The water cleared up real quickly even without wc. This soil is so 'clean' compared to ADA.

This post has been edited by Bigboyz: Jan 17 2016, 10:42 AM


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ADA soil , you need do a number of large water change after initial setup , they are full of nutrients for plants.
Since the water clear up , it is time to seed the tank with algae.
Like what i doing, shrimps just love algae.

Wow. That's a lot of algae man. How long was the lights kept on to achieve that? Btw marimo ball also algae right? Can use marimo instead? At least it looks better.

marimo is moss right?

Wikipedia says it's algae. But slow growing tho.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marimo

it's type of algae
but not the one that shrimp can eat
shrimp loves eating soft algae
if you got yourself a hard algae
they might not even eat them

CRS ignore BBA

Icic. Thanks bro for the explanation. Algae also good for absorbing excess nutrients in the tank right.

yup
any type of plant/algae will use the water nutrients as food

Ok. Got it 👍.

Got a question to ask about plants. I got some new moss and Java fern. I'm afraid it may contain pesticides. How do I know it's safe? I left the plants and miss in a bucket and left a snail together. If the snail survived after 24 hours can I say that the plants is pesticide free?

Btw here's a pic of the shrimp feeding on some dried pumpkin. I left the pumpkin overnight and it shrank so much. I'm concern now it'll expand in the shrimp and cause them to explode! Lol.


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so fast you put in shrimps

Yes bro arrow. I was very impatient. I know shouldn't but I couldn't wait . Actually if u noticed the cloudy water photo when I add the soil also got some commando shrimps dy.

This post has been edited by Bigboyz: Jan 18 2016, 10:12 PM

Worried about plants with pesticides ?

well i always put them in a small glass jar with a bag of active charcoal overnight or 2.

if still worried I'll put a malayan into it to test, just one night and u can see how much one malayan can clean ( or poo ) esp when u place a plant with wood or wabikusa.

so far no shrimp was harmed till this day.

cheers

This post has been edited by icedlink: Jan 18 2016, 10:19 PM

Ok thanks for the tip bro. Thought of trying that but just realised I don't hv a net. Lol. Guess I need to get 1.

Setup 6 Jan 2016 , by 11 Jan water clear up , first hair algae seed in plus one spoon of baby shrimp food to fuel algae growth and feed the bacteria,
Light was on 24 hrs since day one, baby food was dose every alternative night since first dose at 1/4 spoon , by 18 Jan 2016, hair algae cover > 70% of the tank.
A week more or less , will test water for NO2 and trim some of the hair algae before first shrimp in.

Marimo is algae but not food to shrimp although their body do harbour lot of detritus which shrimp fond on.

This post has been edited by arrow: Jan 19 2016, 12:30 AM

Oh it's a new setup. I thought it was your previous setup. What shrimps will this new tank hold? Noticed that the base of both is different.

Didn't know shrimp eat pumpkin. I got pumpkin - I wanna try too. How to feed it? Cook it first? Dry it, or straight from the fridge to the tank?

What other fresh food/vegetables can feed the shrimp?

Ermm actually I'm not sure got any adverse effect anot Cozy I didn't have any shrimp food. So I try pumpkin lo. Lol... Anyway I just put in hot water to make it softer. Then throw in tank. But seriously I'm not sure if should feed them with pumpkin or not. So try at own risk. Lol. I'll get proper shrimp food this weekend.

hehe, we're all learning. I have multiple shrimp food, but its rather expensive. One small bottle between RM40 to RM60+ depending on the type.

Was thinking of supplementing with kangkung from the kitchen so as to reduce costs. I did that a few times - boil a leaf for 2 minutes, then put into the tank. I observe for 5 minutes and see the shrimps were not interested.

Two hours later I come back, I cannot find the leaf. I thought maybe stuck somewhere in the aquarium since its a planted tank. Tried it twice - twice also the leaf was nowhere to be found.

I'm not sure about feeding other fresh food - whether can feed barley, broccoli and so on. And for meat, can cut a small piece of raw fresh prawn (yes the one that you eat) since I see shrimps also eat dead fish or dead prawn (yeah, sometimes they die in the tank). Anyway, just a thought.

shrimp are scavenger
they will eat any thing

p/s:
good or not for their diet
they have to decide by their own