Shrimpopolis!

Photo of the week #41: A few weeks ago, Geoff noticed a slow leak in his 20 Gallon fish tank. Since this turned out to be a relatively quiet week for us, he decided to take this opportunity to not only reseal his tank but also to redecorate it as well. I won't go into the details of the work he's been doing (I'm sure it'll eventually show up here), but suffice it to say that it's an on-going and a time-consuming process. After watching all the work he's been doing, I decided to do the only sensible thing - create my own planted tank!

As some of you know, my current office consists of a windowless cubicle (a bit of a drag during the bright summer months to say the least). In fact, I see so little sunlight in my cube that I'm having trouble keeping plants alive! So, for the past few months I've been toying with the idea of putting together an office fish tank. My main deterrent thus far has been the fact that even the simplest fish tank can involve a great deal of upkeep. During Geoff's tank remodel, I was doing a bit of reading on the subject and realized that a shrimp tank might be a great solution to my problem. Shrimp are extreme environmentalists - they're bioload is essentially zero (ie, the amount they eat almost completely balances the amount of waste that they produce). This is in direct opposition to many fish that you normally see in a small tank. Also, a shrimp's diet basically consists of anything that will fit in it's mouth (ie, shrimp are perfectly content to eat the algae and waste material that form in the tank). This means that they require very little in the way of feeding and that they do a great job of keeping a tank clean. The real selling point for shrimp though was the fact that Geoff already has some in his 20 Gallon. This is great because it means that if my tank suddenly becomes unstable and turns into too much work, my shrimp can easily find a new home in Geoff's tank and I can just disassemble mine.

That brings me to this week's potw. The evolution of my shrimpopolus is currently well underway! I've already started setting up the 1.5 Gallon tank that I picked up last week. So far, my set-up includes some aquarium sand, a rock and three different varieties of aquatic plants (that's right - real, live plants!):

The next step unfortunately requires a fair bit of patience and self-control, which aren't necessarily my strongest points. For one thing, I'm currently in the process of boiling a piece of driftwood to sit in the tank in front of the tall grass. The wood is being boiled (and will be for the next few days) because unless it's pre-treated properly driftwood can leech tanins into the water. These tanins won't hurt my shrimp in any way, but it will turn the tank water an ugly yellowish tea-color.

Also, since the plants came from the pet store, there's a significant chance that they may accidentally have transferred some snail eggs to my tank. Personally, I think that snails are adorable and actually wouldn't mind having a few in my tank (they are also very low bioload). But, the pest snails that you can accidentally acquire on live plants are unfortunately very prolific breeders (ie, you might start with one snail but end up with hundreds). Since I don't want my tank to look like a snail bomb went off in it, I've decided to quarantine the plants for a few weeks before adding the driftwood and shrimp. The best case scenario will be that a few weeks will go by without any snails developing in the tank. If that's the case I can just go ahead and finish populating the tank. If however I do end up with snails, I'll need to look at ways to kill them off before moving forward. Most treatments that will eradicate snails will also kill shrimp, so it's very important that I don't add shrimp until I know that I don't have a snail issue to deal with. That said, I think the tank is already off to quite a lovely start: