Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

How much water do the jars hold? How tightly sealed are the tops? Having the tops off for a while may help in algae spores colonizing the water.

That so much algae grew points to excess nutrients. That said, I don't know if starting over would be the best idea if the shrimp are healthy. Generally algae should diminish over time if you don't feed the tank, but that it grew so much while you were absent makes me think there must be excess orga...

Aragonite sand should be more than enough as calcium source, so no worries there. You may want to check the water for ammonia though, since live sand tends to contain a lot of dead stuff in it (ironically). Still, once you get some algae growth the tank should stabilize and be ready. As for the filt...

That looks like a shrimp paradise as it is (provided you get enough shrimp for it, I'd start with a few dozen as a tank that size will accommodate hundreds as the years go by), the females will love having so many places to hide when carrying eggs. I would remove the filter though (assuming you didn...

The newly metamorphosed shrimp are very secretive, not sure if they are actually slower.

As for moving them, a fine mesh net works well enough if you're careful and get them back into water fast. You can try a turkey baster too/instead, but you'll likely get a lot more water than shrimp.

I don't know if anyone here has tried moving larva. They are more sensitive than the metamorphosed shrimp, so if you want to be extra safe you could wait until they become tiny shrimp. If you don't want to wait then you could always move one or two and see how they do. The tank itself should be fine...

I've heard the test strips can be unreliable (the droplet tests are better), so perhaps it's a false positive? In either event, a water conditioner like Prime that detoxifies chlorine should be safe to add to the tank just in case.

Don't add any food to the tank, at least until the copepods are gone or nearly gone. Over time (and it may take a long time) the copepods will die off as the shrimp outcompete them and can survive off more limited resources. The shrimp will eat the dead ones too. If you want to directly reduce the p...

I assume the filter is just in there temporarily, since it says its there to get the water circulating (probably to clear the water up, I did the same when I first set up my tank). And yeah, the substrate in the back might be deeper than necessary, but provided you get snails to dig in it it should ...

Yup, perfectly normal. I don't think it's been proven why, but for some reason first time super shrimp moms often seem to drop many or all their eggs. They tend to do much better the next time they are carrying eggs.

The macroalgae won't prevent other algae growth, it may just limit it in a low nutrient setting (which is what you want to maintain). Believe me, you don't need to worry about the shrimp starving, they require very little food. If they are scrubbing away at surfaces then they are finding bacteria, a...

It may be that with the snails and shrimp eating whatever starts growing, and the macroalgae and moss balls competing with regular algae, the regular algae just doesn't build up enough to be visible. It doesn't mean your tank is unhealthy, indeed having low available nutrients is good for these shri...

You could also get a ammonia test kit if you're still concerned. In general though, algae absorbs toxins from excess nutrients in the water so it's a good thing to have.

So long as the water is about the same temperature then yes you should be able to add the shrimp right in. As brackish water animals the shrimp adapt readily to changes in water chemistry. I don't think there is "too much" when it comes to the macroalgae and mosses, so long as they don't c...

That timeline should be fine, the general rule though is that its safe to add the shrimp once you see algae in the tank. Many (including myself) simply added the snails and a tiny bit of food to start with and things were fine (they're generally even tougher than the shrimp). As for shrimp to snail ...