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Cherry mix in 5l Collar Pico-Set

Alexander Belchenko

Alexander Belchenko

Member
Joined
23 Sep 2013
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1,242
Location
Ukraine
2 weeks ago I've set up 5l Pico-Set tank from Collar at my work desk. I was lucky to buy one set at Collar's event where I made set-ups for 5l and 10l tanks. Right before that event I started to think about putting small nano-nano tank at my work's desk. So, the universe answered my thoughts, and I've got one with interesting discount. I probably will make small review about Pico-Set. Just tell you now that heater is not part of the set, I bought it separately, but from the same manufacturer.

22872845249_e9461af014.jpg17x17x17 - Collar 5l Pico set by Alexander, on Flickr

As you may think 5l tank is too small for something really serious, and I'm against to put any fish in such small tank (even betta). So I considered to keep there only shrimps. I wanted orange sakura cherry shrimps only, but later decided to add more colors to mix (after looking at Chris Lukhaup beautiful photos).

23214669136_8b572a0b66_c.jpgCherry mix by Alexander, on Flickr

I don't pan to use any ferts, CO2 or anything else. It should be just easy and slow tank with anubiases. For my good surprise anubias petite is already started to develop new leaves, while another anubias species (which I bought as a. angustifolia) has some damages on leaves - those leaves a little bit dried out while I worked on layout.

Tank spec:
* 5l Collar Pico-Set: optiwhite tank 17*17*17 cm with cover glass + led light (3 SMD LEDs) + internal made-in-china filter (~200l/h, probably Sun-Sun HJ-11)
* aHeater
* driftwood
* black sand less than 1 cm thick
Plants:
* Anubias nana sp. petite
* Anubias angustifolia
* Fissidens fontanus moss
Shrimps:
* Orange sakura
* Red cherry
* Blue dream
* Black cherry (with some rili gene)

23240806695_c0640ea667_c.jpgCherry mix by Alexander, on Flickr
 
Last edited:
nicpapa said:
Why you mix the shrimps?
The most babies, will turn in the wild color...
Click to expand...
Yes, I know. I just want something nice to see on my desktop.
As soon as I get shrimplets I'm going to remove them to separate tank to keep only adults there.
 
Update. During and after NY vacations I've lost almost all black shrimps, most of blues and reds. Right now the bigger population in the tank has oranges. Couple of weeks ago I trimmed anubias, it grows very good. Started to dose some liquid ferts. Overall - everything is good, I like this tank, it does not create too much troubles for me. Once a week I spend about 30 mins for tank maintenance: waterchange, clean filter, sometimes prune the plants.
Recently I've removed all grey & brown shrimplets, to keep my colors pure and bright.

Enjoy the video:



Thanks for watching :)
 
Hi Alexander

Nice one, don't know how I missed it! I like the idea of a colorful shrimp tank. My 25 liters is going to be definitely a shrimp tank, for the moment only with Amanos and Red Cherries... Which of these shrimps you have are compatible with Red Cherries? My guess is that Caridina species are the only alternative (Tiger shrimp and CRS) to avoid interbreeding... Sulawesi and other species are too fussy for me. And would love hardy Gammarus but I have never seen them in the Spanish trade.

Jordi
 
Thanks @parotet

Yeah, I think tigers and crystals - are good choice, although they required RO remineralized water (my tap water is too hard for them).
 
Yup, my tank readings are 3-4 KH, 11-13 GH and 500 microS... a bit too much for soft water shrimps I would say.

Jordi
 
Well, 5L is much simpler to fit on the work desktop, but if I'd buy the tank today, I'd go for 10L version. Actually 5L is very small actually, there are hardly 3-4L of water. I'd avoid to put any fish there, although some people think it's OK to put into such small tank betta male. Sometimes I think it's too small for my shrimps, I dunno.

The filter is a little bit powerful, AFAIR it's 200 lph for 4l. As you can see I had to use spray bar, and direct the flow to the side glass to reduce it's power. Light is quite good for anubiases and mosses. I have some GDA on leaves directly under the light.

Overall it's very small and cute tank, but don't expect too much: easy smaller plants, small livestock, - that's OK, IMO.
 
7.5 months update

Our office is about to moving soon, so I decided to empty the tank very soon and clean it properly at home. Maybe I'll change substrate (I have some plans for jbl manado, but also I have special shrimps substrate), have not decided yet.
Overall I'm very satisfied with this tank. It's quite forgiving when I don't have time or mood to maintain it during busy week, I know that I can procrastinate it till next week.

27984231295_9cfeb102f8_z.jpg17x17x17 - 5l - 7.5 months by Alexander, on Flickr

The shrimp population is changing over time. I've started with 4 colors: orange, black, blue and red. After/during NY holidays I lost blacks, which is really pity. Then number of blues has reached zero (approx March - April).

Then I noticed the number of oranges was greater then reds. Today it's opposite: reds have bigger population. Also I noticed that cross between oranges and reds gives me stronger orange color. I've heard oranges tend to loose intensity of color over next generations. I hope my observation is true.

27371422754_0a6d5e10e2_z.jpg17x17x17 - 5l - 7.5 months by Alexander, on Flickr

Over those months I've removed wild coloured shrimps couple of times, and now the colors are more stable. Last time I found only 1 wild colored shrimp. I can call it success.

My latest addition was yellow shrimps (yellow canary + yellow neons). They looked pale comparing to existing orange-red population, but I like to see something new in the tank.

After introducing new shrimps I've also noticed that my other shrimps (those have grown in the tank) are a little bit smaller then shrimps from possibly bigger tank. I think this is due smaller volume of my tank. Or maybe my shrimps have shorter life span and simply haven't matured as they could.

27371553954_1361e66dcc_z.jpg17x17x17 - 5l - 7.5 months by Alexander, on Flickr

Regarding plants: everything went as smoothly as I can only dream. The only "wrong" plant is anubias glabra minima (I guess that's correct name) on the top of the wood. I've started with 3 small to medium sized plants. They grow slowly but steady - about 1-2 new leaves per months. But the problem with them was: every new leaf was bigger than previous one, and eventually they went out of water and I had to remove the biggest plant months or two ago. Now the second biggest plant should be removed as well. I have not decided yet what to put there instead. I have anubias "gold", or maybe I'll try to find similar sized buce.

I don't want to really rescape it, but I might end up with something totally different in new office :)

Small video, nothing spectacular, mostly about shrimps:



Thanks for watching!
 
I've removed that "palm" on the top of the wood, and suddenly there is much more light :)
Placed some small java fern (sp. minor I guess) instead. Let's see how it will grow here.

27669502224_2f13b134d9.jpg17x17x17 - 5l - 8 months by Alexander, on Flickr

It looks kinda flat now, but I'm looking at the tank not straight to front glass, but rather from the top, so from my working chair it looks a little bit better. Will do another shot soon.
 
Alexander Belchenko said:
After introducing new shrimps I've also noticed that my other shrimps (those have grown in the tank) are a little bit smaller then shrimps from possibly bigger tank. I think this is due smaller volume of my tank. Or maybe my shrimps have shorter life span and simply haven't matured as they could.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure that tank volume is a factor - yellows are often larger than oranges & blues & some of the other color variants, some reds are smaller/larger again depending on line

OTOH if population is too dense, some shrimp will stop breeding, also some color lines are less able to compete for resources & will decline

In one tank I had an established tiger shrimp group (less than 20 in a 45cm x 30 cm, dense planting), when I added new shrimp, some of the tigers were very protective & there was a lot of wrestling matches for the first few days - new shrimp always lost, but there did not seem to be physical damage - no losses & it all settled into apparent harmony by the following week.
Some of the tiger shrimp lines are noted for aggression (I had a wild type)

Hope the move goes smoothly :)
 
alto said:
Hope the move goes smoothly :)
Click to expand...

Well, it was planned at end of June, now we're at the middle of July, and nobody can tell whether it's still planned. Sigh. But so far this is less headache for me. ))

New photo, look at that buce at the top of the wood. I guess this is the reason why buces so valuable: reflection of light makes its leaves look blue, green-blue, and full of stars. Of course you need to get as close as possible to see that. Probably, ideal plant for small shrimp tanks ))

27690080703_3479d53695.jpgFragment with bucephalandra by Alexander, on Flickr
 
I really like this setup and will be taking some inspiration from the way you have planted the wood. I was planning a slightly larger species of anubias but think your latest picture show that smaller and compact planting is the way to go.
 
@mort thanks. If you start decorating wood in similar manner then I may suggest using fishing line to tie plants or super-glue to attach them. You could see clump of buces attached on the top of wood (on 12am) - that was glued to wood.
 
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