Initial jar with gravel. The shrimp often try to get down into the gravel to get at food. I hope they don't get crushed, but so far they always to seem to find their way back up.
First shrimp desk jar at work
Moderator: Mustafa
First shrimp desk jar at work
Been wanting something for my desk and have been putting together my shrimpjar while lurking here. Found myself fairly addicted, so I'm now working on one for home as well. Here's my work jar.
Initial jar with gravel. The shrimp often try to get down into the gravel to get at food. I hope they don't get crushed, but so far they always to seem to find their way back up.
Added Marimo balls, I think I may have added too many... I'm probably going to try to find a home for some of them, and some might not be doing so well.
Added a sea fan.
When I first got the shrimp they had lost all color after being in transit for more than a week.
Color has started to return to about half of the shrimp after two weeks. They are lively and running around and grazing on marimo balls constantly.
Initial jar with gravel. The shrimp often try to get down into the gravel to get at food. I hope they don't get crushed, but so far they always to seem to find their way back up.
Added Marimo balls, I think I may have added too many... I'm probably going to try to find a home for some of them, and some might not be doing so well.
Added a sea fan.
When I first got the shrimp they had lost all color after being in transit for more than a week.
Color has started to return to about half of the shrimp after two weeks. They are lively and running around and grazing on marimo balls constantly.
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Welcome to the forum! 
I like the clean look of your work desk jar! How is it going? Just a word of caution on marimo moss balls - most of them can’t truly adapt to brackish water. I have tried adapting higher salinity aqua plants for my shrimp tank, some fared better than others, but after months I had to take them all out. It created so much organic matter for my 12G tank which was one of the reasons I didn’t have any breeding activity for over a year. Since it’s a jar, the water will get polluted much faster compared to a bigger tank. If you really like the moss ball look, I would recommend swapping those with Mustafa’s supershrimp moss balls. You can also search for “marimo” or “moss” in the forum topics to view other users’ experience with both types of moss balls.
Please keep the updates coming!
I like the clean look of your work desk jar! How is it going? Just a word of caution on marimo moss balls - most of them can’t truly adapt to brackish water. I have tried adapting higher salinity aqua plants for my shrimp tank, some fared better than others, but after months I had to take them all out. It created so much organic matter for my 12G tank which was one of the reasons I didn’t have any breeding activity for over a year. Since it’s a jar, the water will get polluted much faster compared to a bigger tank. If you really like the moss ball look, I would recommend swapping those with Mustafa’s supershrimp moss balls. You can also search for “marimo” or “moss” in the forum topics to view other users’ experience with both types of moss balls.
Please keep the updates coming!
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Nellyville41
- Shrimp
- Posts: 156
- Joined: Fri Nov 24, 2017 2:01 pm
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Welcome! That’s a nice jar you have there. And yes, please be careful with the marimo. It will eventually turn bad.
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Thanks for the warning. I'll probably drop down to a single small ball and see how it does over the next few months.
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Anyone know what kind of algae is in the bottom of this picture? The green strands are slowly growing, and all around the bottom of the tank. I'm not sure if it's pieces from the marimo, or a new type of algae.
The shrimp will often pick up a few strands and pick at them. Just wondering if there's any risk of them getting stuck in this kind of algae if it gets bigger.
The shrimp will often pick up a few strands and pick at them. Just wondering if there's any risk of them getting stuck in this kind of algae if it gets bigger.
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JoanToBa
- Shrimp
- Posts: 110
- Joined: Tue Nov 07, 2017 12:47 pm
- Location: Barcelona, Catalonia
- Contact:
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Those look like marmo hair debree. Probably when you introduced the balls a bit of it fell off. I have the same in my tank
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Interesting. They seem to be slowly growing/spreading in the tank. I wonder if it could end up carpeting the jar after a long time. Time will tell.
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
That's the tit and bits fell off from Marimo. I don't know about Marino in brackish tank however I did kept them before in freshwater tank.
Their tit and bits tend to fell off often all over the tank, a small tiny strain if it's single string will just fly and stuck everywhere in the tank and it starts growing some sort like hair algae everywhere and in the filter outlet too.
That was my experience though it may be different with others.
Their tit and bits tend to fell off often all over the tank, a small tiny strain if it's single string will just fly and stuck everywhere in the tank and it starts growing some sort like hair algae everywhere and in the filter outlet too.
That was my experience though it may be different with others.
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Welp, bad news. After coming back from the winter break it appears there was a shrimpocalypse. All but 2 shrimps were dead, and those 2 were not swimming quite right. My hunch is that the generic aquarium rocks I started with were too big, and some food I threw in the tank before break rotted at the bottom of the tank where the shrimps couldn't get to it. Lesson learned, going to try again this time with smaller substrate, snails and closer food monitoring, if any at all.
Since I'm starting over, I decided to use new substrate, and a new enclosure. I found a vase that holds about ~1.5 gallons of water and used mostly distilled water, with 1 cup water from the old tank. I moved the sea fan over, and some algae rocks from my tank at home. Here's the new desk jar:
Both living shrimp were moved over, as they were certain to die in the old tank. Unfortunately one died the next day, and there is only a sole survivor - a single supershrimp who survived the shrimpocalypse. He's been there about a week and vitals looked improved, though he does seem to be swimming a bit oddly. Hoping he can hang in there and recover.
Since I'm starting over, I decided to use new substrate, and a new enclosure. I found a vase that holds about ~1.5 gallons of water and used mostly distilled water, with 1 cup water from the old tank. I moved the sea fan over, and some algae rocks from my tank at home. Here's the new desk jar:
Both living shrimp were moved over, as they were certain to die in the old tank. Unfortunately one died the next day, and there is only a sole survivor - a single supershrimp who survived the shrimpocalypse. He's been there about a week and vitals looked improved, though he does seem to be swimming a bit oddly. Hoping he can hang in there and recover.
Re: First shrimp desk jar at work
Hope your one shrimp survived. This time wait until you see some algae growth before buying more shrimp. Also, don't put any marimo balls in there and no feeding for a while...i.e. probably months in your case. Excess organic matter can wreak havoc in a shrimp tank. You also have to be extra careful with containers that have a tiny mouth when you do feed because of the small water surface area. That's usually where the air enters the water. If you overfeed bacteria will deplete the oxygen in the water and due to the small water surface area it will be much harder for oxygen to be replenished.