# Shrimps more active with no pump?!?!?!



## MikenJulie (Oct 12, 2010)

Howdy everyone, we're new to fish and shrimps, we have a 48gal with a small variety of fish, and a 10gal with about 30 cherriy shrimp (10 babies close to 2 weeks old), and 6 Amano's. 

Ammonia is 0, nitrate/nitrite is very low, I've been using RO water for a few weeks now, tap water is way too hard here. I cut back feedings to a base minimum, I added a nice plant and a piece of driftwood to help with ph balance, it's around 7.2 right now. All looks great, except I really hoped to see more shrimp play in the tank, they have some spots to hide for sure, but most of the time they just walk on the bottom picking away at the sand for food.

Nothing new to everyone here so far, I'll get to the point I unplugged the pump and stirred up the gravel to give everyone something new to pick at, and left it off for about 15 minutes, I usually only leave it off and wait 5 minutes for everything to settle but I got busy. When I got back to the tank, I was surpised to see bloody everyone racing around!! The 10 babies were running laps, the Amanos were blazing around like bullets, most of the Cherries were swimming everywhere too!!! We are used to really seeing nothing but a few walking, they were everywhere!!!

I turned on the pump (I have a small corner unit, pump submerged, large size foam filter with very small holes so no babies are lost), and within a minute the Amanos went back into hiding, the babies went back to just hanging in the live plant, everything went back to normal. I waited a while and did this over again, same results, add a few cocktails in the tank and they're celebrating the new year.

The pump feeds into a side-mounted filter housing, I've added rubber strips and foam strips to iscolate vibes, did this when I got the tank, the pump is noisy and vibrates. Obviously the shrimps don't like it, so what would you all recommend I run for circulation/filtration. Honestly I don't know if they like the fact there is no current being too powerful maybe(same pump is in a 20gal kit at the pet store), or the tank emits harmonics that numb them.

It was great viewing last night watching them run around. Thanks for the time.

M&J


----------



## Gordonrichards (Apr 28, 2009)

Hi Mike & Julie.

First of all, you should have more then 1 plant in your tank. The shrimp are all hiding from your fish and will continue to hide from them forever.

Why do you stir up the gravel, you should never do this.
You should though, be siphoning the crud that comes out of the gravel IMO/IME, or you should stir up the gravel while doing a water change.

Purchase some more plants for them in the forum, adding a few clumps throughout the tank will give them places to hide.

Nothing about harmonics. They just don't like being out in the open becoming someone's lunch.


----------



## MikenJulie (Oct 12, 2010)

Thanks for the info! To clarify a few points, I have one tank for fish and one for Shrimp. I stepped up in size for the shrimp to a 18 gal, I have 3 plants now, along with a few moss balls. Some java moss on the way. I have some fake plant bits floating on top of the water, they are really liking that. My water has been very stable, hopefully soon I see some females with berries!


----------



## JohnPaul (Aug 28, 2006)

Dwarf shrimp, especially in my experience those of the _Neocaridina_ genus (Red Cherrys, Yellows, Blue Pearls, and Snowballs) really like hanging on floating plants on the surface of the water. I am guessing (and this is only a guess) that since floating plants are much closer to the light source, they grow algae faster, and so the shrimp have more to munch on than other things that are lower in the tank. But that's only a guess. If you ever want to get rid of the fake floating plants, you could float something like Brazilian Pennywort, which I have in one of my shrimp tanks and the shrimp love it. Something like Amazon Frogbit or Red Root Floaters could also work.

The shrimp zoom around like you saw because of the amount of food that was kicked up. You'll see that kind of activity whenever you do something like that. While it is normal (in one sense), that kind of frenetic behavior is not something you want to be seeing out of shrimp 24/7. They should always be active & picking away at substrate etc., but not zooming around at a crazy pace. (The one other time you'll see a lot of activity is when you have females that are fully saddled & ready to breed--they emit a hormone signal into the water and you will see all of the males zipping around all over the place trying to figure out which female is releasing the hormone.)

In smaller shrimp tanks like yours, in general you see two common options for filtration. One would be just to have a large sponge filter (like this) in there. The other would be to have a good quality HOB filter (something like an AquaClear) with an additional sponge pre-filter (like this) over the intake in order to prevent baby shrimplets from getting sucked into the filter and being killed. In people who have really large tanks (30 or 50 gallons and larger), you typically see them running a canister filter of some sort, again with the important addition of a sponge pre-filter over the intake.

If you dig around in your substrate and kick stuff up often, then probably an AquaClear with a sponge pre-filter would be the way to go for your shrimp tank.

One more note: why do you say your tap water is "way too hard"? _Neocaridina_s like Red Cherry Shrimp actually prefer alkaline, hard water. Have you measured your water hardness? If so, what are your KH/GH/TDS values? Some of the best shrimp breeders I know had booming populations of Red Cherrys and other _Neos_ in water that (in at least one case) was described as "liquid rock." I'd be very surprised if your water was "too hard" to use in your RCS tank.


----------



## MikenJulie (Oct 12, 2010)

Great info JohnPaul, thank you!!!!! You know it makes perfect sense with particulates floating the shrimp go out and investigate, they just seemed to really get going after some time with the pump off. Now with a new tank that doesn't apply anymore anyway.The filtration chamber is quite big (IMO anyway) for an 18 gal, it's 4"w x 4"h x 10"L, it has 3 chambers with charcoal and foam for the main filtration, and I forget the name but the first and third chambers have bacteria collecting "objects" , some round composite balls in the 1st and hollow short pieces of composite tubes in the 3rd, for lack of a better word, please excuse my ineptitude.](*,). I still use the foam in the pump infeed, the shrimps do enjoy picking on morsels collected.

I havent't stirred up the sand this last week, I forgot to mention I put a large bag of some special shrimp substrate, small black colored balls, and mixed it in with the light colored sand in there, they definitely are partial to the new stuff. I will look for the Pennywort, I don't have it up here in my local shops but I'll try to find some at least in the provice to ship (I'm in central BC).

I do know with the addition of a few extra plants, the substrate, driftwood, more space, and the fake plant material floating above, they have all taken a liking to thier surrounding and are *much* more active overall. Another change I did, I'm not too happy about it, but I moved the Amanos to my big tank ( I have some cleaners, goldfish, a few rummynose, a crab, the Amanos go about the tank freely), they were really bullying the cherries and spending alot of time chasing them around. All my Amanos are close to 2" except for one, and ran the tank like hoods. I've had lots of molting, but no berried females. I'm going to leave the Amanos in the big tank and see now if anything changes not being chased everywhere or being kicked out of hiding spots will have a positive effect.

The water, it's hard, well into the high 8's for ph
http://www.seachem.com/Products/Testing.html
The ph alert was right off the chart for ph, now using RO jugs and 25% changes/week both tanks are low 7's, and I've kept ammonia at 0 for 3 weeks now. Nitrite and nitrate are also very low, temps in the shrimp tank I've kept 75f at night and it goes up to 77-78f during the day (100w heater in tank also). I'm getting a small RO system built that will let me cycle some of the water in the tank to fresh RO levels, so once a week I'd run the system, 2/3rd's of the water I cycle is clean, 1/3rd lost in the RO process is dumped down the drain, I only use 1/3rd fresh RO from the bottle, some descent conservation IMO.

I/we get a big kick out of the tanks, whatever I can do to make it more enjoyable for the habitants and us, the better. Thanks again for the tips!!!


----------

