# New tank - When to introduce shrimp?



## fairgate

Hi all, I have a day old planted tank with a HOB filter, the filter media is 3 weeks old and was started with some mature water from a friends tank, some of the water in the new tank is also bacteria laden to help kickstart things.

I'm a bit worried about buying shrimp so soon, how long do you wait before stocking a new tank?


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## MsNemoShrimp

I would really wait at least 1 week before adding shrimps. If you could, get some cheap feeder fish to cycle to tank just to test if the fish could even stand it for a week. Make sure your pH, gH/kH and temp is in the range of the types of shrimps you wanna add


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## jeremyTR

Why add fish when his tank is no where near completely cycled? I don't get it. Just cuz you added the filter from a cycled tank does not make your tank completely cycled and ready for fish off the bat.

Save the fish. Cycle your tank without them by feeding your tank with fish food. Wait for an ammonia spike along with a nitrite spike then wait for them to drop. Because of your filter you'll get the cycle going faster but you'll wanna make sure you keep feeding the tank with fish food for it to break down into ammonia and give the bateria to stay alive with. Wait for the spike and drop. But also make sure yu spike your ammonia to 3.0ppm.

At least that's what I was told and that's what I did. Worked good. No ammonia or nitrite spike after adding 15 shrimp.


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## acitydweller

Add pure ammonia to the tank and wait for the levels to clear up themselves. Pure ammonia shouldn't bubble when shaken up. Nitrates should be at 0 at the end of the cycle...

Search on fish less cycling. A densely planted tank may skew the results since they feed off the water column... If sparcely planted, then disregard...

Any shrimp you add before this point can be considered money and lives tossed away as they won't survive.


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## jeremyTR

I think you mean nitrItes should be at zero. NitrAtes aren't dangerous unless they're in really high levels. At least that's what I thought.


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## acitydweller

jeremyTR said:


> I think you mean nitrItes should be at zero. NitrAtes aren't dangerous unless they're in really high levels. At least that's what I thought.


Your right. Thanks for that 

Contrary to cycling convention...

Shrimp have very little bioload... Intact, the snails actually will poop more than shrimp in my tanks. Anywho, what I've done in my shrimp bowl was use Eco complete substrate, heavily planted, added snails and waited a week before my cherries were added... Zero casualties...

All water used was treated tap and everything has been golden ever since. The water quality only spiked up to 230 TSS once and a wc brought that down to 160.

crs, crystal snow whites, CBS, and tangerine shrimp live there now... The key was getting bioembedded substrate, being heavily planted and not adding a bioload that would overwhelm the tank. Mind you the tank swings wildly given it's only a 1.5 gallon... You ought to have a much easier time with the larger water volume. This was another way to cycle fishlessly.


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## chicken

jeremyTR said:


> Why add fish when his tank is no where near completely cycled? I don't get it. Just cuz you added the filter from a cycled tank does not make your tank completely cycled and ready for fish off the bat.


I'm not trying to knock fishless cycling, but I have cycled tanks many times by moving a filter or filter media from an established, healthy tank. 

However, i do think it is too soon to add shrimp. Not only does the tank need to be fully cycled, but shrimp do better in a mature tank that has had time to build up a layer of biofilm.


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## somewhatshocked

Depending upon the type of shrimp you plan to house and how many you hope to get, it's not a good idea to add shrimp right away, necessarily. I usually don't add sensitive shrimp until the tank has been running for 4-6 weeks. Biofilm, as mentioned above, is one of the secrets to great shrimp colonies.

If you're housing Neo shrimp? Waiting 3-4 weeks should probably be okay. Just make sure you have plenty of moss from an established tank for them to enjoy.


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## fairgate

acitydweller said:


> Add pure ammonia to the tank and wait for the levels to clear up themselves.


How do you add pure ammonia? Can it be bought?



> Depending upon the type of shrimp you plan to house


Can you recommend a hardy variety, I'm new at this and don't plan on keeping anything fancy (yet) or huge amounts.


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## MartyMA

If you were in the US, the gold standard is Ace Janitorial Strength Ammonia. It contains 10% ammonia hydroxide. Whatever you can find, make sure it contains no soaps or fragrances.


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## acitydweller

read here

10% ammonium hydroxide solution, *no other ingredients*...


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## ItsDubC

As already mentioned, you can add shrimp very soon if you've planted heavily enough. I have read of ppl even adding fauna the exact same day they set up a heavily planted tank w/ no casualties, tho I personally am not that ballsy  I always wait at least a week to let the plants settle in and start growing before adding shrimp. If you don't have sufficient plant mass, float some hornwort until your planted plants grow in.

I've only ever used fishless cycling in my non-planted tanks. Talk about requiring patience lol


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## diwu13

You can instant cycle shrimp tanks as long as you have preexisting biomedia from another tank. Shrimps have very very low bioload so as long as you don't feed them for a few days your BB will build up enough for the shrimps in ~1 week haha.


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## MsNemoShrimp

jeremyTR said:


> Why add fish when his tank is no where near completely cycled? I don't get it. Just cuz you added the filter from a cycled tank does not make your tank completely cycled and ready for fish off the bat.
> 
> Save the fish. Cycle your tank without them by feeding your tank with fish food. Wait for an ammonia spike along with a nitrite spike then wait for them to drop. Because of your filter you'll get the cycle going faster but you'll wanna make sure you keep feeding the tank with fish food for it to break down into ammonia and give the bateria to stay alive with. Wait for the spike and drop. But also make sure yu spike your ammonia to 3.0ppm.
> 
> At least that's what I was told and that's what I did. Worked good. No ammonia or nitrite spike after adding 15 shrimp.


I add feeder fish to all my tanks after about 1 week of cycling. That method have worked well so far for me and very minimal casualties. They are only 10 for $1 here and I think that is much less scary to "test" with than shrimps. But everyone has different methods. If one is rushed, I would imagine adding lots of fish could only help increase that water cycle than just adding random fish food, etc 



somewhatshocked said:


> Depending upon the type of shrimp you plan to house and how many you hope to get, it's not a good idea to add shrimp right away, necessarily. I usually don't add sensitive shrimp until the tank has been running for 4-6 weeks. Biofilm, as mentioned above, is one of the secrets to great shrimp colonies.
> 
> *If you're housing Neo shrimp?* Waiting 3-4 weeks should probably be okay. Just make sure you have plenty of moss from an established tank for them to enjoy.


Lol. Am I missing something here?


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## diwu13

Pretty sure Jake meant "neocaridina shrimp"  hue hue hue


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## dasob85

lol is it true you like moss?


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## GeToChKn

jeremyTR said:


> Why add fish when his tank is no where near completely cycled? I don't get it. Just cuz you added the filter from a cycled tank does not make your tank completely cycled and ready for fish off the bat.
> 
> Save the fish. Cycle your tank without them by feeding your tank with fish food. Wait for an ammonia spike along with a nitrite spike then wait for them to drop. Because of your filter you'll get the cycle going faster but you'll wanna make sure you keep feeding the tank with fish food for it to break down into ammonia and give the bateria to stay alive with. Wait for the spike and drop. But also make sure yu spike your ammonia to 3.0ppm.
> 
> At least that's what I was told and that's what I did. Worked good. No ammonia or nitrite spike after adding 15 shrimp.



What do think the purpose of cycling is? It's to create the 2 types of bacteria in the filter media that eat ammonia and eat nitrites. Without filter media, that process takes 3-4 weeks and happens when we provide ammonia and the bacteria start to form. If the bacteria are already there from an established tank, what is there to cycle? I have jump started a bunch of fish tanks in the past just by taking media from one of my canister or bioballs from my sump and adding them to a HOB filter, plant, fill, add fish, done.

Now with shrimp, you can do this too but the tank will lack biofilm on the walls, substrate, which babies and shrimp like to munch on. Adding plants, wood, moss from an established tank will supplement this as well as feeding bio foods like Mosura Bioplus. I just setup a small desktop 2.5gal with a M/F pair of my nicest PFR's in it. New substrate, small sponge filter from another tank, big chunk of floaters, moss ball, lava rock and moss from tanks over a year old. She's already berried, they are happy and I added them the same day. My new tank I setup I have to wait as the substrate leeches ammonia for a while and is still lowering the pH or else I might have already added some to it. It's a 10gal with a established jumbo sponge filter and HOB filter from another tank, so all the filter media is cycled.


To the OP, adding water from another tank means nothing, there is pretty much nothing beneficial in there and it's probably just high in nitrates. Now that you did move the filter over though, you have to provide it a food source either from ammonia or adding shrimp and them eating and pooping to create ammonia. you can't move a filter over loaded with good bacteria and not feed it or else will have to start cycling over again.


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## somewhatshocked

Haha - yep, the species and _not_ the forumite. 

But about bioload and shrimp. Sure, you can toss shrimp into a fresh, new tank with lots of plants and they may thrive. But you're better off waiting a few weeks so all kinds of tasty grub can grow in the tank for the shrimp to eventually forage for and eat.


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## MsNemoShrimp

diwu13 said:


> Pretty sure Jake meant "neocaridina shrimp"  hue hue hue


LOL. Sure... :hihi:


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## fairgate

I guess I'll wait, it'll be hard, I've spent all day watching the tip of a plant turn from facing the bottom to the top lol, at least it's alive!

Thanks for all the helpful info, you don't get great tips like those from a book.


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## randyl

fairgate said:


> I guess I'll wait, it'll be hard, I've spent all day watching the tip of a plant turn from facing the bottom to the top lol, at least it's alive!
> 
> Thanks for all the helpful info, you don't get great tips like those from a book.


That's why you put plants in your cycling shrimp tanks -- just so you have something to look at ;-) I am in the same boat, but after 6 weeks of cycling I'm redoing the tank again tonight....but that's a different story.


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## somewhatshocked

If you add plants, you'll likely have plenty of little critters to observe until it's time to add shrimp. Copepods and such can be highly entertaining. Snails that hitchhike, as well.


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## sleepswithdafishez

somewhatshocked said:


> If you add plants, you'll likely have plenty of little critters to observe until it's time to add shrimp. Copepods and such can be highly entertaining. Snails that hitchhike, as well.


Yep.It's what I'm doin' right now


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