# 10gal Shrimp tank journal



## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

I finally had a couple days in a row off work to move my shrimp tank over to my condo.

*Tank specs:*
Standard 10gal tank
Eco-Complete substrate with a ton of mulm
No heater
No filter (except if the water is cloudy, like now)
one MiniJet 404 pump for circulation
1x36 AHS light in a custom canopy, photoperiod from 4pm to 10pm
No CO2, just Flourish and Flourish Excel

*Plants:*
HC
Hairgrass
Moss

*Fauna:*
Cherry shrimp
Amano shrimp
Snails...stupid snails

Moving it was pretty easy. I took out all the hardscape first, leaving a ton of Taiwan moss...or Singapore moss, I don't remember which. I'm starting to think it is Singapore moss because it didn't have much of a hold on the wood it was attached to. Then I drained the tank until there was only a couple inches of water left, then moved the tank onto a 21x11 piece of 3/4" plywood. The drive shook up the substrate and mulm quite a bit, as did refilling. The tank still isn't settled, so I'm going to get my old XP1 and load it up with filter floss.

I'll be working with the moss and lava rocks later while the water is being polished.

Here are a few pictures. As you can see, I have lots of shrimp and the tank is still unsettled from the move. It looks like a neglected graveyard now...and it is...but I promise it will be way nicer in a few weeks!




























Here is a close-up of a lava rock that already has some fissidens-like plant growing out of the pores. It should be interesting to see if it grows underwater.


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

OK, so I'm a bit impatient. I just ordered a couple mats of Taiwan moss and some Eleocharis parvula. I didn't want a moss that won't grow and spread across the lava rocks. The upside to this is I will have a bunch of Singapore moss for the meeting!


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## redstrat (Apr 3, 2006)

your shrimp look happy, do you have any scaping plans for this tank???


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

Yep, and in fact I just spent the past three hours working on it. The back wall is going to be lava rocks and moss, set up in a reef/live rock fashion. I took some pictures but they aren't the best due to the cloudiness of the water. The whole front of the tank will be HC, which is currently floating happily in the tank. Near the rocks, in the little nooks and crannies I will put tiny bunches of hairgrass as accents. I still have a huge amount of moss leftover, so I will be bringing some of it along to the meeting, and some of it will be used in a trade for some glosso.

Question:
I am having a problem with all this mulm on the substrate. I would like to mix up the substrate a little and have it settle underneath the surface, but the stupid baby shrimp won't get out of the way and I'm afraid they are going to get trapped under the substrate. What should I do?


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

Oh, another thing...I'm fighting with Aquaspot World right now to get my order cancelled. They say no orders can be cancelled because of all the work that goes into filling them, and I understand that...but I know damn well they probably didn't even see my order, much less begin to fill it, and I had already sent them a cancellation request. Is it unreasonable to deny the cancellation of an order that is nothing more than a piece of paper, or am I being unreasonable in asking?


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## MatPat (Mar 22, 2004)

As far as the mulm on the substrate, I would siphon it off if it is bothering you. I don't think you will be able to get it under the substrate very easily and no sense risking the shrimp. If you don't want to siphon it off, leave it there and it will make it's way down eventually 

If you used a credit card with Aquaspot, call your credit card company and dispute the order. You may be able to dispute the order with PayPal if you used that but I'm not really sure. This is another reason I don't like to order from online vendors


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

I would love to siphon it off, and that would be easiest but I would be sucking up a ton of shrimp in the process. The rest of the substrate is fairly clean as it seems to have accumulated on the left side only. I have the XP1 running right now to take care of the heavy water polishing, but I think I will add that MiniJet pump to eliminate the dead spot on the left side.

As for AS, I had them substitute petite nana for the mosses. I think that will work well in this 'scape, as will the Eleocharis parvula.


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## Rob Tetrazona (Jun 21, 2005)

Mr. McClure,

Let the shrimp do they're thing. They'll turn over the substrate constantly and like Matt said, it will settle in...just not immediately.


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

OK, here are some more pictures because everybody loves pictures!

This picture is of the work space. Working with a 10gal is great becaue I can sit at my kitchen table and work anything I want, cleanup is a breeze, plenty of space, etc. The rocks are lava rock busted from a larger 40lbs boulder. Obviously, I had a ton of moss to work with and I only used a small amount of what you see there. The trick was pulling out pieces that were baby-shrimp free...









A couple hours later I had all the moss and rockwork completed. It wasn't easy fitting everything together. There is a lot of trial and error involved, a lot of visualizing all your options, etc. You can see the HC floating happily at the top left...that will probably be planted tonight.









This is to show-off the plethora of happy shrimp.









Closeup of an Amano hoarding a piece of algae wafer.


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## Rob Tetrazona (Jun 21, 2005)

Erik,

The moss and the lava rocks look great! Especially in the 2nd pic. Do you know if they sell lava rocks at Buschelman's?


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

That's where I bought it. I bought three large boulders, one of which I'll bring to the meeting if anybody wants to try some. The guy that weighed and rang me up is into aquariums as well...he has a 150gal with an arrowana, rays, etc.


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## Troy McClure (Aug 3, 2005)

Ok, so I suck at making "journals." To make up, here's an updated picture.










A few months ago I had planted some nice HC but the MTS and shrimp managed to uproot most of it. Bugger. I left the tank alone for a long time, only adding the occasional dose of Excel and Flourish, some petite nana. I also did a trim of the moss about six weeks ago. Two weeks ago I added some patches of Eleocharis parvula. Yesterday I tied some of the moss to ADA riccia stones to give the impression the moss from the background is flowing down to the front right. It'll take a while to grow in but I'm optimistic. The new CO2 system is really helping out and I've continued dosing Excel (2x OD every other day or two.) Flourish is dosed 1-2ml every couple days. That bunch of HC to the right of center has doubled in the past week since I got the pressurized system up 100% and the pinhole-ing has all but disappeared. The color of all the plants has vastly improved as well. Note the bright green specks amongst the moss across the top. That's because of the uprooted HC sprigs getting stuck in the moss when I let the water level drop really low...like down to the top of the pump's outlet. I thought it was cool the HC was doing so well above the water so I let it go. Now I'm having a heck of a time picking it all out because the moss isn't rooted very strongly into the lava rocks, so when I pull off a sprig of HC, some of the moss comes with it and I have to trim the area.

Neglect aside, I'm very happy with how this is turning out. The petite nana to the far right will get halved as it's way too big for that area. I don't think there is any real style to it...if anything, it was inspired by combining moss wall tanks and the liverock structures in reef tanks. My only gripe is the MTS drive me nuts and there isn't anything I can do beside manually remove the biggest ones.


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## evercl92 (Aug 14, 2006)

wow, that looks fantastic


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