Newbie, excited to start the process!

[Munakgirl]

Hello all

I have been lurking around this forum/site for lil bit. Just reading and searching around.

I used to (still am just not active at the moment) be a member of another big shrimp forum.
I was researching and setting up for cherry shrimp in a 10gl planted tank I had for over a yr. I remember seeing a member that had some opae ula, but for some reason she made keeping them seem very diffucult and I thought they were harder then cherry shrimp. An require much more difficult setups...

Been researching lately and not seeing that as true now o.o...

I don't have my planted tank anymore as my sister took it over and pretty much killed everything in it... and then just threw everything in it away (so painful to find out... some of those plants were spendy ;-; an took so long to aquire and scape it all..)
My family didn't handle my stuff nicely in our last move so I believe they threw out my entire box of fish/aquarium supplies... (another painful blow.. as it had my master test kit, huge pack of filter replacements, tons of treatments, foods, meds, deco, and random bits) I don't really know what they were thinking....

But now I have to start from scratch!
I do have my lil box of shrimp stuff I happen to have with other stuff when they moved. It has a bunch of shrimp food samples mostly, maybe some cholla wood and leafs...

I'm gonna be looking around for a small tank, hopefully a 5+gl. I kinda want it to be filtered but I'm on the fence about that... I want to put a few Hawaiian dwarf hermit crabs in there and maybe 1-2 nerite. An 10(with hopes they may breed...) or so opae ula. I would get more but they are spendy...
Then get a 1gl vase/bowl with 10 opae ula for my mom.

I know I want lava rock, maybe some decorative coral, and lots of plants in mine, an for my mom's vase probably shells, coral and rocks, maybe some plant stuff. But hers is going to be a center piece on the kitchen table probably.

Though I am curious... it would be neat to add one to the bathroom (her bathroom is ocean/beach theme so would fit right in) would the humidity/themp of the bathroom be too bad for them?

It fogs the glass up pretty bad in there sometimes... but it gets wonderful sunlight. She has a betta in there an he gets algae on his lil tank (... he's in a 1gl which I know isn't the best. I'm unsure why she did that when I explained long ago prolly not the best conditions when I had my Betta in a 10gl...)

Her tank will be her birthday gift which is in november so I have until then to figure it out and get it Going to cycle before I add the stuff.


I'm trying my best to work on a budget, but still make things look nice. I'm pretty excited to get them. I have wanted shrimp for yrs, an haven't had a fish tank in nearly 2 yrs so I have really been craving them.
Hope I can make this work

[Varanus]

Seems you're still unsure about some stuff but these are some points I wanted to make after reading your post:

1. Supershrimp are indeed very easy to keep compared to other shrimp, but there are various restrictions to them that should be kept in mind. For instance I'd advise against adding nerites or hermit crabs until after you have the tank going for a while as they eat a lot more than the low nutrient supershrimp set-ups initially provide. But other users may be able to advise you better on this point as I have no direct experience on keeping the shrimp with anything other than the little snails Mustafa sells.
2. One major restriction regarding the supershrimps are plants, you mention wanting a lot of them but fact is most plants don't do well in brackish water. The successful set ups here have basically Mustafa's macroalgae and/or special moss balls and little else (unless you count hair algae).
3. Regarding the bathroom, humidity and temperature are not really of any concern for the superhshrimp provided we aren't talking about extremes of hot or cold. On that note, if the bathroom is getting a lot of direct sunlight it may not be a good place for them, especially in a small container as the water will heat up faster.
4. I would try your tank out unfiltered and see how it goes, with supershrimp less is usually more.

[Munakgirl]

@varan us thank you for the tips

1. Yes, I will not be adding anything till it's fully cycled and lots of algae build up. Though I will be feeding the hermits more often. They will get fed at least once a week maybe every 5-6 days depending on the need. I will test that out. But I have read on here and thought about it. An wouldn't do it unless it's at least 5gl so more space less competition.

2.Oh to clarify I mean I want lots of plant/green but I fully understand most plants don't do brackish. I mostly mean the ones that mustafa sells here :3. I am a huge fan of marimo balls (I used to have the freshwater ones all over my tank, and I even have some nano gardens)
So I'm pretty happy he has a brackish water type.

3. Oh the bathroom doesn't get hot from the sun, just lights up nicely. An the spot I am thinking of doesn't get the direct rays. =3

4. I will prolly try.
Thank you so much =) I appreciate the advice, I will take any advice given to heart.
I do not get any animal/pet with out fully researching for a few months before I get them usually.


Though 1 extra question.... I was going to choose 1-2 nerite snails as I like to watch pretty snails eat... but I don't want them to breed, which is why I was choosing the nerites over the lil trumpety looking ones mustafa sells. I worry about too many (my friend is over run with snails in her 55gl...) especially in small tanks.
One of the reasons I chose mystery snails for my freshwater tank was they didn't breed easily and we're sexable. (I eventually would have been okay breeding my purple n blues but they were the same gender of course! Lol)

[Varanus]

Though 1 extra question.... I was going to choose 1-2 nerite snails as I like to watch pretty snails eat... but I don't want them to breed, which is why I was choosing the nerites over the lil trumpety looking ones mustafa sells. I worry about too many (my friend is over run with snails in her 55gl...) especially in small tanks.

Provided you don't feed the tank much you won't need to worry about the trumpet snails overpopulating (though given you will be feeding more often thanks to the hermit crabs this may be a consideration, though at the same time the crabs may eat the relatively delicate trumpet snails if they get hungry enough). But as for nerites, the larva apparently need full strength sea water to survive, so at most you'll get eggs and dead larva in the tank rather than baby nerites.

[Munakgirl]

I wonder if it would be too much to have both the random trumpet snails and 1-2nerites.... I like the look of the nerite snails a lot more... but I hear the trumpet ones are good for airing the sand.

But I'm worried about over populating my tank... hmm...

How many snails should I keep? If I keep 3-5 hermits? (I plan to buy 5 but hear it's likely a few may die starting out and I may be left with 2-3 that will stick around)

I am thinking I may do more then one tank at some point.... Maybe a freshwater also (for some fresh water shrimps an lots of plants)

[Mustafa]

I wouldn't worry about overpopulating the tank with the brackish water snails from this website. Before they overpopulate you'd have a giant algae problem at your hands if you truly feed that much. A couple members went through that. And, as Varanus said, the hermit crabs are likely going to eat a few snails here and there anyway.