badflash wrote:What I am doing right now is using small clay pots and cutting them in half. Looks cool and my inverts love them. Java Moss will root to it too.
I have a tile saw and it takes about 30 seconds a pot. The pots cost about 25 cents each.
That's a good idea, and easier too Also, have you guys considered coconut caves? You get two caves per coconut and are excellent for attaching moss
I make coconut caves for plecos and apistos, and there are drawbacks to using them for shrimp. First, they acidify the water. That can be controlled by water changes, but then you have the fluctuations which the shrimp wouldn't like either.
Second, unless you polish them they tend to produce a massive amount of detritus. For some reason, the detritus sticks to the shrimp and drives them crazy till they either get rid of it, or die trying. Yes, I've tried it.
I bought a couple of coconut caves from my lfs which my shrimp and bn plec love. They don't alter my water though....have you tried boiling the coconuts for a while like you would bogwood?
You know you might take another look at the hardware store and see if you can't find some mesh in something like stainless. I was just visiting in San Francisco and the guys told me I had to go to this new shop, Aqua Forest, very close to downtown San Francisco. Very nice high end planted (Amano type) shop and they also had a lot of shrimp. One of the things I saw, and I'm pretty sure I remember shrimp in the tank were that they were using a metal mesh for java moss. It was very bright and shiny and also looked pretty heavy, ie not aluminum. To me it looked like stainless steel. If someone really wants to know they can google Aqua Forest to pull up their web page and then give them a call.
That soft San Francisco water chews up everything and they seemed to be doing fine. They had a couple of tanks of B grade crystals (their label not mine) that looked really nice. Pretty pricey but nice.
[commercial link removed by admin] make a very good selection of caves and if he doesnt have what you want he'll will make custom designs to your specifications, i have ordered caves for ancistrus before and he was extremely nice to deal with
I know you were trying to help but posting links to commercial websites (*any* commercial website, not just shrimp or fish related) is against the rules here. Please be mindful of that and go over the rules again to avoid these issues in the future.
As for "caves" for shrimp...the only shrimp that really appreciate caves are macros, which most of you don't even keep. Dwarf shrimp don't need caves and don't use them for anything, unless you have hungry fish in your tank that harass them constantly (in which case they will seek refuge in the "cave" and you won't ever be able to observe them).
As "cool" as these multi-layer, bound plastic "caves" (from the original post) may look, they are less than ideal for shelter using inverts such as macros and crayfish. These inverts prefer shelter close to the ground (especially the crayfish who can't swim) and some distance away from the next shelter. Macros can at least swim to the upper layers of this "cave" structure but crayfish can't. I would never use these things. Not very practical at all.
Last edited by Mustafa on Sun May 13, 2007 3:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
My crays love the clay pots. They are always in them. If you put several in a row you can use a peice of slate to bridge between them and have caves between.
Also, have you guys considered coconut caves? You get two caves per coconut and are excellent for attaching moss 
