Help! what do I do?

[abornet]

A week ago I bought 4 cherry shrimp. I placed them in a small plastic tank about 1/2 gallon ,maybe,with some hornwort in it. The hornwort is from my 50 gallon pond outside, which has fish, ghost shrimp, and other critters foating and bog plants. Sadly all my cherry shrimp died I'm not sure why exactly but after reading this site I have some ideas.
My crisis began when I was getting ready to toss the water and contents of my little tank, I noticed some movement. Turns out I had some almost microscopic shrimp. There were about 3 or 4 super tiny shrimp. That was cool.
But now they are bigger 2-3 mm and lots more, I'm counting 20! Holy smokes. I'm terrified to move them, but there are too many to stay for long in this little tank. I am assuming they are cherry babies. That many? I had no visible ghost shrimp in the hornwort weed plus I rinsed it off before I put it inthe tank. Also if they are cherries how come they are alive and doing fine but the big ones(parents?) All died! How do I save these babies! What size tank,? I dont have a lot of room. Would a 5 gallon work? Sorry for all the questions at once!

[abornet]

Hi this is an update to my little shrimp crisis. Not long after my original post I found a used 4.5 gallon tank. I cleaned it up with vinegar for the mineral deposts and then bleach for spores etc. Yes I rinsed really really well between tx and especially after the bleach, with an overnight soak w 2 water changes.
I used 1/2 CaribSea Flora Max (rinsed) and cleaned garden pea gravel for my substrate. I planted the tank with one pack of the tissue cultured lobelia cardinalis and pogostemon helfieri( they were on sale at petsmart) I also bought a Marimo ball on sale and split that up into several smaller balls and used some hornwort form my pond outside with some algae scraped from the rock to innoculate my tank. I made a sponge filter out of a Top Fin filter cartridge, dumped out the act charcoal. I let this setup go for about 2 weeks and then I started removing 10 % of water from the 1/2 liter home of my shrimplets and replacing it with water from the tank. I also put the removed water from the little tank into the new one, I did this water exchange 4-5 times a day over 3 days. I then removed as many of the kids as I could from their little home and placed them in a bowl and still did the adding 10% from the new tank, until it was more than half full, then I put them in their new home. I also did not have a light but the two tissue cultured plants seemed to need more so I got a finnex led light for small tanks and the plants are enjoying that. Since the move I have found only one Shrimplet that died, not sure why, after that I decided to add more variety to their diet. My shrimp are really enjoying things like a small blanched floret of broccoli and small piece of banana every few days, as well as mulberry leaf. They are growing a lot faster since I started feeding these things, and are now bigger than whats in my picture. I m finding molted shells more frequently so I suppose that is a good sign.

better living quarters

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