Considering Feeding my MTS...

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Vircomore

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Aug 4, 2010
Messages
534
Location
PA, USA
So, I've had my 26gal up and running for about 6 months now, and I've gotten quite good at caring for its inhabitants (no fatalities for quite some time, and no diseases or tank issues since it cycled).

So since I'm currently living in a rather small apartment, I'm thinking my best bet for a 2nd tank would be a nano (6-8gal) shrimp tank.

I've been looking at the new generation of the Fluval Nano aquariums coming this holiday season (Fluval EBI, Fluval Flora, Fluval SPEC (too small)).

But I'm looking for any other suggestions that could save me some money over these all-in-one systems.

Small tanks?
Recommended Substrates? Mosses?
Filters? Lights?

Also, good stands for small tanks?


Thanks in advance.
 
I've got a 5g Marineland Eclipse hexagonal tank set up for RCS. It's got the filter and light built in and I've got a small heater in the tank. I tore apart the filter cartridge apart and filled it with canister filter foam. The DIY filter coupled with the biowheel works pretty well. You can pick up the tank for about ~$40-$50. It's got a lid to keep the shrimp in the tank too. I've fried a few RCS under my lights because they flipped out of the tank onto the lid.

I don't think there's a plant shrimp like more than java moss. You don't need much light either. A simple CFL would be plenty.

Most shrimp stand out better against dark substrates. Neocaridina heteropoda (RCS and the other colors) are naturally brown. They turn darker against dark backgrounds for camouflage. The captive-bred color morphs also do this, but they turn bright red, yellow, white, or blue instead of brown.

If you don't go with an all-in-one system, go for a 10g with a glass canopy and a sponge filter. I constantly have to clean RCS out of my power filter.

Just about any halfway decent piece of furniture should be able to hold a nano tank. My 5g maybe weighs 45lbs.
 
Sounds good. I've actually been eying the ML 5g hex kit, since it's currently on sale at PetSmart. :)

Did you still have to put a sponge over the Marineland hex's intake? or is it small enough to not suck up shrimp?

Are there any pros/cons to gravel vs. sand in terms of keeping shrimp and mosses?
 
I haven't put any sponge over the intake. I may lose the occasional shrimp, but I haven't seen any chopped shrimp in the tank. They get into the AC50 on my 20L all the time and I've seen one dead shrimp while cleaning the filter.

My tank is a mess at the moment, but the shrimp don't seem to care. I traded my wife a 20H for the 5g. She used it for a betta so it's got PFS, some plastic plants, and it had a castle until I put it in the 20H. I dropped a fist-sized wad of moss in the tank and added 5-10 shrimp over a couple weeks. They're readily breeding. I had enough to trade a bunch of RCS for some blue pearl shrimp without really making a dent in the population.

If I get motivated, I'm going to switch the white PFS out for some Black Blast that I used on my 40B. It doesn't make a difference as far as the moss goes, but I'd speculate that shrimp would like smaller sand better than larger smooth gravel. RCS like to have something to hold onto. They can actually stress out and die if they're kept in a bare habitat.
 
Ok, an update:

I went to Petsmart and picked up the 5g hex, 50w heater, foam to replace the cartridge, and 10lbs of black sand. Got the sand washed (which basically just turned everything it touched black) and got the tank set up with just the substrate and water, and it's looking good.

I'm definitely going to have to make a trip and pick up a cfl to replace the crappy bulb it included.

Letting it run for a night and then adding ammonia and a filter bag of biomax from my canister to get the cycle off right, with any luck I'll be looking to get some moss and shrimp after thanksgiving holiday. :D

One question, I'm guessing the easiest way to do pwc on this thing without having to tear it apart would be siphon-out, pitcher-in?
 
The Eclipse 5g hex is supposed to come with a CFL. It's just a U-tube CFL instead of a spiral. It's a decent bulb for the tank. The Marineland replacement is a bit expensive so I hope no one switched bulbs on you.

I converted the factory cartridge over to foam. Here's how:

1. Tear the blue mesh off the factory cartridge. It's tough to get off. I still have little clumps of blue on the frame, but it doesn't hurt anything.

2. Dump out the carbon. You can leave it if it's fresh. I started with an old cartridge.

3. Cut the foam into strips that will fit snugly into the cartridge frame. Don't compress the foam, but you don't want gaps either.

That's about it. I rarely have to clean the cartridge, especially with the shrimp.

For PWCs, I use two pieces of airline for siphons. They don't suck up shrimp. I have a handy animal crackers bucket that use for the waste water. I just start the siphons and gravity stops them when the water levels are equal. I generally do a PWC every other week.
 
Yea, unfortunately the one I got came with a 13w Incandescent pre-installed. I'll have to take it apart and see what kind of space there is to see if I can just go down and pick up a generic U-shape CFL and see if it will fit.

Apparently according to some reviews I've found - Marineland actually gets away with selling two versions, one with incandescent and one with CFL.
 
Interesting. Sorry to hear you got the inferior version. A spiral CFL will do fine too, as long as it doesn't touch the clear plastic lid.
 
Yea, Petco has U-shape 10w CFLs for $10, and if they don't work then Amazon sells the actual Marineland 10w UCFLs for $10 as well.

Did you happen to put any kind of background on your hex? I was thinking of getting some black background and doing either just the back panel, or the back 3 panels (it's on a nightstand against a wall so the back panels wont get viewed often).

Also, I'd like to put something structural in the middle of the hex just so that the Java Moss can lattice up instead of just being along the bottom. Right now I'm considering taking one of the extra decorations (a rigid plastic plant that's basically just huge blades of grass going up about 12 inches) and just weaving the moss into it.
 
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