FaelynK

Hey there! Welcome to the madness! Not really familiar with that particular tank myself so a little GoogleFu showed me those grates you're referring to. It looks like those are part of a built in filter system? Is it possible to get in behind it and place sponge there? You're right, the babies are REALLY small. If you can get foam/ fine pore sponge either behind or in front of that grate blocking it, I'd think they'd be ok. Hopefully somebody else pipes up too, and I wish you luck!

Never been in this particular situation but if you have any time to prep, I'd think you'd be able to at least make any potential issues not quite as bad. Is the tank cycled and how's it set up? What type of filter, how's the water parameters, etc? I see you have almond leaves in, that will help with the food situation. I've heard snowflake food (soy hulls) doesn't go bad or spoil the water so that's another potential long term food. From all the reading I've seen, it's better to underfeed than overfeed anyways, so you've got a chance there. If you have the time, I'd do a water change on the last day possible to give it as long as it can. I've seen diy instructions on Google for auto top off systems to cancel out evaporation. Depending on your set up, perhaps you could set up a 5gal bucket as a sump to expand your water volume to keep the parameters stable longer. Alternate option, might not be the most popular but would guarantee survival- could you move the tank to your home?

Didn't get a chance to do the water change Saturday. Again, assuming I'm not colorblind, water test Sunday showed 7 pH, .25ppm ammonia, 2ppm nitrite, and 5ppm nitrate. Did a 2qt water change (approx 25%) and added a splash of the liquid bacteria back. Did another water change today, 5.5qts (approx 70%) as the test this morning showed .25ppm ammonia, ~3.5ppm nitrite and 5ppm nitrate. Added a fresh splash of bacteria and ferts. Tossed three pea size chunks of wonder shell in and added a thermometer (just in case since I don't have a heater). Found a hitchhiker, have no idea what it came in on. Hope it's the only one...

Looks like Monday is early! Surprisingly (at least to me) the tank is showing nitrates! If I'm reading these correctly, ammonia is at 1ppm, nitrite is 1ppm and nitrate is around 5ppm or so. (Side note: anybody else find it easier to read the colors from a photo than real life? Doing these tests makes me swear I'm colorblind!) It's a little late in the evening so I'll be doing a water change in the AM. Plan to leave the algae wafer debris just to keep the bacteria happy and make sure we're good and it wasn't a fluke reading. Now, to finally choose which color neos I want... really thinking pumpkins or snowballs... neither of which is common around here - everybody has reds or blues!

Hurray we have presence of nitrites! Ammonia had been climbing daily, peaked at 1ppm yesterday and has fallen to a touch over .5ppm with .25ppm of nitrites detected. No nitrates yet. Considering the tank is 6 days old, I'm thinking I owe it all to Fluker's Eco Clean and Godzilla for sharing his supplies. Monitoring will continue and algae pellet is still decaying. Maybe we'll have nitrates by Monday? Crossing fingers even if it doesn't do me any good since I can't buy critters. Silly lockdowns...

No water change yet. Probably pulled a few ounces doing tests but haven't topped or changed. Thought by leaving it alone I'd better see if the levels were changing. Ammonia is still rising with no presence of nitrites as of yet, which isn't too surprising, it's not barely a week old. No waterfall/HOB filter, but I did add an air stone and hook both it and my sponge up to the old (bigger) pump just for temporary circulation to disperse the decay a bit. Once it's cycled, I'll probably go back to the Hygger and sponge only. The Hygger is rated .11gpm vs the Imagitarium is .87gpm. Not a super fan of the Imagitarium though, I have to put some kind of cover over the entire tank as it splashes out the open area of the lid and the tank sits on a raw wood shelf. I did pull the filter completely apart when I first got it and it does look as if I could put media inside the bubble chamber. Not much but some, if there's need for carbon or anything. The plan was to also have a few species of moss in there but due to COVID, those aren't shipping for awhile. My hesitation of moving anything over from the turtle tank is salmonella contamination. If that wasn't in play, I'd move a couple plants and a shrimp or two in a heartbeat. Can't buy new ones either, LFSs have put a halt to all animal and plant sales due to social distancing issues. I'm pretty much resigned to wait. Not a big deal, I figured it would take at least a month to cycle anyways.

I'm OK with the squared off corners, but later down the line I might be a rounded one too. The plants are new from the LFS. I do have a mystery and a couple ghosts/macros in my turtle tank, but I kinda want to leave them in there. A ) they're the clean up crew cuz he is DIRTY and B ) the ammonia reading in the picture was actually from Monday evening, yesterday's reading was .5ppm and today's was 1ppm. Don't really want to sacrifice anybody...

A thought I just had... will be matter to my bacteria that I'm not dosing gH/kH+ right now? Will they be ok when I finally do? Don't want to get cycled and then crash myself because I was trying to space out my acquisitions.

So the new filter got here Friday evening. Got it hooked up using my old pump. Very noisy and a little too much pressure as that pump was for a 10gal so I put a valve in and turned it way down. Light and new pump got delivered early on Sunday and got them hooked up. The new little Hygger pump is only 1.5w and SO quiet, all I hear are the bubbles from the filter. The algae wafer I put in to start the cycle escaped the cup and has disintegrated all over everything. Eh, good start for biofilm I guess. Water test is already reading a touch of ammonia so we're on the way. Still don't have any shrimp mineral so no gH or kH since I'm using distilled. Had to take the plastic flap off the lid to attach my new light (7watt LED) so the filter got moved to the front for now, probably going to rearrange anyways because I'm starting to not like how crowded the stem plants are in the back. Even though they look to all be planted toward the left, the hornwort is actually planted on the right and just flopped. Might move the rocks forward just a schooch so I can stagger the stems better. Light is currently set for 50% strength blue and white running about 12 hrs to get this party started. A fine fog/ooze has definitely started to grow on all the food particles and little white puffs of algae or something is growing on some of the plant leaves. Picked up a small bottle of Aqueon plant ferts and dosed 1ml today. Just enough to keep them happy I hope until the bacteria start producing nitrates. I'll continue dosing that three times a week I think for the next while. Had planned on buying some homegrown mosses (fissadens fontanus, Xmas, Cameroon and subwassertang) but due to COVID the seller's area just got put on lock down and the shipment is indefinitely delayed.

Hurrah, tank is filled with scape, plants and 2gal DI water. Scape is Aqueon Shrimp and Plant substrate, dragon stone, anacharis and hornwort. More plants to be added as I can afford them or whenever the LFS gets a shipment. Thinking long term, the current plants will be replaced by L. Aquatica "Ambulia" and some type of low growth. Added a capful of my liquid bacteria I use in the turtle tank to help jump start and used an algae wafer as "waste". Is there something that might work better? I don't have pure ammonia. Got a good piece of news, my new filter is out for delivery! I'll hook that up as soon as it gets here using my old pump and just deal with the noise until the new one gets here on Monday. Hope the plants will be ok till then as my light is in the same box but there's plenty of ambient from the turtle tank and brooder box.

Just documenting the journey... comments, pointers, opinions welcome! Been planning this for weeks and hit a couple bumps on the way. Originally planned to convert my turtle's old 10g to a shrimp tank but it has been commandeered as a baby chicken holding tank for when their brood box gets cleaned. Not getting that tank back for several more weeks, so change of plans. (That one will get shrimpified later on!) Slowly been accumulating scape items, substrate, etc. Light is still in the mail along with a smaller sponge filter and pump as I picked up a 3g cube on sale, pictures of those will be posted upon arrival. Still debating getting other items, budgets a little tight right now so I'll probably just start the cycle and do more later. Need to get new tank maintenance items as I don't want to use the turtle stuff in the shrimp tank. Ew, salmonella. Just finished scrubbing my dragon stone, wow did I underestimate how dirty that was! Started last night for a couple hours, soaked overnight, scrubbed a couple more hours this morning. Could probably scrub some more but I'm breaking the finer ledges and I'm using a clay substrate in this tank anyways so I'm calling it "clean". The bag was net weight 9lbs, after scrubbing about a million pounds of dirt and clay out it weighs in at 9lbs 12ozs. Think I got my money's worth! Guess I'm gonna go try to scape it, back with more pictures later!

I actually wasn't planning to use a heater for mine. From what I understand the higher the temp the more active, therefore shorter lifespans plus more risk of bacterial disease. My room temp is 70-72, which should be just fine for them, and my snails will like it better too. 78°F is the de facto "I have no idea" recommendation at my LFS as it's the general tropical temp.

No worries mate! Moving is always "fun". Yeah, I remember titration from science class way back when, the fact that I never got the starting color just threw me for a loop! 🙃 I did make sure to cap and invert a time or two after every drop, although I admit by the third time I was just capping and giving a half hearted shake. I'm totally on board with RO or DI water, however the transport and storage would cause me issues and I can't afford an RO setup. Perhaps I could just get some GH+ to add in at least the required minerals up to preferred levels, or I might just bite the bullet and get a ZeroWater. I've been looking at those anyways for the hoomans, plus side - shrimps! Either way, I've got a starting point. I'm slowly accumulating the equipment, I'm going to go buy substrate next week. Gonna go Walstad I think with a large grain sand/ small grain gravel cap but I can't find any stones to use for my aquascape that I like that don't cost a zillion dollars with shipping. Any way I slice it though, this tank isn't even gonna be cycling for at least a month. 😕 Chickies come first... 🐣

Thanks! And looks like a welcome back is in order to you!

@dirtyfeetindeedNot that I'm an expert on the topic but here's my 2cents. I have ghosts and they don't look like that. You are correct, ghosts tend to have a very angular hump and are much clearer than yours. I think you've got a snowball. Congrats! If you got it from a LFS, they sometimes do mark species wrong, or their suppliers do and they don't know to fix it. I hope someone else chimes in as well, but either way, good luck with the little buddy!