Tips on setting up a new shrimp tank

Setting up a shrimp tank is fast and easy provided you keep it simple. I have tried many methods of setting up a shrimp tank from sponge filter, permanent UGF, box UGF, overflow etc. In my opinion, choose one that will suit your availability of time and effort when you need to reset the tank later on.

Things you need:

• Aquarium Tank
• Active Soil
• Filtration
• RO water
• Reminerizer

Optional items (added after cycling or during) :

• Moss
• some plants
• quick start bacteria (liquid or powder)
• Microorganism ball (Lubao)

The steps are fairly simple and if you have everything ready, setting up the tank would probably take 15 minutes.

There are different methods and my method is to ensure during reset it also takes a much quicker time. Reason being is that if you have to use 45 mins or 1 hour to reset your tank, multiply that with the number of tanks will determine the total time required. Also resetting tanks require some form of effort and if you have a lot of tanks, it will also take a lot of effort physically.

People ask why do we need to reset a tank? When breeding slows down and the soil has slowed down in it’s buffering than changing it will help kick start the breeding too.

Coming back to the method of setting up:

1. Pour active soil into the tank until it reaches 1cm
   1. 45 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm tank will use about 1L of soil
2. Add water into the tank and reminerize to TDS of 85-90 with GH of 3
3. Setup filter (i use Totto hang on and powerhouse S size Soft water filter media)
4. Wait 40 days.

This method of cycling is the traditional method and it works as active soil release ammonia which then kick start the nitrogen process.

During this period some will add liquid bacteria (can be any brand) to ‘kick start’ the beneficial bacteria colonization. More importantly is these beneficial bacteria will then convert ammonia to nitrite and then the less harmful Nitrate.

Source:http://theaquariumwiki.com/w/images/1/1f/Cycling_graph.png

Once it reaches 40 days it is then where the Nitrate is the highest and Ammonia and Nitrite becomes 0.

Few methods to Seed the tank:

• Use existing mature shrimp tank water
• Use existing filter media
• Add Lubao

The first 2 directly place beneficial bacteria colony into the new tank but an ammonia source is needed to keep them going. Active soil and lubao emits sources of ammonia to allow beneficial bacteria to feed on and multiply.

The difference over here is lubao whilst a grazing material will also help condition the water.

Using microorganism ball to seed the tank can have multiple layers of benefit while it creates biofilm for shrimp to consume, the biofilm creation is due to the fermenting of material in the ball which invariably also feed beneficial bacteria thus in return increase beneficial bacteria numbers.

While the creation of biofilm cannot be controlled as there are no shrimps in it to feed on, what i do is to scoop out excess biofilm that i think the shrimp will not be able to feed upon when they’re release into the tank after cycling. Incorporating microorganism ball as part of tank reset or setting up new tank what i’ll do is to soak the ball for a day in RO water to leech out the tannin and then let the process begin.

After 40 days i’ll then measure the water parameters and if the parameters are fine, i’ll do a 20% water change, reminerize and wait for another 2-3 days and re measure the water parameters. Once everything is fine, i’ll add mosses, a claypot of plants and frogbits. By day 47 the tank will be more or less ready.

However, there is this unspoken feeling, gut feeling based on experience that if the tank doesn’t appear to be ready, i’ll continue to keep cycling till day 50-60. Once that is done, i’ll re-measure the parameters before adding the shrimp.

The shrimps will have sufficient food in the tank and i’ll hold off feeding for a few days. If you’re adding new shrimp in hundreds, they’ll strip off biofilm very quickly so you can then start feeding after 3-4 days in the new tank.

Thanks for reading and i hope you have learn something from this post.