Quick Shrimp Query

[Asp]

I'm setting up a nano on my desk with a view to having a few shrimp to entertain me on long haul essay/revision sessions now uni is starting back up.

I have a few plants that I would like to move into it from my main tank, however I know that my main tank has in the past been dosed with medicines that contain copper.

the plants are free floating, and have never rooted into the substrate, but would they be safe in a shrimp tank?

Obviously I would well wash them and it would be a few months before any shrimp are actually introduced, but would they contaminate the setup?

Thanks in advance.

 

[GrayScale]

The shrimp should definately be fine as long as you rinse the plants and they sit in your new tank for a bit. I'm pretty sure you can also get a test kit for copper or your lfs might be able to test for it just to be sure.

 

[saltynay]

Soak the plants for 2 weeks in a filtered tank running activated carbon. Even the smallest traces have been known to be deadly why take the chance.

 

[the biffster]

I'm setting up a nano on my desk with a view to having a few shrimp to entertain me on long haul essay/revision sessions now uni is starting back up.

I have a few plants that I would like to move into it from my main tank, however I know that my main tank has in the past been dosed with medicines that contain copper.

the plants are free floating, and have never rooted into the substrate, but would they be safe in a shrimp tank?

Obviously I would well wash them and it would be a few months before any shrimp are actually introduced, but would they contaminate the setup?

Thanks in advance.

how long is it since your tank was
dosed with the medication

 

[Asp]

In the end I chose not to risk it and planted with plants I'm sure have not been in contact with anything shrimp dodgy!

Its quite a nice little tank now, I'm experimenting with a energy efficient 11w 6400k daylight bulb in a cheap ikea desk lamp and the plants seem to be growing surprisingly well (Considering the lamp and bulb cost about a tenner this seems a good bet for low-tech nanos, if you pick low light plants!) but its only been running for 3 weeks or so, so i'll wait until I've tried it out over several months before deciding its the way forward...

I've got a nice healthy crop of lymnia stagnalis bombing around (and I've spotted a few eggs, so thats a good sign), so i'm thinking that its quite healthy at the moment.

At what point is it safe to start introducing shrimp?

 

[GrayScale]

What type of shrimp were you panning on keeping? They have such a low bio load and most are hardy enough to wihstand a pretty wide range of conditions as long as there's no copper present.

 

[Asp]

I haven't quite decided - it depends a lot on what is available.

Current front runners are blue pearl, snowball, tiger and sri lankan dwarf (as described here ) - The blue pearl being the only ones I can't get hold of at the moment (and naturally therefore the most appealing!)

I was more concerned with letting the plants get established and everything settled down before adding them. Are there any cheap shrimp that I could use as canaries that won't breed or cause problems when the real shrimp are added?

 

[GrayScale]

Red cherry shrimp work well. They may breed but you can always take them back to the lfs for a quick discount on the ones you want. If your worried about algea and don't want the rcs you could probably stick a couple snails in there but then you gotta deal with disposal of those. RCS would be my choice but that's because I have some and breed them.

 

[Asp]

As I said a few posts above, the tank does have a sizeable (and breeding) group of great pond snails (a food farm for my terrapins!) who are doing very well indeed - but most things I have read suggest that three weeks is not long enough to correctly mature a tank for shrimp, so I was being a bit cautious.

 

[saltynay]

RCS can survive in pretty much any conditions from 5-35C in disgusting water quality with very little food. If you wanted really resilient shrimp then you could get halocardinia sp. They are what you find in bioballs they survive in pretty much any water conditions without food for several years slowly starving to death. Most shrimp require full cycling what you can buy are some amano shrimp which don't breed in freshwater and are herbivorous to test the tank for shrimp compatibility. They also look cool as the females are giants compared to most microshrimp species.