Amano shrimp problems (among other things)

[Balik]

Using this kind of fertilizer will kill RCS in long run ?
http://www.aquariumguys.com/flourish250ml.html

It has a very tiny amount of copper in it .

I have seen planted aq who have been treated by these and have Red Cherries in them doin just fine !

So is it ok to use them with RCS ? or RCS should removed from those tanks ?

Thanks

[badflash]

You should stop using it. Your plants don't need it. Light and shrimp waste are all I use and my plants are green and lush.

Plant ferts build up to toxic levels over time. Eventually the shrimp will start to die and you won't be able to figure out why.

[Neonshrimp]

Protozin does contain copper and is not safe for use in the tank that contains your shrimp. If your fish are suffering from a protozoan infection such as white spot then we would recommend Octozin as this is safe with fish. If it is a bacterial infection then use Myxazin.

Regards,

Could they have meant "shrimp" instead of fish? Because why would you even use a product that is not safe for your fish to treat your fish?

[Dusko]

You should stop using it. Your plants don't need it. Light and shrimp waste are all I use and my plants are green and lush.

Plant ferts build up to toxic levels over time. Eventually the shrimp will start to die and you won't be able to figure out why.

Hi badflash, since I am very much into planted aquariums I can't believe that plants can be lush if no fertilizer is given.
My questions are:
How strong is your light?
What plants do you grow?
How many plants do you have? (like 50% of your tank or more, less?)
What kind of substrate do you use?
What is your tap-waters NO3 levels?

I don't think it is wise to encourage people just like that in stopping to use fertiliser without knowing what kind of lights or substrate they have.
If they have more than 2.5W per gallon fertilisers and CO2 are must otherwise the plants will uptake all the nutrients fast and after will starve. When that happens they will start leaking nutrients back into the water and algae will favour this condition . ECO-system is not that simple. Even a handful of shrimps can't fertilise enough a few fast growing plants. Slow growing like Anubias nana maybe .
Since I have plain pea gravel I had to add lots of Iron rich ground fertiliser. Plants will not thrive without Iron.
My aquarium is 70% planted (you can say heavy) and those plants have needs like Micro and Macro nutrients.
How to fertilise hugely depends on your light source !
For references, my fully planted, 180 liter tank has 1,3W per gallon, making it low light set-up. http://www.180liter.blogspot.com/
I use Tropica Master Grow for trace elements and I dose 20ml every week. NOTE; I keep 5 Caridina japonica in that tank and they carry eggs all the time
At one stage my plants started to show deficiencies like yellow leaves and black pin holes in leaves. I measured my NO3 and it was on 0ppm. So I needed to find a good way to add nitrAtes. So I found over the net something called PMDD ( Poor Mans Dosing Drops). Through it you dose Pottasium, nitrAte, phosphates and others like Mg. Cu (Copper) up to 0,006% is nothing and will not harm the shrimp because the plants will up-take that measure in no time. Only if your plants start dyeing off because nutrient starved, they will start leaking nutrients back into the water column and pollute the tank and this way maybe harming the shrimp.
But if you have only one or two slow growing plants in there, badflash statement above is OK I guess. But should be checked before stated .
I believe plants and shrimps should share the same habitat, but do not forget, only healthy plants will keep water quality high and shrimps happy
One more thing though, I will soon establish a 10 gallon Red Cherry shrimp tank. I will plant it with low light, slow growing plants like Anubias nana and Java moss. Will do a research on do they really need ferts in low light tanks.
Kind regards, Dusko.

[Ecir]

Hi Dusko and welome to the forum,

First off I want to congradulate you on an amazing tank, that 180 is just beautifull. Second I found the articles you have on algae are very informative(and a good read for anyone around here too...) and last of all you are an amazing photographer, keep up the good work!

Ecir

[Dusko]

Thanks for comments , I am happy if my Aquarium Poetry can help you. As I stated in another thread, there are so many old sites that desperately need UPDATE because like I use to, lots of others follow those old methods that don't really work. The same is with keeping algae under the control and breeding Amanos and etc.
Thanks good we have forums like Pet shrimp.com so we can bring down the myths and write about the real facts.

Kind regards, Dusko.

[badflash]

Dusko
Think about this. Where do wild plant get their ferts? In nature it is a natural balance between the animals and plants.

I use dayligh fluorescent bulbs on about 12 hours a day. That puts 4 40 watt bulbs over as much of the aquarium as will go over the tank. If you want to keep shrimp for a long time you need to forget the ferts. It builds up over time & then the shrimp die.

I grow plants that are compatible with my shrimp. Riccia, Java moss, java fern and hornwort mostly. My tanks are totally overgrown to the point you can't see front to back or side to side. This keeps my nitrates and phosphates at un-measurable levels.

My plants are for the shrimp, not the other way around. The plants keep the water quality high.

[Neonshrimp]

My plants are for the shrimp, not the other way around. The plants keep the water quality high.

I agree with badflash on this subject. When I search for new plants for my tank I always ask if this plant is good for my shrimp. I don't use fert in the tank because there is a good balance between shrimp and plants.

[Dusko]

Dusko
Think about this. Where do wild plant get their ferts? In nature it is a natural balance between the animals and plants.

I use dayligh fluorescent bulbs on about 12 hours a day. That puts 4 40 watt bulbs over as much of the aquarium as will go over the tank. If you want to keep shrimp for a long time you need to forget the ferts. It builds up over time & then the shrimp die.

I grow plants that are compatible with my shrimp. Riccia, Java moss, java fern and hornwort mostly. My tanks are totally overgrown to the point you can't see front to back or side to side. This keeps my nitrates and phosphates at un-measurable levels.

My plants are for the shrimp, not the other way around. The plants keep the water quality high.

In nature plants get their ferts through decaying plant material and fish/invertebrate waste. They are so called organic nutrients. They get trace elements through the soil, stones and rain + water circulation that is present in many ways, depending on is it a river or lake, pond or bog. Soil plays a big roll in plant fertilisation.

"Think about this. Where do wild plant get their ferts? In nature it is a natural balance between the animals and plants."

I am thinking . As you mentioned your self, your and my aquarium are far from being natures natural balance !

Even in the nature the fish/invertebrates waste don't give much of a nutrients, looking at the, for example, river stocking level. Most of the nutrients comes from decaying plant material.
Even if you place a Canaries over the tank it is hardly going to contribute the fertilisation.

Your plants are thriving not because of your shrimp waste but because your tap water is Hi in nitrates and phosphates + trace elements.
I don't know where do your plants get their Iron supply though.

Remember that an aquarium is not a naturally balanced nature!
That is why we do the fishless cycling when starting a new tank and nature doesn't have to do that. We have to watch at our stocking levels and nature doesn't.

Tap water should be always measured first when planning your fertilisation regime, since it already contains lots of nutrient and trace elements. My tap water has 10ppm of NO3-, for example. After 3 month the NO3 levels went down to 0ppm even though I was performing water changes. If I replace 50% of water that has 10ppm of NitrAtes I will have 5ppm in the tank. Fast growing plants will uptake this amount in 2 days. And if the lights are on the HIGH side even before that.
Replicating nature is not that easy

Riccia, Java moss and Java fern are slow growers so need less nutrients while Hornwort is a fast grower and if you have lots of it, without fertilisation it will start yellowing. Again depends on how dens is the tanks vegetation.
Just for references, so you can see what I did in my planted tank. http://www.180liter.blogspot.com/

"My plants are for the shrimp, not the other way around." you said.
I rather believe that any living creature (plant or shrimp in this case) deserves the same amount of respect when kept in captivity by us (humans). They didn't choose for them selves to end up in our tank. I believe that your shrimps look upon the plants like their friends.

Lets keep it friendly then.

Kind regards, Dusko.

[badflash]

Sorry you took offence. None was intended. Here are the plain facts though. Use ferts and over time the shrimp will die. You need to chose between what you think your plants need, and what experience shows happens to shrimp when you use ferts.

Like I said before, I don't use ferts of any kind any more, and my plants are lush to the point I need to trim & feed the extra to my plant eating snails.

My tap water has 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates. I got the info from the water company and test it myself. The nutrients come from fish food, snail and shrimp waste. If you put a canary over your tank it would be green in no time. You would be amazed at what a little fish food does. Why else would we need to be doing 50% water changes each week?

[Kenshin]

I agree with badflash in regards to this matter. Dusko, fertilizer in the long run will kill shrimps in general. Shrimp is an invertebrate and invertebrate in general (exceptions can be made because turtle is a super hardy invertebrate) cannot handle all that concentrated chemicals especially iron, copper, lead, and among other things including too high doses of calcium. Plants in the river, ponds, or lakes do not get their fertilizer just from the decaying plant matter, but from nitrifying bacteria that breaks down the organic plant matter, waste, and dead animal matter not to mention run-offs from other water sources. In addition, most of these shrimps have grown to adapt and thrive in aquarium tanks since they were bred for generations without their natural environment - so therefore any unusal concentration of chemicals in their aquarium environment will kill them. Second thing - you also have to consider the size of the invertebrate as well when considering the amount the concentration of the fertilizer you are using. Amano shrimps are bigger in size and more tolerant to fertilizer compare with other dwarf shrimps such as Red Cherry, Snowball, Green, Sri Lanka, and other shrimps of that category. I have experienced this myself and realized that fertilizer cannot be used. Even though your Amano shrimps are carrying eggs all the time, I can guarantee that if they hatch in your aquarium and live their first few days in your tank (before you switch them to brackish water), they will die before you can even get to transfer them to the proper culturing environment because of your fertilizer doses you have given over long periods of time. One last thing - water in nature such as rivers, streams, or ponds get cycled (besides lake) quiet often so a lot of "natural" fertilizer do not stay, but instead flow to the sea or other places. And you are talking about nature in which the environment is "ENOROMOUS", compare to a fish tank of 10, 20, 30, 55, or even a 100 gallon of water. When you are dosing fertilizer in an aquarium in a regular basis, it gets pretty concentrated in which shrimps cannot handle because of the hypertonic environment besides the part that they keep on absorbing heavy metals into their tiny bodies - even it if one carry out water changes of 50% every week. My water from the tap also has 0ppm of nitrates and nitrites, just like badflash. Well as you have stated Dusko, you will be setting up a 10 gallon tank for RCS with Anubias and Java Moss - I want to ask if you will be willing to dose that tank with fertilizer on a regular basis just like you do to your other planted tanks no matter how much plants you put in the 10 gallon aquarium or what kind of substrate like you have mentioned earlier to see whether your RCS will thrive. If you do, and can succeed we would like to know how you do it so we can all learn from you. Cheers

[Ecir]

I want to ask if you will be willing to dose that tank with fertilizer on a regular basis just like you do to your other planted tanks no matter how much plants you put in the 10 gallon aquarium or what kind of substrate like you have mentioned earlier to see whether your RCS will thrive. If you do, and can succeed we would like to know how you do it so we can all learn from you. Cheers

It's all about balance, asking about dosing a tank with ferts regardless of plants and substrates is ridiculous. If you can find a balance where the plants take up the nutrients I believe you could be succesfull. If you read about his 180gallon tank you'll notice that Dusko has been using fertilizers and his Caridina japonica are still becoming ovigarious.

Shrimp is an invertebrate and invertebrate in general (exceptions can be made because turtle is a super hardy invertebrate) cannot handle all that concentrated chemicals

Last I checked a turtle wasn't an invert, it's a reptile

Ecir

[badflash]

Take my advise, or not. I tried to tell you.

[Mustafa]

There seems to be a communication problem here. I'll try to clear things up a bit. It's not impossible to dose MICRO nutrients IF you really need it and eventually find a balance that won't kill your shrimp and/or their young. MACRO nutrients (i.e. nitrate, phosphate etc.) have no space in a shrimp tank, as we shrimp keepers are trying *eliminate* those from our tanks and using plants for that purpose in addition to water changes. Adding those macronutrients back in would really defeat the purpose.

The problem with dosing micronutrients is finding that balance. It's extremely difficult. If you think you have a need to fertilize, ideally you should only dose about enough nutrients that will eliminate the nutrient shortage the plants are experiencing. Considering that plants store nutrients for a while in their tissues, the question is: "How do you know that the plant has run out of nutrients?" Most planted tank people don't wait until their plants start turning yellow to dose. They have a dosing regimen every week. And at the end of the week they usually do a 50% water change to "reset" the water parameters, in case they overdosed. Ideally, you would just dose enough nutrients for the plants' needs and then stop until the plants need more. Unfortunately, there is no device (electronic or otherwise) to determine if a plant has run out of nutrients or if a plant has enough nutrients (after dosing). It's a guessing game.

With plants that might work well, but if you add shrimp into the mix problems *will* arise. Shrimp don't react well to guessing games. By the time you *reset* your water parameters, the shrimp will have accumulated all kinds of fertilizer ingredients in their bodies. With shrimp, things like heavy metals and minerals don't just pass through their system, a large part just keeps getting accumulated in their bodies until some of those things become too plentiful and harm the shrimp. This happens over time, so you won't necessarily see an immediate reaction when you start dosing fertilizers (or put shrimp in a regularly fertilized tank). However, after a while you'll start seeing a dead shrimp here and there, whereas others seem unaffected (still accumulating chemicals in their bodies). Even if the adults do ok, hatchlings are even more sensitive to adverse water parameters and die even more easily.

As sensitive as shrimp are the risks of adding fertilizers to a tank is just too large to recommend such a practice. Yes, there might be some reports of success with hardier species (such as amano shrimp) and maybe even reproduction reports with species such as the red cherry, especially in lightly, irregularly fertilized tanks, but most of those reports are short term successes and exceptions. After all, in a guessing game you can get lucky too.

More below...

Soil plays a big roll in plant fertilisation.

Not in most true water plants. Most true water plants take up nutrients with their leaves and bodies. However, lots of swamp plants are being sold as water plants in the aquarium hobby, so people think that these plants normally grow inside bodies of water all year round. If you grow and Amazon sword above water, you'll see that they are much easier to grow then submerged. That's because they are not meant to be fully aquatic. Hence, plant farms grow most of their plants above water. Fully aquatic plants are not as fussy about nutrients and are usually easier to grow.

Your plants are thriving not because of your shrimp waste but because your tap water is Hi in nitrates and phosphates + trace elements.
I don't know where do your plants get their Iron supply though.

Fish food and shrimp excrements provide more than enough macro and micronutrients. You might want to read the ingredients list of the fish food you're using. Tons of chemicals in there. That's why I recommend feeding those prepared foods sparingly since they release tons of chemicals into the water and may *overfertilize* the water to a degree that shrimp start dying.

"My plants are for the shrimp, not the other way around." you said.
I rather believe that any living creature (plant or shrimp in this case) deserves the same amount of respect when kept in captivity by us (humans). They didn't choose for them selves to end up in our tank. I believe that your shrimps look upon the plants like their friends.

Since this is a shrimp forum the focus is on shrimp and not plants. This has nothing to do with respect. We use plants to keep our water parameters constant and eliminate potentially harmful things like nitrates, phosphates, heavy metals etc. from our aquaria. That's why we usually use fast growing, non-finicky plants such as Najas, horwort, various Egeria sp. etc.. You seem to be a planted tank person first and foremost and your focus is on your plants. Shrimp are probably just a "clean up crew" for you (even though your focus might change over time ). So, as you can see, it's all about focus, not about elevating one creature over another.

[Kenshin]

Ecir,

My bad....stupid biology major person who doesn't even know his subject...you are right...turtle are reptiles and not invertebrate! HAHAHAHAHA - I am so SILLY!!!! Forgive me for my comment on that.

However, in regards to your comment about Dusko's Amano shrimps being ovigarious doesn't mean that the fertilizer is still safe for the baby Amano shrimps. My previous post in this topic stated

Even though your Amano shrimps are carrying eggs all the time, I can guarantee that if they hatch in your aquarium and live their first few days in your tank (before you switch them to brackish water), they will die before you can even get to transfer them to the proper culturing environment because of your fertilizer doses you have given over long periods of time.

Dusko himself did not state whether he observed baby Amano shrimps. A lof of animals can still be ovigarious before they die even under high levels of stress or high levels of toxic metals or toxins. They can still have offspring but under these conditions, it is very unlikely they can succeed in living.
Anyhow, I believe Mustafa summarized everything quiet well already so I will not go on to argue any more points. After all this is a shrimp forum and not a planted-tank forum. I hope you all have no hard feelings taken and peace out!