Your current Fish tank Setups!

bainbridge said:
Well the shrimp aren't doing well at all in my 60ltr. The panda corys, cardinal tetras and harlequin rasboras are all happy as larry but nearly all the 10 or so shrimp have died at a rate of approximately one per fortnight.

Parameters are good with only ph being a bit high at 8 when a water change is due, almond leaf brings it down a little but I'm not sure if it's the ph that the shrimp don't like. Filtration is good, doing a 33% water change once per week, 6 natural plants in there.

Only big red and little red is left!
Click to expand...

Iirc shrimp like it either alkaline or acidic (cant remember which way it was now) they were also very sensitive to anything. The only way i ever got them to breed/multiply was to use rodi and re buffer with a shrimp specific mineral (admitadly i used to keep expensive shrimp)

Mineral wise you need “salty shrimp gh plus”
 
NoobCannon said:
Sorry to say but your talking rubbish, salt water fish are doubly hard to keep compared to fresh/tropical even just from a filtration requirement point of view they are absolutely nothing like fresh water fish.

Do yourself a favour @Kyrne and dont start with saltwater. Get yourself some easy to keep fresh/tropical fish. Unless your prepared to put some real time into looking after a saltwater tank it will end in tears, everything is more expensive and requires constant maintance even for a fish only tank.

I dont intend to put anyone off trying to keep saltwater fish but many on here who actually keep them will tell you its not an easy/cheap hobby
Click to expand...

How am I talking rubbish? The only fundamental difference between a fish only marine tank and freshwater is the water. The principles of everything else are exactly the same, including the nitrogen cycle and maintenance requirements. In fact clownfish are incredibly easy to look after, they are hardy, don't need a huge tank and normally take prepared foods. I also pointed out that marine tanks rarely end in fish only and the additional cost and complexity really stack up.

Loads of fish keepers went straight into marine, you don't need to keep tropical to earn the right of passage to marine :rolleyes:. I said in my post to do research and if your happy with the commitment (mainly cost) then go for it. Whats wrong with that?
 
bainbridge said:
Well the shrimp aren't doing well at all in my 60ltr. The panda corys, cardinal tetras and harlequin rasboras are all happy as larry but nearly all the 10 or so shrimp have died at a rate of approximately one per fortnight.

Parameters are good with only ph being a bit high at 8 when a water change is due, almond leaf brings it down a little but I'm not sure if it's the ph that the shrimp don't like. Filtration is good, doing a 33% water change once per week, 6 natural plants in there.

Only big red and little red is left!
Click to expand...

cut back on the water changes , everytime your change the water it will trigger them to moult.

Keep your kh below 250 and supplement there diet with calcium (hikari crab cuisine or shrimp cuisine is like crack to em) and they will breed like rabbits
ph is fine, i use alder cones as a cheaper (free) way to drop ph in one of my tanks.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
How am I talking rubbish? The only fundamental difference between a fish only marine tank and freshwater is the water. The principles of everything else are exactly the same, including the nitrogen cycle and maintenance requirements. In fact clownfish are incredibly easy to look after, they are hardy, don't need a huge tank and normally take prepared foods. I also pointed out that marine tanks rarely end in fish only and the additional cost and complexity really stack up.

Loads of fish keepers went straight into marine, you don't need to keep tropical to earn the right of passage to marine :rolleyes:. I said in my post to do research and if your happy with the commitment (mainly cost) then go for it. Whats wrong with that?
Click to expand...

Its not about a “right to passage” i said that you need to be prepared to put the time in with marine fish.

You have said just now yourself that there is additional cost and complexity to a saltwater setup, a freshwater set up consists of the following.

Buy tank
Buy filter
Buy grave sand decorations
Wait for cycle and add fish

Saltwater in its simplest form

Buy tank
Learn to mix and test saltwater
Set up tank
Auto top off
Skimmer
Sand/rock
Precise temperature control
Salinity testing

And thats just the basics. I cannot honestly be bothered to get into an argument with someone over the internet but as i said in my first response to you, jumping straight into saltwater is asking for trouble with 0 experience in fish keeping. unless you are prepared to put in the time its likley to end in expensive tears
 
You cannot start keeping marine fish on a whim. You have to do a lot of reading or you will end up in trouble real quick. There's tons of equipment you need to know how to work and fine tune. And there's so many tests you need to know how to do, and one mistake can wipe everything out.

And clownfish are quite territorial so you have to be careful of that. Once a female reaches maturity they get very mean. :D
 
rebel rebel said:
You cannot start keeping marine fish on a whim. You have to do a lot of reading or you will end up in trouble real quick. There's tons of equipment you need to know how to work and fine tune. And there's so many tests you need to know how to do, and one mistake can wipe everything out.

And clownfish are quite territorial so you have to be careful of that. Once a female reaches maturity they get very mean. :D
Click to expand...

But.... it’s exactly the same as freshwater except the water :rolleyes:
 
Nasher said:
I had a blue ram cichlid which got very mean. So you can make that mistake with tropical too :(
Click to expand...

Everyone makes mistakes but a saltwater mistake usually means a £50 fish rather than a £10 freshwater fish (obviously you can get expensive freshwater fish)

My last tank my clowns caught brook, noticed it in the morning before leaving for work and by
The time i got home i think i lost half my tank and the rest of the fish over the next couple of days, only one goby survived :(
 
Ouch that's awful. They are quite prone to that. My female black and white clownfish killed off 2 males, she used to pester them too near the surface, and they jumped out in the night.
 
NoobCannon said:
Iirc shrimp like it either alkaline or acidic (cant remember which way it was now) they were also very sensitive to anything. The only way i ever got them to breed/multiply was to use rodi and re buffer with a shrimp specific mineral (admitadly i used to keep expensive shrimp)

Mineral wise you need “salty shrimp gh plus”
Click to expand...


user_name said:
cut back on the water changes , everytime your change the water it will trigger them to moult.

Keep your kh below 250 and supplement there diet with calcium (hikari crab cuisine or shrimp cuisine is like crack to em) and they will breed like rabbits
ph is fine, i use alder cones as a cheaper (free) way to drop ph in one of my tanks.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys, a rethink is in order then before getting any more.
 
^^
Caridina (Crystal shrimp) Prefer Acidic
Neocaridina (cherry Shrimp) Prefer slightly Alkaline,

If your PH is rising between water changes then something is hardening the water, its likely rocks with lots of calcium in them. You would normally expect to see your PH to slowly drop over time between water changes. PH 8.0 suggests your water is very hard, much harder most fish outside of African ciclids tend not to like water that hard. As user_name said PH8.0 is OK but its considered to be about the maximum for cherry shrimp.

user_name suggested keeping the KH below 250, I think he meant TDS (total dissolved solids) because a KH of 250 is way off the scale (15 is considered high for cherry shrimp). Keeping it as low as possible isn't a bad shout though, but you can only really do that with water changes. It also depends on what the TDS is out of the tap, mine is over 200.

Another thing to consider is that the fish may have been bred in much softer water than yours and are struggling to adapt to it. PH is a logarithmic scale meaning +1PH is actually a 10X change in the hydrogen ion concentration. Cherry shrimp will bread all the way down at PH6.4 and can be very finicky if they are moved to very different conditions. They normally like a very long acclimation process, a very established tank and lots of cover from predators. If you do get anymore you may want to get some from someone locally with similar water to you.

Are you sure the shrimp are not being predated on by your other fish?
 
Still plenty of work to do on this tank coral wise, fish are hiding.

17JLYp5h.jpg
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
user_name suggested keeping the KH below 250, I think he meant TDS (total dissolved solids) because a KH of 250 is way off the scale (15 is considered high for cherry shrimp). Keeping it as low as possible isn't a bad shout though, but you can only really do that with water changes. It also depends on what the TDS is out of the tap, mine is over 200.
Click to expand...

My tap water comes out at 450 TDS :p

I think it's a bit miss-leading without context, as it will include all the beneficial stuff and water additives.
 
Nasher said:
My tap water comes out at 450 TDS :p

I think it's a bit miss-leading without context, as it will include all the beneficial stuff and water additives.
Click to expand...

Tap water contains heavy metals and copper which is poisonous to invertebrates. Invest in an rodi unit and then re mineralise for shrimp and your problems will be instantly solved. Take it from someone who had been thru the same things your going thru and came out with a healthy expanding population of shrimp.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom