This will document the (hopefully) successful growth of my new 10 gal shrimp tank!

Current Specs:
10 gallon tank
x2 10 watt CFL bulbs
HOB Quietflow 10 with covered intake
1 inch peat moss, 2 inches Black Beauty "Sand"

Current Plants:

x6 Wisteria from two sources
x3 Java fern
x4 Echinodorus Angustifolia 'Vesuvius'
x4 Crypt of some sort (probably the normal green one!)
Big clump of Java Moss
a clump of Peacock Moss


Current Inhabitants:
10 little Fire shrimp!
1 Otto Cat

Current Picture:


Older:

This took place on Monday, April 11th, 2011

First I added 1 inch of pre-soaked peat moss


Next was about two inches of Black Beauty substrate


Then, I planted three stems of Wisteria and two Java fern (held down above substrate by hooking a plant weight over them and burying the end of the hook)


All filled and ready to run:

Here are my little shrimplets right when they arrived! I took them out of their bag and put them in this cup for a 4 hour drip session


Not the best pic in the world, but here is one of the shrimp today, chilling on the Vesuvius


Another little shrimplet hanging out in the clump of Java Moss

Awesome pics! N great tank!!

__________________
------------------------------
35 gallon tank
4 ryukin goldfish (4 - 5 inches)

5.5 Gallon Planted tank
1 halfmoon betta
2 ADFs

awesome!

cool!

keep us posted on how it goes.

Cool. The Vesuvious' leaves may brown and die off due to the shift into your water. If the leaves turn a little brown it is okay. In a couple of weeks, new leaves should start growing in. When it happened to mine I pulled the plant up and peeled off the old brown leaves - carefully - once the new leaves were 5-6" long.

Oh good! I was really worried about it, that is exactly what is happening! Thanks for the reassurance that it's normal, I was about to pull a few and put them in different tanks to see if that helped any. I'll leave them then and hope for the best

What type of lighting do you have? Are they incandescent bulbs?

They were, I switched them out today for a pair of fluorescent ones. A bit lower wattage, but better light quality It looks so much nicer!

Lower wattage but better and more light output. i think its 15 watt CFL = 60 watt incandescent.

Post new pics of the new lights.

Sounds pretty good.

Sorry about the lack of updates, today's the last day of finals and then.... SUMMER!!! :P

Everyone in the tank is doing well, I can't believe how fast these little shrimp are growing! I've added a small Oto cat in the tank, to keep algae down and clean up the shrimp's leftover pellets (Ok, it was mainly because he was adorable, and I was getting some for my big tank!)

Here is the tank today: (sorry about the glare...I need to buy some curtains :P and ignore the blob of shrimp food on the floor...)



The clump of java moss in the back left will be tied to a piece of manzanita once it's done soaking! Oh! And the Vesuvious have stopped melting and started to put out some new growth, so I'll be taking out the dead leaves soon! The wisteria is growing great, nice and compact I was afraid of it getting leggy, but it's doing well and branching out on it's own!

Update:

There was a tragedy in the shrimp population :( The poor little guy wasn't acting right, and then was shortly dead. Everyone else is acting fine and dandy, so I'm hoping that it was an isolated event!

The next day, I changed things around a bit to add the piece of wood and a few crypts. I pulled the christmas moss and put it in another tank. It was too close to the peacock moss, I didn't want them to mix! o.0

There's a pic from a few minutes ago up in the first post
And here's some shrimp pics! If they'd cooperate and hold still a little more, they would be better, sorry!







For still being so tiny, I'm pretty impressed with their color

Sweet.