Evening,
Right, here goes the set up of my first shrimp rack!
Firstly, justification for the rack. I've been into shrimp keeping for a good few years now, starting with the usual Cherry Shrimp in a heavily planted 120l tank. I bought my first 10 shrimp off ebay, at the time only really to help control algae and can remember the day they came clearly. Carefully removing the bag from the small box they were shipped in and holding it up against the window to view my new shrimp - i can remember thinking my god, these things are tiny! I put them into the tank [joining about 30 tetras!!] and didnt see anything of them for about 6 months. In hindsight, i suspect most were eaten and a couple of the survivors must have bred.......From there my shrimp colony steadily grew and the fascination took over as more species became available. Roll on a few years, more tanks and many coins spent inbetween i now want to condense my tanks into a pair of racks to house them all.
My current shrimp collection comprises Crystal Red, Crystal Blacks, Snow Whites and Goldens, Cherry, Painted Red Cherry, Yellow Fires, Simoni and more recently some interesting Blues and Wine Reds offspring from the CRS/CBS. So i wanted mulitiple tanks in order to continue and get the best from my shrimp going forward.
The racks were being situated either side of a chimney breast, each alcove measuring less than a metre wide. I knew how many tanks i wanted and that each tank needed to be around 60l in size, so i quickly pulled together my shopping list for the first rack:-
Heavy Duty Boltless Steel Rack
Bought off ebay, this was sold as having a shelf capacity of 260kgs per shelf. I reckoned that each of my shelves would need to hold about 160kgs max, so this was easily going to be more than man enough - WRONG! Although the steel frame is very good, the shelves supplied were not. At only 6mm thick and made from particle board, there was no way that these shelves were going to hold my tanks. They were flexing like a Rolf Harris 'Wobble Board' and I know that particle board+water = disaster. I ended up replacing the shelves supplied with 15mm Birch Ply which i coated with Yacht varnish. I'm very happy with the Birch Ply - seems solid.......so far!
Tanks
I wanted min 60l tanks for my rack. In my experience, anything less than 60l is hard to keep stable for shrimp. Custom built tanks ordered accordingly from Midland Aquatics. Back panel for each tank painted black - CBA with the black background on a roll as i hate the bubbles and messing about with sticky tape to hold in place. I used blackboard spray for mine as it adheres to glass very well. Very happy with the results.
Lighting
Each shelf is lit by a single 39w Daylight T5. Each tube costing a tickle over £3 from Lampspecs [thanks to JamesC for his post on cheap lighting!!] and mounted on refelctors which are firmly held into position using industrial strength velcro. The tube and reflector are both very light and the velcro is more than adequate for this. I went for aquatic starter units as i wanted to feel safe with moisture resistant end caps.
Next step, adding substrates, pumps and filters etc. Will post up again later this week.
Cheers,
Mike.
