munching on your plants. I t does look like you have pond snails and they do eat holes like those in you plants. To REDUCE their numbers you can pick them out as you see them and feed a little less. The more left over food there is in the tank the faster they will breed.

Also shoot me a pm and I'll give you enough potassium to dry does your tank a couple of time. Just if it's the snails or the potassium doing that to you plants. After seeing that I believe it's the pond snails.


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

oh noes! i guess i'll just have to go on a pond snail rampage then... are my ramhorns plant safe?


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## will5 (Oct 26, 2005)

yum said:


> oh noes! i guess i'll just have to go on a pond snail rampage then... are my ramhorns plant safe?


Most of them no but as for the ramshorn that carry their flat against the surface they are climbing on. They do and will eat plants. Oh and the giant ramshorn also eat plants. They are also illegal.


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## Dustymac (Apr 26, 2008)

yum said:


> oh noes! i guess i'll just have to go on a pond snail rampage then...


Hmmmm.... Until getting "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium" I used to be a big anti-snail snob. Don't ask me why but I've seen the error of my ways. Now I have hundreds of pond snails in all my tanks except one. So far I have yet to ever see one of the little buggers ever put a hole in a single plant leaf. I'm not saying it isn't happening in your tank, but if it is, you should be able to see them doing it. Unless, of course, you think they're waiting to eat your leaves when you're not watching. 

And remember the tank that doesn't have hundreds of snails? It's not for lack of trying on my part. Ever since my daughter brought home a female Betta to keep her male Betta company, the snails have mysteriously started disappearing. There were hundreds and now there are maybe twenty left. The Betta spends all day hunting through the leaves and she couldn't be less interested in whatever fish food I provide her 20+ tank mates. She's even grown to be bigger than the male! Could be a solution if you think pond snails are the problem, or maybe if your shrimp population starts getting out of control! 

Jim


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

DustyMac,

Thank you for jumping in and defending snails!

Once again...snails clean plant leaves of algae and bacteria. They speed up the decomposition process so that debris is quickly recyclyed into plant nutrients. The fact that many fish love to eat snails (live food for fish) is added bonus.

Very few snail species eat plants. Snails should be a welcome part of the NPT ecosystem.


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## newbie314 (Mar 2, 2007)

The snails are great for taking out the dead spots in plants.

We clip the yellow leaves off our citrus trees since we only want healthy leaves. Same for water plants. Anything that can remove/prune the bad stuff is great.

And yes my Betta loves snails too. Missing a feeding for him is nothing. Just munches on snails.
He's fat but not bloated.


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## will5 (Oct 26, 2005)

So it may be that you are lacking potassium. Just try this stuff I gave you and see if it clears up.


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

I added one dose of the potassium you gave me and I think it helped. The elodea is the fastest grower in the tank and I'd say it made a huge difference in the growth pattern. The new growth was much more condensed. Now I'm not quite sure how often to dose.

And I didn't have the heart to kill any of the snails, so rest assured, they are still in the tank. heh.

I'd love to add a snail eater but then that would probably mean it'd be a shrimp eater too.

So far so good, though. The shrimp are still spawning like nuts and the baby cories are growing nicely.

What is strange, though, is that some of the guppy fry are still tiny like they are only a few weeks old and some are down right giant. I guess that is survival of the fittest, right?

Here is the really weird part, there is only one fry that is coloring up like a male. How is it that out of 20 fry I only have one male? Strange.


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## Kosh42|EFG (Jul 4, 2007)

yum said:


> What is strange, though, is that some of the guppy fry are still tiny like they are only a few weeks old and some are down right giant. I guess that is survival of the fittest, right?


I was thinking of getting guppies for my new tank so did some research. Culling large numbers of fry that are "runts" is the norm for fancy guppy keepers, and that's breeting good quality fish with known linage, mixing gene pools, etc. If your's are store bought guppy's, you may well find that very few fry grow into large, healthy, attractive fish.

Handy guppy breeding info can be found here:

http://www.fancyguppies.co.uk/index.htm


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## will5 (Oct 26, 2005)

yum said:


> I added one dose of the potassium you gave me and I think it helped. The elodea is the fastest grower in the tank and I'd say it made a huge difference in the growth pattern. The new growth was much more condensed. Now I'm not quite sure how often to dose.


I would start once a month and then work up from there because I don't think you do water changes that often. So they potassium should remain in the tank until it's used up or you do a water change.

Now for the guppies. The sex of guppies is highly affected by the temp of water that they are in. Although I can't remember which is which when it come to what makes more males verses females.


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

Ok, so it's been a while since my last update. I've pulled out the elodea and put the guppy "runts" into an outdoor pond set up. The tank is just overgrown to the point of it being a nuisance and I'm going to pull out all the rotala as it's not doing well at all in my tank.

I'm going to add some flow with a nano-propeller type "pump" and dose my tank to kill the planaria that are taking over my tank. I didn't mind a few here and there but the walls, plants, everything is crawling with these suckers. I'd love to add a predator to take care of them but I think they would take care of my shrimp too.

My tank is finally reaching the point of needing a major revamp. The sword plants are just too large and I'm not quite sure how to remove them as the roots are probably spread across the entire floor of the tank. Seems a shame to kill it but I might just have to unless I can figure out how to get it out without making a colossal mess.

The shrimp are still breeding well but they do a much better job of hiding and come out in batches which is odd. Some times of the day I can see 5 or 6, other times they are out in full force by the dozens.

Updated pics to come after some chores.


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## mommyeireanne (Oct 24, 2007)

You can cut it off flush with the soil level, use a razor blade if you can't cut it with scissors without disturbing the soil. There may be an adjustment period again, from loosing that much plant mass, but it sounds like you have the hang of it...


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## yum (Feb 11, 2008)

Thanks, "mom". I actually don't have the "hang of it" just yet. It's all just sort of working despite my best efforts. I guess that is a testament to these types of set ups.

Sorry, still too lazy to hook up the camera and upload new pics. Heh. The olympic action dominates the night time schedule these days.


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