I've got one lonely survivor in an Ecosphere and a 5 gallon tank at the right salinity (1.010) and with plenty of macroalgae all over. It's been running for a while, with no ammonia/nitrite/nitrates.
My question is: should I move the survivor in on his own, or wait until I get some buddies for him? I don't plan to have snails in there, as I have crushed coral for the substrate and I think the snails prefer sand? I plan to start with about a dozen more shrimp, which shouldn't tax a 5 gallon too much.
Also, how would you go about getting him out of the ecosphere? The hole from the plug I opened is pretty small.
The snails would be fine with gravel. You could also get 1-3 nerites.
I would put your shrimp in now. You can always get friends for him later. Can you gently pour the contents out in a bowl, and then add to the tank? If not, look up YouTube videos on opening ecospheres. I have heard some people have to break the sphere but it would probably be better if you can avoid that.
I got the plug out of the bottom a while back (and added a single half-inch strand of Mustafo's macroalgae, which has grown tremendously!). I'll browse YouTube anyway
I am just not sure I want the snails, haha. Nerites might be cool though...
I have coral skeletons in my tank and the little snails get into tiny cracks that the nerites are too big for. I'm glad I have them. If there get to be too many, I have a friend with an assassin and another with loaches.
Also, snails can be a good indicator for correct feeding levels. If you get too many you're probably overfeeding. They're tough, but not anywhere near as tough as the shrimp when it comes to surviving without food so their populations go down if there isn't enough food (although never to a level where they completely disappear...so nobody should worry that they aren't feeding enough for these snails to survive).
I did end up getting a pack of snails Added some pool filter sand as I needed some for my other tank anyways, and the shrimp and snails are both happy to pick through it.
As for getting him out of the sphere, what I did was have a clean tupperware that was sort of wide and shallow, but not so wide that the water from the sphere would end up being too shallow. I had been adding tank water to the sphere (as they were the same salinity) until it was as full as it could be. Then I gently tipped it so it started pouting water out. At first I was just getting it to a level where I could really pour it without it doing the glug-glug-glug thing. Once it got to that level, I focused on pouring only when the shrimp was relatively near the hole. I had to add some water back to the sphere a couple times (tilted the tupperwear and sort of dipped the sphere in) but eventually I got him out. I then used a secondary tupperwear to catch him while taking as little sphere water as possible, and used that to put him in the tank. He stayed fairly red even after all that and as far as I know is doing well
