Dried sea fans?

[Harry]

I see that most "ecospheres" use sea fans. I am wondering if it is okay to place a small sea fan in my established tank. The tank holds about 2-1/2 gallons and approximately 50 shrimp.

[jcfrank922]

I've had one in my tank for 6 years. I've never had a problem with it.

[SuperProofer]

I have one in a jar tank and as others have mentioned, it's slowly rotting away. I can't say for certain it's harming the shrimp but there was a slow die off a while back until the remaining 3 shrimp had a few batches of babies. But many of those babies don't seem to have survived. There should be around 25-30 shrimp in that tank and I can only ever count around 15-17. There's really nowhere for them to hide, so I don't think that's it.

Also, the babies were born over a year ago and some of them are still almost microscopic, like they aren't growing. Not sure if it's a nutrient issue so I've been supplementally feeding them shrimp pellets. I don't have these issues in my other tanks that don't have see fans, so draw your own conclusions. I won't use one again though. If I could get the one I have out of the jar without traumatizing the tank I would, but the opening is too small; I'd have to yank it out pretty forcefully. So I leave it alone for now.

[Harry]

Are you sure the "microscopic" babies are not new ones? A year is a long time for larvae to stay small. I suspect there are continuous larvae forming if the water conditions are good.

And yes, many years ago I had a sea fan that decomposed very slowly over time. But it did not seem to do any harm. One of the components of sea fans (coral) is calcium which shrimp need for their exoskeleton.

[SuperProofer]

Pretty sure. I never saw any other berried females. It's a small tank with nowhere to really hide and I check in on them almost everyday, so I'm pretty confident they are from the last batch if babies. They aren't larval anymore just really, really tiny shrimp.

[SuperProofer]

Pretty sure. I never saw any other berried females. It's a small tank with nowhere to really hide and I check in on them almost everyday, so I'm pretty confident they are from the last batch if babies. They aren't larval anymore just really, really tiny shrimp.

[SuperProofer]

Sorry for the double post. Not sure what happened there but I don't see a way to delete it.