Is there anything I should know about starting a shrimp tank?

[pugsandseals]

Very excited! Had a tiny 8 litre tank for a few months now. Tried it as a hospital tank but it was never very successful so I've decided to use it for shrimps. Bought some tiny plants today including a moss ball @ £4.50 - just wanting to know if I need to do anything to cycle the tank like I would for fish? Having had single fish in there before I think I can be fairly certain it has already peaked, but I'm a worrier! Shall I feed the tank for a bit?

Ooh, and what do shrimps eat?

Oh and one more question - when I water change should I always use fresh water or would I be better off taking some from DD's 180 litre tank?

8 litre? Hmm, that might be a bit tiny even for shrimp, I'd try it with a few cheapo river shrimp first before you spend any money on cherry shrimp or anything.

Yes, you will need to cycle the tank first before adding the shrimp. How long ago was the fish in there? Filter bacteria die off pretty quickly without a source of ammonia. What sort of filter have you got? And do you know the wattage of the heater?

Tiny planted tanks can look so amazing. I used to have a half-litre tank with tiny plants in, no livestock or anything, but it looked brilliant- makes a nice change from house plants.

You can get shrimp pellets from most specialist aquatic stores.

It's one of those with the seperate area at the back for the filter sponges & currently has a blue & a white juwel sponge in there cut to size. I agree it looks great just with plants! The plan was is to try some cherry shrimp & if there are any signs of them not doing well, transfer them straight into DD's tank as I wouldn't want to harm them & her tank is suitable (no fish bigger than platys).

Shall I try the stocking trick to cycle the tank then? We have been adding water from the main tank for a while now so I'm hoping that has done a fair amount of the work for us!

It was sold as a Betta tank on ebay & I have to admit I was originally expecting something a bit bigger. May well be more like 10-12 litres if you include the area in the back compartment too, but even so it is still smaller than I was imagining it would be!

Probably about 3 months since fish were in there btw.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about your other tank. In that case, all you need to do is take some sponge from the mature tank and stick it in the new one- hey presto, a mature filter and you're good to go You've also got the safety net of having somewhere to move the shrimp to so you can afford to cut a few corners in this case.

Doh - why didn't I think of that?