Boof’s little crystal shrimp tank

Howdy folks!

Here is my little shrimp tank that I put together for something to look at while I work.

I miss having large jungle tanks filled with all sorts of plants and animals but we plan on buying a home next year and I don’t want the hassle of breaking down and moving large tanks.

Anyway, there really isn’t much to this one. It’s a tiny little Spec V (5gal) with Fluval Shrimp Stratum as the substrate and some wood for hardscape.

Using RODI water that is remineralized with Salty Shrimp GH+. This allows me to keep the GH at 5dGH and the KH at or near zero.

Dosing dry ferts, conservatively. Took EI dosing regimen and essentially cut it down to 50% so as to keep TDS and nitrates low for the shrimperdoodles. So far everything seems healthy and growing quickly so I haven’t seen a reason to increase the supplements. Also injecting pressurized CO2 via one of those GLA atomizers or whatever they call them.

I’m keeping this one simple in terms of plants. Several types of buce, flame moss, staurogyne repens, and some anubias nana var. petite. The anubias is not really providing the look I wanted so I may take that out and put my buce plants on top of the driftwood on the right.

The moss was only added yesterday so it hasn’t had a chance to fill out the tree branches, yet. I’ve played a lot with Xmas moss over the years but this is my first experience with flame moss. Not really sure how quickly it will fill in the branches.

The only tank inhabitants are SS+ grade crystal black shrimp and a pair of otocinclus. The shrimp are still a bit young so I probably won’t start seeing any berried mommas for another few weeks.

Here is the tank as of this morning. About one month into it. One of the reasons I love strong light CO2-injected tanks is watching all of the plants pearling. All of the bubblies you see in the video are purely O2 from the plants; the CO2 is being injected/tumbled in the Spec V’s overflow filter system so there are no bubbles from that entering the display area of the tank.

Here is a full tank shot. That batting you see in the upper left is there to prevent the shrimp from ending up in the overflow haha

This is sweet!! Love your little Bob Ross figure too!

Haha Thanks! Bob was a little stocking stuffer from my wife this past Xmas. She got him as a little gag gift but I love him. He has a handful of sayings from his shows that he will play.

Not much has changed in the past week other than more staurogyne growth. I wanted to add a better straight on shot because I want to keep track of how quick(slow) the flame moss grows.



Speaking of the staurogyne, I think I need to trim it. I love the overgrown look but I don’t want the lower parts of the plants to deteriorate. I had that happen with a dwarf baby tears carpet one time. Whole thing looked healthy up top but then started to separate from the substrate. I want a closeup of the little beautiful plants before I butcher them haha

Just so y’all can appreciate this fully, here is how the staurogyne arrived on 4/5 after being delayed in shipping. I was half-convinced it was going to melt and die. Just goes to show you what some TLC can do.


Kind of crazy seeing just how much it has grown in just 6wks.

It looks absolutely gorgeous. Really does go to show how much patience is worth.

Looking good! The Fluval Spec is a nice little tank.

I like the Spec V for what it is as a desktop aquarium but I still really miss my larger tanks. I already made it clear to my wife that when we buy our house next year I’m going to set up a 120gal jungle tank for another BGK

BluewaterBoof said:

I like the Spec V for what it is as a desktop aquarium but I still really miss my larger tanks. I already made it clear to my wife that when we buy our house next year I’m going to set up a 120gal jungle tank for another BGK

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Hehe, yes.

Amanos all taking a “bath” together, I guess haha


What’s interesting is that particular piece of driftwood already went through the snot phase and cleared up. I took it out of the tank a few days ago to swap the anubias with buce and now there is a whole new mess of the stuff. So strange.

Edit to add photo of the flame moss finally starting to take off.

An Amano bath, lol.

The flame moss is looking super!

PheonixKingZ said:

An Amano bath, lol.

The flame moss is looking super!

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Yeah after they spend half the day foraging in the tank they all come back to that shady spot under the driftwood and clean themselves for like two hours haha

This is my first time using flame moss. Very interesting. I had only used Xmas moss in my past tanks. I had actually put Xmas moss in this one, too, but the initial algae that swept the tank during the first couple of weeks just made a mess of the moss so I tossed it and decided to try something new.

I do miss the Xmas moss, though. It was super pretty when it was pearling and covered in bubbles.

Two months into this little project (plants and water went in on April 4th according to the time stamps on the photos in my phone).



We went to San Diego for a week last Friday and I hacked all of the staurogyne down before we left. It was impressive to see how much it had filled back over the course of only one week. Here is what it looked like last week after “The Hacking.” I also had some stained water for a few days because I tossed some alder cones in the tank.


Trying to figure out an issue with my buce... Several of the plants are losing their dark vibrant color and don’t seem to be doing as great as the others (I have five or six different types of buce on the right side). I’m not sure what the deficiency is; this issue is only happening with a select few individual plants and the tank is dosed with all of the usual NPKs and robust micro mix. Seeing how 95% of the tank is healthy and flourishing I do not really have any plans to start adjusting things just to make the problematic plants do better. For the near future I’m just going to leave things be and see if the buce does better as it adjusts to the tank.

I got tired of being able to see the corner through the tank so I painted the back glass white. I should have taken the photo with the pump off so that the camera didn’t pick up such a wild prism effect haha