Petshrimp.com Discussion Forum

1 Month ago, I received 2 Species fo Wild caught Shrimp.

They were Indian Zebra Shrimp, And Indian "Rainbow" Shrimp.
Both Species are doing great. The Zebra Shrimp are even Breeding.
Hopefuly I will have a Herd of little Zebra's soon.
So, that tells me that the water conditions are to there liking.

The problem I was having, Was they were not showing there Color, and were always hiding.

So, I was thinking.
If they are Breeding, than the water conditions were fine. And they were getting enough food.
The only other variable was Lighting.
I have a dual 4 foot shop light over 6 Tanks. This was plenty of light.
But, I was thinking this was to much light. So I change the 4 foot floresent light to 2 Screw in , 9 watt compact floresent lights.

This dropped the lighting level to about half of what is was.
And now the Shrimp are Showing color almost all day long. And they are not hiding .
My Crayfish are now showing themselves alot more.

Only time will tell, if the lighting is enough for the Algae to grow .

Has anyone else, tried to change lighting levels ?
John

John,

I use the 4 ft shop lights(T12) with just only one 40watts bulb.
I use one shop light for two tanks. There is a space of around 6in between the tanks and the lights. I get plenty of algae growth so far and all the crays/shrimp have nice coloration.

-Pedro

My 29 only has a NO fluorescent hood, and the hair algae grows TOO well. I pick out gobs of it when I do partials. There is a 4' shop light a couple feet above the 38 in the basement, with only 1 regular bulb. The algae grows very thickly on the glass cover, and well enough on the front and sides that I have to use magnets to clean it off. More than enough for shrimp, if I had any in that tank.
I put a 15W 24" full-spectrum light strip behind my planted 10 cherry shrimp/dwarf crayfish tank. I had been using an 18" gro-light, but the ballast went out, and the 24" fixture w/bulb was only $10 at Wal-Mart. The change in lighting makes the cherry shrimp look much better, and the orange dwarfs parctically glow when they're not in the shadows.
The 30 long I moved the orange/brown crayfish into has a regular 24" strip light, and I'll be adding another 24" fixture like the one behind the 10 for the plants. Otherwise, the tank has plenty of cover, I picked up a large lot of lok-rocks on e-bay, and used them to furnish the tank, along with some soaked oak leaves. The orange/browns stay under cover much more than they did in the heavily planted 10. They seem to like the low caves under the plastic rocks, and I'll be adding some real rocks to increase the cover available.