Tropical Fish Keeping banner

Green Stuff ( ex 0.3 gallon Jar)

47K views 266 replies 19 participants last post by  ao 
#1 · (Edited)
One of my many jars :D
My juvie betta girl graduated from this jar and is now in a 2 gallon. So I was wondering what else I could put in it. It seemed like cheap shrimp would be a good idea~
So off I went and got 4 ghost shrimps for this jar. Honestly I've kept caridinas and neos before but never had much luck with these guys...they always died after a month or two.

i guess I'll see how it goes ^_^



Any suggestions/questions are welcome :3
 
See less See more
1
#3 ·
Very nice looking jar-scape.

I'm just dabbling in the small realm with a jug and some plants now... this gives me some ideas though.

I've seen those bio-ball things with shrimp and they claim that they last of a year or two with shrimp and they are a sealed ball. I would think that a jar with an open top would be easier to deal with and better for anything inside. Ist 0.3 gallons large enough for a handful of shrimp? Perhaps if you change the water frequently... that may make a difference in their longevity.

The only thing I might do different is go with shrimp that are more colourful. Just easier to see them.

Jeff.
 
#4 ·
bioballs? ecospheres? those are cruel little pretty things that takes advantage of the opae ula shrimp's hardiness :( please don't support them T_T basically the shrimps starbe and feed off their own body mass, getting smaller an smaller until they die.

If you ever set up brackish/SW mini tanks, opae ula shrimps are a wonderful species to keep. they are very hardy and can live many many years.

I've done many jars :) and all of them hold a steady system. it's kind of interesting, nature always tries to balance itself out.

I once had another 0.3 gallon jar with a bajillion scuds and one cherry shrimp!
another one i had was a 3x3in cube container which held a blackworm culture and quite a few snails :D

the blackworms and residents are still alive and reproducing and the water has never been changed. ditto the scud jar.

I believe the trick is to always use fast growing low light stems, preferrably from a sungle species, the right temperature lighting, some snails to start the process off and it will survive by itself for a very long time.

Truthfully I'm not a big fan of floaters alone for water quality, as most are not true aquatic plants (ie. they will die if submered)

I have another gallon tank for the more colorful shrimps XD For my tanks I rarely do timed water changes. I like to repurpose my tank water. eg: Sometimes I use tank water to water my plants, after which I simply top up again.

Here's the ghosties munching on algae wafer bits. My favorite brand is omega one. they dont fall apart the way other algae wafers do in water and seem to decompose at a slower rate;



here are some other shrimps I keep in the 1 gallon:
caridina balbauti (excuse the spelling)


Rili


Yellow neo
 
#5 ·
Ah, you've obviously got the visible shrimp going on elsewhere.

I liked the look of those ball things but a sealed system just seemed odd. Setting up my own in jars would be much more fun anyway.

Jeff.
 
#6 ·
I have jars of plants on my windowsill with snails. Some of my plants actually grow better like that, and my snails seem to do fine. I usually just suck up some water in a turkey baster every once in awhile to water my other plants, and then put in a mix of tap/tank water.

I put a cutting of anacharis in a plastic soda bottle and left it for a month or so and when I pulled it out it was around 3ft long.
 
#7 · (Edited)
"visible shrimps" lol!

I did the same thing with elodea oO mine got to two ft cos it snapped. haha
I don't have any more of the plant though. doesnt seem to do too well on the windowsill in summer~
My favorite weed plants are naja grass and m. mattogrossense XD where water wisteria and all the other stuff are kind of stiff and get way too big, these are a good size for small containers, are flexible, have small leaves and tend to grow around the shape of the jar with style...

The rotalas and ludwigias I prefer to leave in my highlight tanks where I can actually enjoy the pretty colors :D
 
#8 ·
Very pretty little environment! I have similar jars all over my windowsills, planted, but not quite as pretty as that! I always keep pond snails in them because I can't kill them and don't want them in my tanks - never considered putting shrimp in them, though! I might have to try a copycat version one day :)
 
#9 ·
I'm actually trying something very similar this summer! One of the bathrooms in our house has a terrarium window (seems like a terrible place to have lots of windows lol). I'm putting some of my old betta bowls in the terrarium window with some crushed gravel, ramshorn snails, and anarcharis (in one) and hornwort in another. I'm growing catgrass there, too, and plan to water that with just water from the snail bowls and top off the bowls with tank water or tap water. If it goes well I might make one bowl a ghost shrimp bowl next summer!

I'm really glad to hear you guys have had great success with anaracharis in window bowls. Maybe we should have a contest to see who can grow the longest anarcharis this summer! XD
 
#11 ·
I measured my jug on the weekend. 70F in the sun when it was well below freezing outside. I would expect that it would easily climb over 90F in the summer... or higher. I will be moving the jug away from the direct light as the spring rolls into summer. I only have plants in it so far... I think that with shrimp in the jug that it would need to be more stable. I don't think that the plants need the direct sunlight as long as they get lots of light... perhaps. For me, I'm not interested in having to provide additional lighting.

Jeff.
 
#13 ·
I've got LEDs that are pretty focused, not a lot of ambient tank light. We have other large indoor terrestrial plants that do well so I think the aquatic stuff will be fine.

Jeff.
 
#14 ·
yep they will~I grow a lot of emmersed plants too!

I've heard feed back about led (finnex rayii) vs Fluorescent (cfl, t8,t5). And that the fluorescent bulbs brings out better color from the plants. not sire how true that is. I've ordered a led bulb from ebay to test this out ^_^

on the other hand there are pricier Leds that create awesome lighting. But the price tag keeps me at bay.
 
#15 ·
If the LED is rated for that 6,500k range then it may only be the lux at depth that may be of issue. Any plants with a bit of red might lose some of that colour as the plants produce green instead in response to the lower light level. I have considered doubling up on the light... briefly.

Mine's a Marineland Doublebright, 6,500k I think. Lots of growth. About 1800lux at the bottom I expect.

Jeff.
 
#18 ·
is .3 gallons enough for 4 ghost shrimps...? good question XD I guess we'll fine out :p I AM keeping 6 adult shrimps and many babies+lots of snails in a gallon tank with .75 gallons of water... so~ it should.

This is how I set up my jars.
they can't be "cycled" as they dont have a filter.
The plants generally need an adjustment period.

I will use a thin layer of whatever substrate. and put the plants in.
usually prodominently low light, small leaved, hardy fast growing stems. then I add a couple of floaters.

In these setup my best friends are pond snails. Depending on the jar size I will put in a few snails.
pomd snail cleans up the tank as well as completing the plant/animal cycle.
food -> snail waste -> plants

I give the tank a month or two before stocking with shrimps. the tank tends to balance itself out by then.
 
#27 ·
....
This is how I set up my jars.
they can't be "cycled" as they dont have a filter.
The plants generally need an adjustment period.
....
Sorry, I mistook "can't be cycled" as an implication that it couldn't exist.

An empty cycled tank is non-argument. Who would bother keeping such a tank?

Here I digress....

Point of the matter is that the tank would be, technically, cycled as most understand it. Seeing as these organisms appear as soon as there is ammonia indicates that they are already present in some form and quantity... either that or they get beamed down.... I prefer to believe the former. Adding water with even trace amounts of ammonia will generate them, no ammonia, no new organisms. Also, water is never stationary... unless you freeze it, and some would even argue not even then, although I will admit that there would be no nitrifying going on. You cannot have water still enough that, even in a dark empty tank, it does not move through some convection or even on some molecular agitation level. Whether the organisms need light, I am not certain. Given some of the environments that they exist in I would hazard a guess that they do not, or least not very much at all.... apparently they thrive in canister filters and those are pretty dark.

Keep in mind that these nitrifying organisms, unlike plants, do not need a plethora of nutrients. Pretty much oxygen and ammonia/nitrite. If both are present, they will grow and multiply to the level required to consume those ingredients. Once they exhaust these, they are known to go dormant.... not die off, not quickly anyway.... until such time as the nutrients are present again.

I think referring to the cycling of a tank is mostly a misnomer as the nitrogen cycle is what is referred to anyway, not the act of pushing the organisms to grow, they do that on their own. We just help it along the best we know how to a point where it is stable for our purposes.

The tank is always cycling ammonia to either nitrates or to plant growth. Either method is satisfactory even though both occurr in any planted tank. Taken one step further, the planted tank cycle has the added benefit of going all the way from ammonia to nitrite to nitrate to plant material. The more plants, the less reliance on the organisms.

Jeff.
 
#28 ·
Myrio! I love that plant! Didn't know it could be grown in bowls. I have to try some when the plants in my shrimp tank get large enough to have clippings lol! And don't worry, you spelled that last one close enough that I was able to get a picture of it. Cute little stem! I never knew there were so many types of stem plants.
 
#21 ·
The jar will cycle, filter or not. The bacterial colonies still do their thing and you leaving the jars to sit for a month or two allows this to happen. They won't spike like a large tank... mostly due to the moderate levels of ammonia, but they still cycle.

Jeff.
 
#25 ·
The jar will cycle, filter or not. The bacterial colonies still do their thing and you leaving the jars to sit for a month or two allows this to happen. They won't spike like a large tank... mostly due to the moderate levels of ammonia, but they still cycle.

Jeff.
Agreed - the cycle is not about the presence or lack of a filter - it is about the presence of the "ingredients" in the environment - ie ammonia in the water causing the development of the BB. This happens in any container/tank/etc where there is an ammonia source whether or not it is filtered. In fact, in a cycled aquarium with a filter a good portion of the BB population is maintained outside of the filter housing on the hardscape within the contianer/tank.
 
#22 · (Edited)
I'm pretty sure that if there are any bacteria, the plants don't give them a chance. as long as we're talking about the nitrogen cycle. lol.
I've never gotten nitrogen readings on these setups. or in my planted tanks. a combination of floaters, and fast growing stems seems to take care of the minimal bioload.

but in an established Jar, the PH settles down too. i dont doubt there is bacteria in te tank, but probably not significant nitrifying bacteria colonies as there is no oxyen flow sent down to them. I think if they didn't need this oxygen, mini cycles wouldn't happen to those people who lose power to their filters.

if we're talking about the plant cycle then sure, fish>waste + CO2 >plants> oxygen> fish
 
#23 ·
Well, they are still there. It's not like the plants aggressively stalk the ammonia, there is always some floating around and the bacteria do develop, albeit on a much smaller scale. Obviously with so many plants, the point is entirely moot as you don't need them anyway.

Jeff.
 
#26 ·
what cycle are we talking about? I'm assuming bacteria based nitrogen cycle?

The tank is cycled in the sense that the plants eat the nutrients and has adapted to the jar environment. Oldfishlady calls this the silent cycle.

I never said there isn't presence of bacteria in an aquatic environment. but there definitely isn't enough to cater for a system in a flowless tank....

If some one has cycled a tank with nothing but water in it, no water movement or a light source, I'd like so see that...

I said there was no need to "cycle"(<- note qutation marks) as in bacteria dependent cycle a jar...
I didn't claim that a cycle disn't exit >.>
Posted via Mobile Device
 
#29 ·
lol Jeff, as detailed as always. I accept and totally agree :) Bacteria doesnt need light, I was propsing a unlit tank so algae cant play a hand on that setup.


@izzy, there are soooo many stem plants out there~
I think I have more than 20 different species XD

Now You made gave me an urge to count and list the all D<

HC, HM, Hygro polysperma, Mayaca, Myrio, Cabomba Furcata, Star grass ( no idea what the latin name is), Staurogen repens, Macranthemum umbrosum, Hygro difformis, Rotala Nanjenshan, Rotala rotundifolia, Rotala Gialai (Gailai? whatever) Ludwigia arcuata, Ludwigia sp. red, Cardamine lyrata, Blyxa Japonica, Egaria Najas, Lindernia rotundifolia, Persocaria Kawa-something, Rotala vietnam, Limno mini vietnam, hydrocotyle triparta... I think that's it?

THAT ^ is what we call collectoritis >.>
 
#30 ·
...
I think I have more than 20 different species XD

Now You made gave me an urge to count and list the all D<

HC, HM, Hygro polysperma, Mayaca, Myrio, Cabomba Furcata, Star grass ( no idea what the latin name is), Staurogen repens, Macranthemum umbrosum, Hygro difformis, Rotala Nanjenshan, Rotala rotundifolia, Rotala Gialai (Gailai? whatever) Ludwigia arcuata, Ludwigia sp. red, Cardamine lyrata, Blyxa Japonica, Egaria Najas, Lindernia rotundifolia, Persocaria Kawa-something, Rotala vietnam, Limno mini vietnam, hydrocotyle triparta... I think that's it?

THAT ^ is what we call collectoritis >.>
Quite a list. I actually recognize some of those :shock:

I really should brush up on my Latin one of these days.......

Jeff.
 
#31 ·
i kind of got these names drilled into me. once you cross the domain where plants no longer have a common name, ur in trouble o_O

Most of these guys are small plants. and for things like the cabomba, I only keep one stalk. same with the wisteria, and also because it's a variegated variation.

Before i've only seen pics of h. Augustofolia online. And I was like... ooh I like those leaves~ I want one.
But when I saw it in person for the first time at petco I was like : omgbbq what is this gigantisaurus?!

oh, I did forget one: Limnophilla aromatica XD
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top