New Setup: Plants Question

[kurtb]

I checked and lots of people have tried plants, but it looks like no one actually uses brackish water plants. Does anyone have experience with plants that actually live full time in brackish marshes? I was interested in adding a few sprigs of Najas marina or Ruppia maritima. Both are fairly common, weedy plants that grow in full fresh and brackish water, including lagoons and such here in Southern California. Oh, and both species do well in water without much flow.

Any reason that doing this might be detrimental to the shrimp when I add them? I have experience in fresh and marine aquariums, but brackish is new to me! My setup is going to be 5 gallons.

[Varanus]

The thing is supershrimp tanks aren't "typical" brackish water tanks, so what works in normal ones may not work for them. Supershrimp tanks work best when you keep things spartan. As such most plants could add too much waste and nutrients to the water.

Mustafa made an article addressing this, and his conclusion is that only a couple types of macro algae so far have proven to do well in supershrimp tanks. https://www.petshrimp.com/beware-of-so- ... er-plants/

You could always experiment, but I don't think it'd be worth risking the shrimp.

[i<3Opae]

If you end up experimenting, please update this thread! I’ll be very interested in the long term (1-2 year) results: such as reproduction stat in both shrimp and plants.

[mike.d]

I used to have a freshwater planted shrimp tank and I grew to hate it. At first, I thought it was great that everything was growing so well, but then it got to be a real pain. I was in there all the time trimming plants and removing hair alqae.

My supershrimp tank (10 gallon) is great because I don't have to do anything with it apart from the occasional top off with distilled water. I have a lot of algae that the shrimp can't keep up with. I dropped in 3 nerites and 12 MTS snails and the tank walls are a little cloudy with algae but nothing major. I'm using the same equipment (light and 10g) that I used for the freshwater tank.

I never had success with plants in a tank until I put down a substrate of potting soil under the gravel. I think that will be your problem with adding plants to a supershrimp tank. The shrimp may not do well with potting soil and the plants likely won't thrive without it. How will you infuse CO2 into your tank? The shrimp don't do well with bubbles/filtration. I'd imagine in the wild even wind blowing across the top of the marsh would break the surface tension of the water and get some CO2 into it.

Having said all that... I'm curious about what will happen too. Please update us if you end up experimenting.

[kurtb]

So, the shrimp are here.

Brackish plants: I cycled my 2 tanks with the brackish macroalgae and some mangrove propagules. YES! Mangrove WILL outgrow everything, but it will take a few years. I have some in a freshwater pond and after 2 years they are barely much bigger than these. So far the shrimp love hanging out on the mangrove stems and roots.

I am looking to try some other true brackish plants and algae, but I will have to seek out some areas near the coast I can legally collect. Or some plants that I can adapt to brackish found in fresh and estuaries.

[Super Jess]

I have always been curious about using mangroves. Is it true they remove salt from the water and excrete it from their leaves? How closely do you need to monitor your tank's salinity to maintain a good level?

[kurtb]

In my experience they can remove salts but it’s very minimal. In my saltwater tank it hasn’t even lowered the salinity but I’ll see how it goes on a much smaller scale (75 v. 1 gallon).

[Arquisto]

Hey kurtb how is your tank with the mangrove propagules doing? I'd love to see a photo of your set up!

[Super Jess]

Yes yes pics please

[Mustafa]

Yes, how is your experiment going? Also, the two plants sold on this site *are* brackish water plants.

[Euphotica]

I also would be very interested in an update.

[JasonG3333]

Here's another one: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=5360