Cortex Shrimplant:

This is the blog about my office aquarium.

2024-06-30 to 2024-07-28

So no real major changes in the tank for this month other than a few new shrimpy friends! On July 5th, I introduced 5 Blue Velvet shrimps. The people at the local LFS told me that more than likely all the available Blue Velvets will be female. Apparently the vendor tries to avoid selling males as they're usually less bold in color and much smaller. Just after a couple weeks, 3 of them for sure are female as their eggs are quite visible in their "saddle". I'm less certain about the sex of the other 2 though. I decided to roll the dice again and went back to the store on the 27th and got extremely lucky: they had exactly 1 male. Bingo! Go knock up those ladies and start a colony! :D

Attack of the Hydra! Ahh! I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but sometime around the middle of the month I started noticing a small patch of hydra. Normally they're really not that bad of a pest, but for small baby shrimp they can mean death. As almost all of the chemical solutions would definitely kill my shrimp and snails. Besides, the proper solution to any problem is to avoid the issue to begin with. And the culprit here? Over feeding. One solution that I intend on utilizing is adding nano fish to the tank (probably a tetra or rasbora of some kind). Yes they would nom on a few shrimplets here and there, but the nano fish can't squeeze into the small crevices that a shrimplet can. Additionally they would also go after the root cause of the hydra problem: the infusoria that have flourished in the over fed environment. While the hydra can and will eat left over food particles or the powder I use to help propagate biofilm, they go after the small critters that eat the small food particles and biofilm. There's one small catch (well, 2 if you count money): the shrimp colony isn't settled. If I added a ton of fish the short term effects on the PH could stress the shrimp out far too much and could collapse the colony before it starts. They just need more time. So I'm left with an alternative solution.

Step 1: Feed less. Step 2: Add pressure on the food web. Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit! So I've heard, and since noticed, that certain snails will gladly nom on the hydra. They also love the shrimp food I add. So what did I do? I stopped feeding every other day and moved to 2 times, maybe 3, a week. Then, I added more shrimp to add competition to that food. Specifically a male Blue Velvet (as mentioned above) and 2 Amano shrimps. Hopefully with this combo of slightly less food and slightly more competition, the snails will be a little more hungry for hydra. We shall see.

2024-06-11 to 2024-06-29

When I got plants on the 10th they came with a couple teeny tiny floaters (even tho the company specifically said they wouldn't have any). Knowing that the other batch coming on the 14th would actually have significant floaters (I asked for them as they help feed and shelter shrimps), I needed to protect the floaters from being shoved under by the filter I have set up. I looked around online for various options but decided the DIY approach was quicker and cheaper. All I did was take air tubing I already had, cut it to an arbitrary length that I felt would work best, cut a small piece of ziptie and shoved it into one end, poured aquarium glue into both ends, and attatched them together. Once dry I had a nifty floating circle that proctects floating plants from their watery doom (and the snails love doing zoomies on them :D).

By the time the 2nd batch of plants came in I already had a fairly well established horde of snails. They're super adorable and it's been fascinating seeing different behaviors from all the various kinds of snails. However, I didn't want the small varieties to overbreed so I got a couple nerites to help create a bit of pressure on the food-web so there won't be an over abundance of food. This tank is meant for shrimps as the main inhabitants after all. One of the nerites had extensive shell damage (which is permanent, but it's doing much better and the shell hasn't gotten worse) which I named Roddy Piper and the other, Keith David, who's shell couldn't be more perfect. They had a little stowaway that nobody at the LFS or I had noticed (he's called Kurt Russell), so freebie!

Along with the snails, there have been a ton of detritus worms and I've seen some little water flees flittering about. The ecosystem has been thriving and not a single spike in nitrates nor any algae blooms. The water has been clear and no sign of parasites. I couldn't be more proud of the work I have put into this aquarium so far. I put in a netting to prep for some amano shrimp (I've heard they're escape artists) and should be getting some grass as the final plants soon. The only issue now is that I accidently over corrected for my extremely soft water and now it's a little too hard for the kinds of shrimp I want (as of writing this on June 30, it's around a GH of 26 and should be more like 6 to 12). Time for a bit of a water change lol

Examples of snail friends in the aquarium:

2024-05-21 to 2024-06-10

I initially got my 20gal high aquarium on May 21st. The next day I started collecting items that I thought would make great hardscape for the aquarium (such as rocks, a pot, and an old snail shell I found in my yard). I also did a water retention test during this time to check for any leaks. It held up just fine so I emptied the tank and began playing around with arrangements of the items I did have. Over the next couple weeks I did a ton of research for the kinds of critters and plants I wanted to keep as well as how I would want to build the substrate. I wanted the water conditions to be fairly stable for shrimp but I also didn't wanna have a super high tech tank. For that reason I decided to grab a decent looking light (Nicrew C10) and a fairly cheap submerged sponge filter (cheap Amazon drek, but it works. The important part is that it has a sponge so baby shrimps don't get sucked up and killed). Most of the water filtration will be handled by plants and the substrate, so having a small cheap filter is more about airation and waterflow in my system. The substrate is about 6 inches deep. From bottom to top is a thin layer of sand, about 1" to 1.5" of lava rock to act as a home for beneficial bacteria, about 2" of Fluval Stratum aquasoil, and then about another 1" to 2" of black sand. The idea here is that over time an anoxic layer should develop and create a true nutrient cycle so that the tank (in theory) could last around 10+ years. I'll be happy if I get 3-5 years before the soil is entirely depleted. In addition to the substrate, I also ordered some driftwood and a 3D-printed cave that sits at the front of the tank. I also cut a couple of old Soylent bottles I had laying around to create more cave systems and places for plants to grow in and around on.

On June 5th I had everything I needed (except the plants which got delayed till the 10th and the 14th, more on them in a bit) and put everything in the tank. Now I needed to start cycling the tank so that it can properly support the future shrimp. Since I'm an incredibly impatient person, I went to my LFS (local fish store) to pick up a couple plants (no idea what they are lol). The person who helped me out convinced (or up-charged?) me into also getting a goldfish to help start the nitrogen cycle. They told me that I could return the little fella and get my money back once the tank was cycled. I quickly learned that I definitely didn't need to do that and that the "volunteer" snails on my plants that I ordered are probably a better way to cycle nitrogen without being a huge bio-load. By that point I fell in love with the goldfish, named him Rich Evans and stuck him out in our pond with the other 2 goldfish (Mike and Jay). They're all super happy now.

On the 10th I recieved my first batch of plants (same day Rich moved into bigger digs). The problem there tho was that they were actually the second batch that I had ordered. The first batch was a custom built set where I told them my goals with the tank and they would set me up with easy starter plants that best suited my needs. I had orignally ordered them at the same time as my aquasoil at the end of May and hadn't heard from the seller at all as to where my plants were. Out of frustration I decided to order from a different company. The same day that the second order was tracking through the UPS system, the first seller sent me an apology email. The first order of plants did arrive eventually on the 14th. Most of the plants from both orders are doing very well in the tank.