Search the Community

Hiya Y'all! Dose any one have any info on Bio-Floc with ornamental shrimp? Quantities of Bio-Floc to use in nano tanks of less than 5 gallons? Has any one experienced deaths using Bio-Floc?

I think this might be a bit long-winded so apologies up front! I have recently started to care for cherry shrimp having had no problems with amano shrimp in my other 2 tanks. I understood they were easy to care for and could tolerate a wide range of water parameters.(Hmm!) I have a 19L shrimp tank with 10 white pearl and 1 blue phantom shrimp at the moment. Previously I bought 3 blue phantoms (not sure if they are blue jellies, but very similar). Had to keep them in a 30L tank with only assassins snails for company whilst the shrimp tank finished cycling. Lost 1 blue straight away, saw the 2nd one disappearing down the throat of an assassin snail about 3 days later so I assume it died beforehand (I hope it did!) The 3rd one survived. I then purchased 3 more blues and transferred them all to the shrimp tank which at that time was a 12L tank. Couldn't keep the temperature stable so upgraded to a 19L - that's all I have room for now. Transferred the equipment and could only find the one blue again - the same one that survived before I'm sure. It seemed to be much more settled in the larger tank so I got 10 white pearl shrimp and was advised by the breeder/retailer to keep the TDS at 250 as it helps them to moult. (I top up my tap water from 110 - 250 using Salty Shrimp GH+) He also advised keeping the pH 7.5, temperature around 21⁰C and the nitrates under 10 ppm. Here's where I'm struggling - we've had a heatwave in the UK and I'm using 2 fans to try to keep it under control. Without the fans it runs up to 28⁰ on the hottest days. Also I've been having to do water changes every 3 days to keep the nitrates under 10. Got 2 moss-balls in there at the moment which are nice and green - have moved every other plant out as they start to melt due to lack of nutrients I think and probably contributed to the nitrate situation in the first instance. However it hasn't gone away completely and I'm still having to do W/C every few days which is really frustrating. Other water parameters: Ammonia 0ppm Nitrites 0 ppm Nitrates up to 25 ppm if I leave the water changes for more than 3-4 days - had 1 shrimp jump out of the water at that level! pH 7.8 stable temperature 19.5-23.5 depending on weather. I don't have GH or KH tests as I feel I'm juggling too many balls as it is at the moment. TDS increases by 10-15 daily - return it to 250 with W/C Yesterday I added 2 banana leaves and 4 alder cones as I heard they gradually reduce the pH and since my water is at the top of the range for cherries I thought it might help. I also thought it would give them something to graze on, on the days I don't feed them. Added a guava leaf a couple of days ago and there's been a cholla log in there for quite a while now and that was very popular to begin with, but they seem to have lost interest in it and other food at the moment. The water is so dark today it's like black water so have removed the banana leaves. It's almost like they are spaced out or stoned! What am I doing wrong to need to do so many water changes due to nitrates? What temperature fluctuation is acceptable? I'm sorry for the long post, but have tried to include as much information as possible. Thank you for sticking with it this far!