My beginner Opa Ulae experience

[redhotshrimp]

Any advice is welcome!
Here is my story so far: The short of it is that I foolishly ordered my Opa Ulae before my tank was fully cycled, then realized my mistake. Now I'm stuck with a bag of 20 supershrimp that I'm afraid to put into their new 1 gallon home. My current sad plan: wait for a couple of weeks and hope for miracle algae to start growing, and hope the shrimp stay healthy sitting on the shelf in their little bag.

Here is how it happened. We stumbled upon an Opa Ulae sealed environment booth at a 4th of July street fair where we bought a beautiful teeny little enclosed glass vase with an airtight lid. Inside was a teeny plastic palm tree, plastic flower, seashell, and 4 lively Opa Ulae. The vendor said no care was needed -- the shrimp would happily live in there for well over two months to maybe over 2 years! I didn't believe it, but a month later, there were still three shrimp swimming around in there. Surfing the web I then realized that the shrimp were doomed to a sad life in such a little air-tight container and then I found this encouraging discussion forum. I read, perhaps too quickly, stories of 1 gallon jars that were easily converted into growing colonies of the shrimp. I even saw some youtube videos on a simple tank set up. No water filter! No heat! No aritificial light! Then in mid Sept I was down to 2 shrimp in the little vase. Yikes, time to do something. It sounded so simple to make a nice tank for these supershrimp.

So on Sept 26 I bought a 1 gallon glass jar with plastic lid. In it went some well washed aragonite sand from a local pet store, a plastic plant, and a rock that was advertised to not change pH, and some brackish water. The tank went onto the shelf next to the little glass vase for a month, getting indirect sunlight, but the not particularly bright light. To hopefully speed up the cycling, I thought I was clever by scraping some biofilm from the small vase and squirting it into the new jar. A month later, Oct 26 I ordered 20 Opa Ulae and some microalgae.

After ordering the shrimp, I thought that maybe I should look at the Step-By-Step Instructions on this site... Oh no, the instructions said to wait until there was definite ALGAE growth before introducing the supershrimp. And there was no algae in the 1 gallon jar! I tested the water: 2ppm ammonia, 0 ppm nitrite and nitrate -- clearly not cycled / stable yet. In fact, not even close. I'm pretty sure I'd lose a bunch of shrimp if they went into that tank in the current state.

Mustafa's supershrimp and microalgale arrived the next day, Oct 29. He gave me advice to just put the bag on a shelf with indirect sunlight and wait until the 1 gallon jar developed algae. Maybe a couple of weeks or even a month (What! -- these shrimp can live in a teeny bag for a month?!). So, here we are, just sitting around hoping for the best.

In the meanwhile, I am looking for ways to speed up cycling. There is conflicting advice online, so I'm not sure what will work. I added the microalgae. I added an LED light set at 13 hours on / 11 hours off. Also I put in a sponge filter into which I stuck a piece of filter material from my mature freshwater tank. -- not sure bacteria from a freshwater tank will help cycle a brackish water tank. (I'll remove the filter before I put the supershrimp in). I'm thinking of warming up the tank to speed up cycling as well, but don't have a good way to do that. Any other advice is welcome!

[Dch48]

The seeding might work. Some say that the freshwater bacteria can survive in moderately brackish water up to 1.010 salinity. The macroalgae will also help by absorbing some of the ammonia. I don't know if I'd leave the shrimp in a sealed bag that long. A small container with some exposure to air might be better.

[pelletube]

I’m going through the same thing actually. 10 shrimp in a bag plus 10 snails in another bag arrived two days ago. My tank has been quickly set up following all the instructions except that it has not cycled or grow any algae yet.

I initially had Marino moss balls bought elsewhere (a year ago) and thought these would be enough to provide as good for the shrimps. But mustafa said the moss balls would die.

Any way to speed up the algae growth?
I don’t want to pay more for the petshrimp.com Marino and/or micro algae (and the shipping).

BTW, OP, would you suggest where did you get your ammonia/etc/testing tools?

Thanks!

[redhotshrimp]

Hi pelletube -- Misery loves company! Hope your shrimp do well! I know that oxygen can diffuse fairly well through most plastic bags (I used to study oxygen and the best way to prevent oxygen diffusing into a liquid is to put it into glass, not plastic). I think those shrimp will be on my shelf for at least 2 or 3 weeks.

As to the water testing kit -- I had gone to my local pet store and picked up a $35 kit that could do several tests, including high pH, ammonia, and nitrite / nitrate. The kit has bottles of indicator liquid that you need to add drop by drop to test samples of 5 mL of water. They say the tests are accurate if you follow the directions.

Mainly, I think I _probably_ only needed the ammonia test. The aragonite sand should keep the pH high, so I don't really need to test pH. My ammonia is even higher now (2-3 ppm) than it was a couple of days ago -- probably deadly for supershrimp even though the 1 gallon jar looks so inviting. Any advice is welcome.

I'm getting an increasingly thick layer of bubbles at the top of my tank from the sponge filter -- I'm not sure what that means. Maybe that means that there is more protein in there?

[redhotshrimp]

Question to anyone: After I eventually put the shrimp into the tank in like 2-3 weeks, should I feed them right away? They will have been in their little shipping bag for a long time.

Or would it be better if I poured them into my little vase with my other 2 opae Ula? (the vase is small, but about three times the size of the little bag.) Really appreciate your advice!

[Dch48]

If the vase is bigger, I would put them in there. I read a study that said you can have up to 50 Opae's for each gallon of water.

[redhotshrimp]

The bag of 20 shrimp weighs 185 grams, which is a little less than 1/20th of a gallon. So if 1 gallon can support 50 shrimp, then this bag should support 2.5 shrimp -- it is way over crowded!

My little vase looks like it is about 2 to 3 times bigger. So probably I can safely put move 2 to 4 of the new shrimp from the bag into the vase. The rest of the shrimp will have to sit in the bag until the 1 gallon tank cycles. I'll think about that before doing anything rash. Mustafa said it would be safe to leave the bag unopened for several weeks. It may be better not to mess with it. Anyway, I'm not sure how to open the bag and safely move just a couple of shrimp. I don't have a net. Not sure I can manage using a spoon. Maybe a turkey baster.
It would be ironic to use the vase to save the new shrimp, when the main point of my getting the 1 gallon tank was to save the shrimp in the vase!

In the meanwhile, I added a heater to the 1 gallon tank to bring the temp up from 68 to 82 degrees F -- I read somewhere that warmer temps may help the cycling process go faster.

As an aside, I had a similar situation a couple of months ago with cherry red shrimp -- I ordered 10 shrimp for my freshwater tank that had neons & a recent purchase of 5 cherry red shrimp. But after ordering the shrimp, I realized that my neons were eating my existing cherry red shrimp. So we quickly scrambled to make a new 5 gallon tank just for the cherries. We ended up saving only having 1 cherry red from the old tank + 10 new cherries in a 1 day old tank. But that new tank benefited from lots of filter media & plants that were poached from the neon tank, so it cycled much better than my current 1 gallon opa ulae tank is doing. Over the next two months we lost a shrimp or two per week initially. Luckily babies arrived. Now I have 12 thriving babies and 2 remaining adults in that rescue tank and it looks stable. Nevertheless it was so hard to see all those adults die.

My kids are laughing at me -- suddenly we have all these tanks! But shrimp are so cool! Shrimp fascination all started that fateful July 4th.

[Super Jess]

Hey y'all, take a deep breath and don't freak out. The opae are really good at just chilling in a holding pattern. It's their super power!

I kept 20 shrimp in a mason jar for a month while I packed up and moved across the country, and they were totally fine. They will also be fine if you want to leave them in the bag as Mustafa advised. You could just pour them and their water into a small jar if you want to be able to see them better. Their oxygen needs are insanely low. Your main concern should be avoiding temperature swings.

The surface bubbles may be biofilm that's being disturbed by the filter. Remember: with opae ula less is more. I'd remove the filter now, and let things proceed apace. Don't try to rush it and the shrimp will be fine just hanging out until the tank is ready. Resist the urge to feed!

[redhotshrimp]

It's been 6 weeks since I set up the 1 gallon jar. The ammonia levels have dropped, but no definite algae yet. Reflected light from Mustafa's macroalgae makes things nearby look a little greenish.

Meanwhile, the shrimp in the bag have been doing fine for 10 days on the shelf. Amazing.

[redhotshrimp]

Thanks for everyone's advice. The greenish tinge on the rock looks like algae to me, but hard to be sure.

Anyway, we released the bag of shrimp and all bag contents, including the green yarn, into the 1 gallon jar. Hopefully the shrimp will be OK!

Strangely, though the shrimp looked reddish while in the bag, now they look mostly clear/gray in the 1 gallon jar. Several look distinctly yellow. Maybe it is a trick of the light. The shrimp are swimming / running around actively getting used to things. They are largely ignoring the green-tinged rock and other ornament and prefer the glass jar walls and the area where the bulk of the macroalgae sits.

I didn't transfer the 2 shrimp over from the tiny jar yet -- but interestingly Mustafa's shrimp are substantially bigger than the two that have been living in that tiny jar.

[Dch48]

My shrimp are constantly changing color. Sometimes about half are deep red with one or two actually having stripes. The others will be varying shades of pinkish red or even brown. Other times some are lightly red and the others are almost white. I haven't been able to figure out what causes the changes .

[redhotshrimp]

You were right! Within a few hours, many of my shrimp became pink or light red in color. They are a range from clear to light red to yellow. Very cool! They also seem a lot calmer now. It was hard to take a picture of them initially since they were so active. Some pics below.

[Super Jess]

Looking good! The shrimp tend to go pale when disturbed or under stress. They should color up over the next few days or weeks. Likely they will molt--keep a sharp eye out for their ghostly skeletons clinging to your decorations. The skeletons don't last long with the hungry shrimp, but they're neat to see. Your two little ones will probably grow faster in their new digs with proper food. Congrats!

[redhotshrimp]

You were right, Super Jess. I saw a molt just several hours after releasing the shrimp. But then the molt was gone a couple hours after that. LOL! I guess they are hungry? I know I need to hold off on feeding, but there really isn't much in the way of algae in the tank. Just the thinnest layer of biofilm on the glass and possible algae on a small rock.

[Super Jess]

They are the ultimate recyclers! Don't worry about the algae; they will munch on biofilm and bacteria all day and all night long.

When you do feed, make it a teeeeeeeny amount and keep track of the last time you fed. Overfeeding is doom I throw in a tiny floating shrimp pellet once a month for about 40 shrimp. It's maybe the size of half a sesame seed. Sometimes I give them a freeze dried bloodworm to pick at--it floats, and I just fish it out after a couple hours so it doesn't contaminate the tank. Floating food is best so it doesn't sink and decompose in the substrate before they can eat it all.

Have fun with your new shrimp friends! They look happy in their new home.