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So, I've discovered I have damselfly nymphs in my 10gal...

I'll be removing my African Dwarf Frogs after the chills have stopped.

I need to remove the ADFs because they primarily feed on blood worms, which is the same thing damselfly larve eat while they live in aquariums -- I'd been meaning to rehome them, anyways, as they're next to impossible to see most of the time in my very nookish tank, and the current in there doesn't seem to make them very happy.


However, I've decided that I'm just going leave the ghost shrimps in, as damselfly nymphs don't seem to prey on ghosts, and also, these guys are impossible to catch.

I'll remove as many damselfly nymphs as I can find, and begin heavily cleaning my gravel and doing more (small) water changes through the week. All these water changes should, theoretically, reduce the excess nutrients so that nematodes and the like have less to live off of (I've had a problem with them ever since I added my first live plant to my fishless tank).

After that, I'll simply focus on growing out the plants in my tank and arranging the various bits and pieces. I'll do this until my tank is heavily planted, and can house fish (not frogs), without too much concern.

This will essentially make it my shrimp's tank. There's quite a bit of algea in there, at the moment, as well as lots of live plants and decaying matter. Is that enough to feed my 7 ghosts? Or should I feed my ghost shrimp as well... say, once weekly, or something?


One more question: Earlier today, I fertilized my plants, and noticed later that my normally extremely active shrimps were all very still. After that, 5 of my 7 shrimps sat themselves on the tallest plants in my tank, one of them was even so high up that his back was essentially touching the surface of the water.

Could this be because of my ferts?

This was my first time dosing at full strength, previoulsy I dosed at half strength and noticed no ill effects on my shrimps.

They seem to have perked up, now, but each of them was quite still for at least 3 hours. Or am I just being paranoid?

Check the ingediants. Most metal ions or nitrites do evil to shrimp.

If the shrimp are hungry they eat just about anything. They are detrius eaters, but a little flake food once a week wouldn't hurt.

Ghost shrimp can be fed once a day minimal amounts of flake food (1-2 flakes per shrimp depending on flake size). As for the fertilizer, it depends on what you are using. Just "normal" trace elements fertilizer like Seachem Flourish won't harm shrimp. Nor will a self mixed PMDD solution.

It was a little distressing, I had never seen them do that. All of them were less than 1/2 an inch away from the surface. The one whose back was touching the surface was more-or-less on his side, and I could see his swimmerettes going full speed. I expected them all to die, actually.

But now, they're all moving again. It's almost like they all just decided to sleep "in the trees". I'm keeping a close eye on them, but I imagine if they didn't die within those first 12 hours, they're probably going to be OK so long as I don't shock them again.

My ferts do have trace elements of metals in them, but the bottle itself actually does say, "trace elements", and the directions even say, "1 capful per 10 gallons, once or twice a week."

I'll adjust my ferts and keep an eye on them.


It was really strange. Everything in the tank suddenly seemed to "try and get away", even my frogs -- which leads me to believe it had to do with water chemistry, since frogs are obviously air breathers. That's how I discovered I have damselfly nymphs, they came up for air, too.