Good small tank for a few shrimp and snails

[Aqua67]

Can anyone recommend a good small tank and filter for less than 10 shrimp and a small amount of pond snails, ramshorns and some amphipods? I have a small 2.5 gallon Topfin desktop aquarium and the filter just took a dive on me. I can’t get it to work and never really loved it anyhow since it barely moved the surface water. I’m ready to replace this little tank. Thanks so much for any recommendations.

 

[Colin_T]

10 or 20 gallon tank with an air operated sponge filter would work.

Have you cleaned the topfin filter and impellor assembly?

 

[Aqua67]

Hi Colin_T, I never liked that little filter. It barely moved surface water and the intake was stubby, only going down about 1/4 of the way to the bottom. It was given to me when I purchased another tank, so I guess I can’t complain too much. The filter doesn’t appear to come apart and I don’t want to break it. It went to a small hexagon shaped 2 gallon aquarium. We had a power outage and when power came back on the little pump was no longer moving water at all so I decided I was done with it.

While I was out running around for work I picked up a small 5 gallon tank and I have a small TopFin PF10 Silentstream filter that is more like a normal filter. I can take it apart easily and clean the impeller, etc. I’ve never been one to use air pumps in my tanks, although the most recent one I purchased used came with one so I have been using it on that tank. On this little 5 gallon tank I am now looking for a small sponge to put on the intake. Right now I’ve only got 6 shrimp in the tank, but if they begin to breed I would like to keep babies from getting sucked up. Plus, I’d like to give them additional grazing area.

So now I’m looking for small pre-filters to stick on the intake of this small filter. What I find in the stores have a hole that is too big for this small filter’s intake tube. Looks like I may need to make my own although I’d rather buy one ready to go.

Here is a pic of the new little unheated shrimp tank. Everything has been transferred over from the smaller tank. I’ll leave half the floor bare on the right side. The tiny filter media was placed inside the new filter along with the new filter cartridge that fits this new little filter.

The tank has one spindly water sprite, a dwarf sag, lots of floating hornwort and a clump of java moss. There is a piece of cholla wood, some catalpa leaves and a few alder cones. I also have a holey-block made of ceramic to which I’ve glued some taiwan triangle moss. There is also a few stems of anacharis that have been picked over pretty well by the amphipods. When I switched tanks I moved most of the amphipods to a new container to continue colonizing. Only a few of the snails were brought into this new tank also. Many of those went with the excess amphipods.

 

[Colin_T]

Get a cylindrical sponge for an internal power filter and put a rubber band on each end. The rubber bands will stop the sponge coming off the intake tube and the sponge will help stop shrimp being sucked into the filter.

 

[Aqua67]

I found a Fluval Edge pre-filter that is small enough to work well on the intake tube in this little tank. I put it on yesterday and already have shrimp hanging out on the pre filter. Then I also got some fine (and thin) filter sponge for an internal cannister Fluval filter and I placed them in front of the plastic piece that holds the filter media from the out flow. It is the last thing the water passes through before going back into the tank. I’m happy now that I’ve got a lot more area for the biological filtration to take place.

I have many oak trees here at my house and yesterday I picked out a dried leaf that fell last year into the tank after rinsing it well. I already saw shrimp investigating that also.

Thank you Colin_T.