shrimp rocks... good, bad, or indifferent???

[Magnum Man]

so, I'd like to add some colored shrimp to a few of my community tanks... I have a set of 10 gallons I'm hoping to start breeding them in ( I have Cherries going right now ) and put about 6 into my Hillstream tank, that seems to be working, so far... these community tanks are all soft water... I have bought shrimp rocks before... and in the adds, the rocks are covered in shrimp, like they go to them, and eat them... I've never seen a shrimp on one, and think probably they slowly dissolve minerals in the water... my breeding tanks are currently RO / hard water blend, being mostly hard well water... wondering if the rocks are added to my soft water community tanks, after planting shrimp, if the shrimp are likely to find these rocks, and get the minerals they need, or if a powdered / liquid supplement would be better... I'm not wanting to severely change my tank water hardness because of the fish... the Cherry shrimp have survived for the last couple weeks in the soft Hillstream tank, with no supplements... if they survive, that's great, but even better if they would reproduce, even if the babies became a food supplement for the fish...
... I have a starter group of orange, and another of yellow coming next week, with intention of putting 2 groups of 4 in the 10 gallon breeding tanks, and a group of 4 of each into 2 different community tanks... all the tanks have lots of cover, and food sources for them...
... thoughts on the rocks in softer water tanks???

 

[MaloK]

I imagine these rocks are made from cuttlebones, In small quantity, I don't think it could be enough to change the water chemistry that much in larger tanks.

In my tanks the shrimps never touch it much and it doesn't dissolve rapidly. It also didn't change alkalinity... But it's considered as a good supplement, I'm leaving it in to see how it does long term.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Most rocks can get a coating of algae. The shrimp will eat it. So can the substrate and plants. My blue dreams went into a insanely heavily planted tank. It had algae building before the shrimp went in. Now that is minimal and I feed soilent green, spirulina from Ebo Aquaristik, kensfish mini veggies sticks with calcium and occasionally an algae wafer. I also usually bring 24 shrimp to every monthly fish club meeting for the auction.

This past Jan. I I sold 48 shrimp as my club has an annual auction open to the public every year the and I put another 2 bags of 12 into that auction. My water is pH 7.0 from the tap and on the soft side- in the low 80s ppm-wsie for TDS. In my tanks with lots of plants, shrimp and assassin snails I add a small amount of SeaChem Equilibrium as most of what is in it is needed in these tanks as it gets used up easily.

However, I have only ever altered my tank parameters to accomodate a species in one tank. I had Altum angels in pH 6.0 and TDS in the 50 ppm range or a tad lower. I mix my own RO/DI water to maintain the tank at the desired parameters.