Need help giving ecospehere shrimp a good home

[DAPARROT]

I was given this shrimp ecosphere as a present, and I need help getting the Opae Ula shrimp set up in a proper tank. I am pretty much completely new to keeping aquariums but I want to make sure that the shrimp have a good life.

 

I would like a 5 gallon tank, unless a different size is better. I don't have a specific tank in mind so any recommendations would be appreciated.

 

If a specific substrate is needed that would be good to know, sources for good volcanic rocks and coral pieces would also be great.

 

If you have a specfic brand or source for food that is good for the shrimp it would be nice to know that too.

 

Guides for setting up the tank and moving the shrimp over would be great, I can find a lot of guides on how to care for the shrimp, but not much on how to get them out of their current bad living conditions.

 

Last thing, the shrimp are currently in a transport jar, should I put them in the ecosphere bubble while I get a larger tank set up or will that make it harder to transfer them when the tank is ready? Images attached for the available containers.

 

Edit: I found a tank that is exactly what I was looking for, the filter is removable but it also has a cover that it says will keep shrimp safe. I added a picture of it to the post, is it safe or should I get a proper shrimp-safe filter?

Edited August 20 by DAPARROT
Adding new information/questions

[Tired.]

Hello! Good news: these little guys are very easy to care for, even easier than most houseplants, and have very simple needs. Hoping yours are still doing okay, that one in the photo looks pretty stressed.
(Please disregard any double-spaces, my computer has an issue.)

 

First up, opae ula don't want a filter. Their larvae are planktonic, and will be sucked in by the filter and disturbed by the water motion. They also generally don't need a heater. The only equipment you  need is the tank, lid, and a source of light, and that source can be indirect window light.

 

I personally recommend at least a 3-gallon tank for them so they have room to move around. Any tank of that size or larger, as long as it isn't the spherical sort that only has a tiny amount of surface water exposed to the air, will work, and even the spherical ones are fine if you don't fill it all the way. A fairly cheap and straightforward option is to go to your local pet store and pick up a standard, rectangular, plastic-rimmed 5gal. Petsmart also sells what they call a "shrimp and plant oasis", on an endcap near the fish section and under the plants for mine, which comes in 3gal and 5gal form. Pretty little tanks that come with a filter you won't need, a nice black pebble substrate, a black background, an acceptable lid, and a light. Don't fill them up quite all the way, as the lid has large gaps around the edges. 1/2" or more below the edge of the tank will be fine. Those, or the regular rectangle, would be my recommendation, but again you can use anything you like the look of.

 

Any inert shrimp-safe substrate will work. Black will give you the best color, so people typically use black sand. Avoid painted gravel.

 

You'll also want to try for black lava rock as most of your rockwork, as that, again, gives them the best color and makes them stand out the most. Anywhere that sells the rock for aquascaping should be good. I unfortunately can't help you there, as I haven't had cause to buy lava rock in years. They do usually need some limestone (which includes but isn't limited to coral skeleton) in the tank, but they need very little- a couple pebbles will do it. How much you get beyond that is up to you. You want to have enough rock that it stacks on itself, with plenty of caves and nooks for hiding places. I've heard anecdotal reports that they may not breed if they don't have a dark enough place in the rockwork to go into, so keep that in mind with aquascaping. A reasonably nice-looking heap is the usual approach.

 

For food, I'd buy a shrimp food so you know it doesn't have any copper traces. Aim for something with protein, not an algae wafer or the like, since feeding them is to give them protein- they find all the algae in the tank on their own. Or you can give them a tiny dead (fresh) bug now and then. I never feed mine because they get the occasional gnat or mosquito that dies in there. If you swat a mosquito, there you go, that's opae food!

 

Normally you'd want to let your tank mature for awhile before adding shrimp, so it grows algae and biofilm. In this case, I'd say set the tank up, make sure the salt has been mixed in well enough (some brands are best left for 24 hours after mixing and before using), then slowly acclimate the shrimp over. Drip acclimate them with some airline tubing, if possible.

 

Put their entire container in there, open, so they can make use of any biofilm growing on the inside. You can remove the container once algae has grown on the tank's rocks.

 

If you've been reading, I'm guessing you're aware of this, but I'm saying it anyway: you need salt meant for a saltwater aquarium, not salt to use in treating freshwater fish for illness. Salt for a saltwater aquarium, especially if it's for a reef, will work regardless of brand. If your local fish store has a saltwater section, you might be able to ask them if you can pay them a couple bucks for a couple cups of whatever salt they're currently using to mix the water. You need about 1/4 cup of salt per gallon of water for the salinity that opae like.

 

It's a good idea to have a small amount of water, maybe just a pint or a couple cups, on hand for emergency shrimp holding in case something contaminates the tank. Separate it out when you mix the water and put it in a sealed water bottle (specifically a water bottle if possible, something human drinking water would be stored in) for later.

 

Another thing you probably know, again just in case: use distilled, RO, or RODI water for them. Both to mix the water in the first place, and to top off evaporation.

 

Are you in the US? I might be able to send you some salt, some algae scrapings, and maybe a bit of macroalgae (seaweed) from my tank if you want.

 

Lastly: if you want more opae ula, petshrimp.com sells them, or you can often find them up on eBay, Etsy, or Aquabid from hobbyists whose shrimp have bred. Ideally you want a breeding group, which requires, of course, a minimum of one male and one female. They're quite hard to sex by appearance as far as I know, so getting at least 6 gives you solid odds at having at least one of each sex.

[DAPARROT]

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

Hoping yours are still doing okay, that one in the photo looks pretty stressed.

They have been doing much better, all of them have more red now

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

First up, opae ula don't want a filter. Their larvae are planktonic, and will be sucked in by the filter and disturbed by the water motion. They also generally don't need a heater. The only equipment you  need is the tank, lid, and a source of light, and that source can be indirect window light.

I did end up getting a small sponge filter for them along with a valve for the pump to reduce the flow. I read on other guides both here and on other shrimp forums that even if they technically don't need a filter, having one still makes the nitrogen cycle in the tank more robust and that a sponge filter won't hurt them

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

I personally recommend at least a 3-gallon tank for them so they have room to move around.

I got a nice 5-gallon tank from my local aquarium store, it came with a good lid and a led light that I ended up not using since it needed to be supported by the filter. The tank gets indirect sunlight anyway, so it shouldn't be needed.

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

Any shrimp-safe substrate will work. Black will give you the best color, and people typically use black sand. Avoid painted gravel. You'll also want to try for black lava rock as most of your rockwork, as that, again, gives them the best color and makes them stand out the most. Anywhere that sells the rock for aquascaping should be good. I unfortunately can't help you there, as I haven't had cause to buy lava rock in years.

I wasn't able to get black aragonite substrate but that doesn't bother me. I did find some nice rocks that will give them good spots to hide. 1 black and 2 red

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

For food, I'd buy a shrimp food so you know it doesn't have any copper traces. Aim for something with protein, not an algae wafer or the like, since feeding them is to give them protein- they find all the algae in the tank on their own. Or you can give them a tiny dead (fresh) bug now and then. I never feed mine because they get the occasional gnat or mosquito that dies in there. If you swat a mosquito, there you go, that's opae food!

Sounds like I need to get different food then. My local aquarium store gave me a half-empty bottle of flakes made from black soldier fly larvae but the ingredient list includes copper sulfate.

 

Are there any specific brands that you would recommend?

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

Normally you'd want to let your tank mature for awhile before adding shrimp, so it grows algae and biofilm. In this case, I'd say set the tank up, make sure the salt has been mixed in well enough (some brands are best left for 24 hours after mixing and before using), then slowly acclimate the shrimp over. Drip acclimate them with some airline tubing, if possible.

 

Put their entire container in there, open, so they can make use of any biofilm growing on the inside. You can remove the container once algae has grown on the tank's rocks.

How would drip acclimating them in the ecosphere work? It seems like I would have to remove a lot of the water and I'm not confident in my ability to correctly set up the tubing to only drip.

 

My plan was to use the syringe I got to collect water from the tank for testing to slowly mix the tank and ecosphere water ~5ml at a time, over however long it takes to properly mix them.

 

Is that a good plan? And if so at what point would the water be mixed enough to put the ecosphere in the tank?

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

If you've been reading, I'm guessing you're aware of this, but I'm saying it anyway: you need salt meant for a saltwater aquarium, not salt to use in treating freshwater fish for illness. Salt for a saltwater aquarium, especially if it's for a reef, will work regardless of brand. If your local fish store has a saltwater section, you might be able to ask them if you can pay them a couple bucks for a couple cups of whatever salt they're currently using to mix the water. You need about 1/4 cup of salt per gallon of water for the salinity that opae like.

 

It's a good idea to have a small amount of water, maybe just a pint or a couple cups, on hand for emergency shrimp holding in case something contaminates the tank. Separate it out when you mix the water and put it in a sealed water bottle (specifically a water bottle if possible, something human drinking water would be stored in) for later.

I did get some salt and RO water to mix my own brackish water. I had some trouble with salt not dissolving but it was only a small amount and the water got to 1.01sg. Its slightly lower than what is optimal for these shrimp but the water in their ecosphere has a lower salinity than that.

 

I mixed more water than I needed in a new 5 gallon bucket from home depot, and I've kept the excess in there. would it still be good for water changes or emergency shrimp holding? It was mixed about 3 weeks ago and I've kept a lid on the bucket whenever I didn't need to access the water.

 

50 minutes ago, Tired. said:

Are you in the US? I might be able to send you some salt, some algae scrapings, and maybe a bit of macroalgae (seaweed) from my tank if you want.

 

Lastly: if you want more opae ula, petshrimp.com sells them, or you can often find them up on eBay, Etsy, or Aquabid from hobbyists whose shrimp have bred. Ideally you want a breeding group, which requires, of course, a minimum of one male and one female. They're quite hard to sex by appearance as far as I know, so getting at least 6 gives you solid odds at having at least one of each sex.

Thank you for the offer, but I shouldn't need any of this. I was planning on moving the macroalgae from the ecosphere to the tank. When I do end up moving the shrimp to the tank would it be better to just pull the algae out with something, or to pour the contents of the ecosphere into the tank after all of the shrimp swim out of it?

 

Thank you for your help, I've found a few guides that have been helpful but a lot of them are old enough to make me worry a bit.

 

Here is a picture of the ecosphere and tank next to each other. I think the tank has too much substrate since I forgot to take the rocks into account properly when measuring how much to put in. (The bag had a guide on how much to put in by weight based on the amount of water in the tank) Is it a problem? I wouldn't think so since there is already plenty of space between the rocks and the water surface if the shrimp want to swim up there.

 

Edited Monday at 08:06 PM by DAPARROT
removed duplicated text

[Tired.]

A sponge filter provides a good place for beneficial bacteria to live, but your lava rocks do fill much the same role. Filter media is mainly only important in setups that don't have plenty of highly porous rock like that.

 

I would suggest whatever brand of shrimp food is generally recommended on here. Mine get various particles of whatever shrimp-safe fish food is in my hand when I think "hm, I should feed the shrimp".

 

MIxed saltwater (including brackish salinity) doesn't really change in any way that should be a problem, at least not on its own. The bucket isn't a problem over a short period, and probably would be fine over a long period- it's just that "this container is safe for human drinking water" is the easiest way to determine that a container is safe for storing aquarium creatures and/or their water. Just give it a good shake before using if it's been sitting for awhile.

 

You can quite easily lower the salinity of your mixed water. Just let it evaporate. Salt doesn't evaporate, so if you have a way to check the salinity, you can check the tank now and then until it's evaporated to a good salinity and then fill up the empty space with some of that stored water. Bear in mind that the swing-arm measuring devices, the ones with the white pointer thingy in them, can be pretty inaccurate. Look closely for bubbles stuck to the arm, and measure more than once, if using one of those.

 

To acclimate the shrimp, you'll want to pour the whole contents of the sphere into a larger container. You can then place the empty sphere into the tank while acclimating the shrimp.

 

Transferring water a bit at a time with a syringe will work fine, but dripping will make the process much less trouble for you, since it removes the manual aspect. You want to at least double the volume of water in your acclimation container, ideally more.

 

Old opae care guides should still work fine. Their care hasn't changed- porous rocks and substrate in a container with saltwater roughly half the salinity of ocean water, provide light, feed very infrequently, minimal to no water changes. I say they're easier than houseplants because you can over- or under-water houseplants, whereas your opae tank has an easy water requirement of "keep it full", and because their light requirement is "some" rather than any specific and possibly high amount.

 

I'm not sure you actually have macroalgae there. It looks like a filamentous microalgae. Which will still work fine, mind you. That black rock also looks from the photos like an igneous rock (one formed from lava) but not what's usually called "lava rock", though again, it'll be fine. You have a good bit of porous rock.

 

Cute little setup! That's a fine amount of substrate. I would personally add more water, as more water volume means more stability, and you could add more rock if you wanted. Opae don't need a ton of open water, and don't really care about vertical swimming space, as they tend to swim horizontally.

[DAPARROT]

4 minutes ago, Tired. said:

You can quite easily lower the salinity of your mixed water. Just let it evaporate. Salt doesn't evaporate, so if you have a way to check the salinity, you can check the tank now and then until it's evaporated to a good salinity and then fill up the empty space with some of that stored water. Bear in mind that the swing-arm measuring devices, the ones with the white pointer thingy in them, can be pretty inaccurate. Look closely for bubbles stuck to the arm, and measure more than once, if using one of those.

So I don't want to lower the salinity of my mixed water. The water in their ecosphere is close to the minimum acceptable salinity for these shrimp according to the guides I've found, and I want it to be slightly higher in their tank. The ecosphere water has a salinity of around 1.008 sg compared to my mixed water at around 1.01 sg. I measured both with a refractometer. Most guides I've found say that the optimal salinity is half seawater at 1.011 sg

 

6 minutes ago, Tired. said:

To acclimate the shrimp, you'll want to pour the whole contents of the sphere into a larger container. You can then place the empty sphere into the tank while acclimating the shrimp.

Wouldn't this stress the shrimp more than acclimating them in the ecosphere? My plan with the syringe was to take water out of the ecosphere and then replace it with water from the tank until they get mixed enough. I made a spreadsheet to calculate this that takes into account that I will be removing some mixed water so the plan was to just check off rows on it until it says I have the percentage of tank water that I need.

 

10 minutes ago, Tired. said:

I'm not sure you actually have macroalgae there. It looks like a filamentous microalgae. Which will still work fine, mind you. That black rock also looks from the photos like an igneous rock (one formed from lava) but not what's usually called "lava rock", though again, it'll be fine. You have a good bit of porous rock.

 

Cute little setup! That's a fine amount of substrate. I would personally add more water, as more water volume means more stability, and you could add more rock if you wanted. Opae don't need a ton of open water, and don't really care about vertical swimming space, as they tend to swim horizontally.

Might have used the wrong name for the algae yeah. I really just meant that I was going to just use the algae they already have instead of getting them new algae.

 

I'll probably raise the water level about an inch after I put the shrimp in to keep it lower while I am putting the ecosphere in the tank, but I don't want more rocks since stacking more rocks on what I already have would be less stable.

[Tired.]

Ah, I should have specified; I meant to raise the salinity after the shrimp are in. Really, I'd suggest lowering it for now, to be closer to the salinity in the sphere. Evaporation, topping up with salty water instead of pure distilled, can later lower it slowly enough to not stress them. They'll certainly take lower salinity, but if you can easily get it to ideal, you may as well.

 

Pouring the shrimp into a second container to acclimate will cause them some amount of stress, but not markedly more than acclimating them in the sphere. They won't like the repeated disturbance of the syringe in the sphere. Really, any sort of handling or disturbance of opae will unavoidably stress them out- they're very jumpy. Mine scatter, pale, and hide when I clean the front glass with a toothbrush. It just won't be enough to hurt them, considering it's relatively brief and then they go into a stable environment.

 

If you're willing to go to the trouble of acclimating them in the sphere, it'll certainly work. Though my suggestion there would be to take the simple approach of removing most of the water in the sphere and then slowly adding more. It won't hurt the shrimp to be in a tiny puddle for an hour or so.
(unless you really want to use the spreadsheet, in which case, that'll be fine. Any method by which you slowly replace old water with new is fine, some are just much simpler and less troublesome than others.)

 

 

[DAPARROT]

19 minutes ago, Tired. said:

If you're willing to go to the trouble of acclimating them in the sphere, it'll certainly work. Though my suggestion there would be to take the simple approach of removing most of the water in the sphere and then slowly adding more. It won't hurt the shrimp to be in a tiny puddle for an hour or so.

I think I will do this, I just want to avoid the stress of pouring them out of their container twice when I can just put the full ecosphere in the tank and let them swim out on their own instead. I only made the spreadsheet since I didn't think that taking most of the water out before slowly adding new water was a good idea.

 

Oh and one more thing that I haven't been able to find in any guides.

What concentration of calcium should their water have? The test kit I bought for it says my tank currently has 160-180 ppm which seems to be way too low, but it has been increasing while I've been waiting for the tank to cycle (it was lower earlier). I'm going to take a water sample to my local aquarium store so they can test it, but what concentration should I try to get before putting the shrimp in?

 

Thank you for your help, the guides have been great but they don't always say why to do something, so being able to talk directly to someone about it has been great.

[Tired.]

What salt did you mix the water up with? Was it all clumped up? I wonder if it might not have been quite the right salt, or if what failed to mix in was mostly calcium that should have been in there.

 

I'll be perfectly honest; I have no idea what calcium level mine are at, or what they want. I used a salt mix appropriate for a reef tank, meaning it has a fair amount of calcium, and they have some coral skeleton in the tank. That meant there would definitely be enough calcium, however much it is that they need, as fast-growing stony corals demand far more calcium than tiny shrimp.

 

Does your calcium testing method give accurate readings in brackish water? I'm not sure if methods designed for either fresh or saltwater will work in brackish, so you'd probably want to check to see if the package either says it works in both waters or gives a salinity at which it's accurate.

[DAPARROT]

12 minutes ago, Tired. said:

What salt did you mix the water up with? Was it all clumped up? I wonder if it might not have been quite the right salt, or if what failed to mix in was mostly calcium that should have been in there.

I used Instant Ocean salt, it was a bit clumped up but just squeezing the bag a bit broke it up so it might not have been clumped up in a bad way? I think it was just what salt does.

 

I'll ask about the testing kit accuracy when I bring in a water sample since I can't find that on the kit itself. Though the aragonite substrate is also supposed to help keep calcium levels up so if they keep rising I'll just wait for them to stabilize before putting the shrimp in.

[Tired.]

Do you know if it was Instant Ocean for fish-only tanks or for reefs? Fish-only usually has less calcium.

 

Salt /should/ all mix in when you start stirring it into water, aside from maybe a few grains at the bottom. It not doing that suggests it may have gotten moisture into it. Or, unrelated to the clumping, maybe they hadn't mixed the salt recently and the calcium had settled.

 

You probably want to wait for it to stabilize, depending on how slowly it's rising. You may be able to get an answer on the test kit accuracy via the ol' faithful approach of googling your question and seeing if people are discussing it already on a forum or Reddit.

[DAPARROT]

It doesn't say that it is for reefs, so it might just be from that. I was planning on getting the water tested tomorrow so if the store's tests also have it at a low concentration I'll ask them what do do about it.