Category: Shrimphaus
Staurogyne repens
Staurogyne repens in vitro plantlets
Staurogyne repens is an ‘easy to grow’ and popular aquatic plant. I have been resisting trying this plant for some reason… too easy, too popular? Anyway, it has a low growth habit but isn’t a carpeting plant, so seems like it might be right for the Shrimphaus. I usually prefer potted plants, but at the time could only find S. repens as an in vitro pot, so picked one up from Aquarium Gardens, as grown by Tropica.
Replanting actually… I was looking for something that could grow submersed in the back right corner of the Shrimphaus that might be able to break the water surface and grow emersed. Amazon sword plants (Echinodorus species) are sometimes able to do that and I looked for an intermediate sized one with interesting aspects and came up with Echinodorus chrileni. I first picked up a pot from Pro-shrimp grown in rockwool by Aquafleur about 8 months ago. The plant arrived in great shape, but then gradually rotted away over several months, with no evidence of transitioning to the submersed growth form. This was back when I was using the Asta point-source lighting that was at the exact opposite corner of the tank so the spot for the chrileni was pretty shaded. When I switched over the Shrimphaus to the more even lighting from a Week Aqua S-400 Pro light, I figured let’s give the chrileni another try.
Despite all the advice to the contrary, I tried out some Caridina shrimp in the tapwater-based Shrimphaus. This did not go well and after 3 weeks there was only one brave survivor left. The usual way to keep soft water shrimp is to start with reverse-osmosis (RO) water which is selectively remineralised mostly to restore calcium and magnesium (general hardness – GH). Alkalinity (KH) is usually kept pretty low. The problem with this approach is that RO equipment can be expensive, takes up a good amount of space, and wastes a lot of water. There is an interesting RO water supplier, Spotless Water, that has RO water vending stations distributed around England, but there aren’t any in the Cambridgeshire area. Having RO water shipped in directly isn’t very practical.
What do to about that?
‘Crystal Red’ caridina shrimp: top-down view on the edge of the river
Bloody Mary shrimp (Neocaridina davidi) have been living in the Shrimphaus for a couple years now and are starting to get a little long in the tooth. Their solid dusky red colour also makes them difficult to see against the dark aquasoil and slate hardscape, although the new lighting has helped. I thought I’d pick up some more brightly coloured newcomers.
Neocaridina come in interesting colours but with caridina shrimp there are more varieties and dramatic patterns. I was drawn to Crystal Red shrimp – with their solid white colouration and dramatic red stripe they definitely stand out against a dark background.
I have been using an Asta 20 nano LED light on the Shrimphaus, and that’s been fine but it’s a point source light so there’s not much illumination at either the back (shaded by the river) or the right side (furthest away). Today I swapped that out for a new Week Aqua S400 Pro aquarium light.
The S-series comes in three different light lengths: 321mm, 421mm or 471mm. I went for the middle length S400 model.
You get the light itself with a solid yet lightweight aluminium shell powered through a generous length cord, voltage adaptor and your choice of plug ending. You also get a milled aluminium mounting bracket with six polypropylene (?) screws to hold it all together. The light mounts on an aluminium pole which comes with a silicone O-ring to hold the light in place. Finishing up the package are two plastic zip ties for cord neatness, and a QC control certificate.
You do NOT get any form of instructions either for assembly, mounting or usage. Fortunately it’s all pretty intuitive how to put it together.
Continue reading “Week Aqua S-series light first impressions”
I have been considering floating plants for a while, but they always looked kind of big and dangly and nasty to me which has put me off. Then the Aquatic Plant Society had a get together at Aquarium Gardens and I saw this pretty new (to me) much smaller floating plant from Tropica: Salvinia minima. I picked up a pot to try it out in the Shrimphaus.
It’s a floating plant, so “planting” Salvinia minima is dead-easy. Starting with an in vitro pot, you rinse off the media it came with and then I floated it in a bowl of clean water and forked it over into the Shrimphaus.
Salvinia minima in vitro pot
rinse off the media
fork lift
floating!
According to the British Bryological Society (naturally), Riccardia chamedryfolia, also known as ‘Jagged Germanderwort’ is a liverwort with a thalloid growth form and is naturally occurring in most parts of the world including commonly in the UK. There is a lot more biology-talk about liverworts vs. mosses vs. hornworts that I don’t understand, but I did manage to pick up an in vitro pot grown by Dennerle from Aquarium Gardens and thought I’d give it a try growing on hardscape. The secret hope is always to find something that will be able to grow in the Shrimphaus river even though many, many plants have failed there. It turns out that always wet with flowing water slate chippings exposed to typically low humidity indoor air is a quite austere environment. Still, hope springs eternal and I thought I could try out both the Shrimphaus river and also that wedged into cracks of the Fireplace Aquarium mountain would make a nice effect.
Regular and substantial water changes for an aquarium are a good idea. With EI fertiliser dosing the built-in assumption is that at least 50% of the water will be changed out every week to prevent a build-up of excess fertilisers. Both the Fireplace Aquarium and the Shrimphaus follow this maintenance schedule, although lately I have been doing around 75% water changes to better remove organic particulate debris from the Fireplace Aquarium and to remove salts from the Shrimphaus.
| Fireplace Aquarium | Shrimphaus | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pH | alkalinity (ppm CaCO3) | pH | alkalinity (ppm CaCO3) | |
| before water change | 7.85 | 264 | 9.01 | 342 |
| immediately after water change | 7.96 | 276 | 8.67 | 306 |
| next day | 7.75 | 279 | 9.03 | 309 |
I haven’t had much luck growing plants on the Shrimphaus river. Mostly they dry out either immediately or eventually, or sometimes they rot away. This roots and bottom bits wet all the time but leaves out in the air niche is pretty challenging. Some internet digging revealed plants that thrive in this setting are called marginal plants: those growing on the margins of bodies of water, and they are popular for people with ponds. Ok, so that’s the right setting, but outdoor ponds are much larger than the Shrimphaus so only the smallest marginal plants might work. Some shopping around led me to try Bog Arum (Calla palustris), Golden Buttons (Cotula coronopifolia) and Golden Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’). All of these are listed as growing to a maximum height of about 6 inches.
newly arrived
Golden Buttons
Golden Buttons
Bog Arum
Golden Creeping Jenny
Golden Creeping Jenny
The plants arrived well-packed in wet newspaper and the first surprise was how big they all were. The pond world operates on a much larger scale than the aquarium world!
It’s been 10 weeks since the tear-down and rebuild of the Shrimphaus. One of the things that surprised me in that process is there turned out to not be very many shrimp in the Shrimphaus, and mostly not any small ones. This suggested that things in the previous build were not as they should be environmentally such that the shrimp had stopped breeding. The big question was whether the new build would turn that around or not. It takes four or five weeks from mating until eggs hatch so there has been a bit of a calendar-watching excercise going on and…
Find it…
right here!
baby shrimp
I was pretty excited the first time we got baby shrimp in the Shrimphaus as well.
