short story: Our new shrimp tank is currently gaining some "biochemical attributes" to be a good new home for a few little shrimps and fishes. This procedure will take up to 14 days.

But of course you are here to get the:

full story

Yesterday we (my girlfriend and me) bought this 126 liter fish tank, sand, stones, plants and additional deco to start a new little hobby: aquaristics :)

The whole package costs around 300€ what is a lot of money but we will have countless hours of chilling in front of it while watching the little buddies crawling and swimming around. It is already now a relaxing part of our home.

preparation

It was my wish to have a black backdrop. This way we can simulate a bigger tank and the colours of plants, fishes and shrimps are better separating from the back. But to be honest: glueing the plastic sheet to the tanl was an unthankful and really not satisfying job but I did a pretty good job if you ask me :P

Next we added the ground which consists of sand obviously but also a layer of soil to give those plants a good energy source next to the liquids we'll add on a weekly basis.

After we tried out different layouts we decided to put some water in the tank and plant those plants at their spots.

Important question: Should we place the plants with this whool and plastic pots or without? And the internet answered: Remove it because steel whool could contain fertilizer and other chemicals we do not want in our tank. Plastic pots will constraint the little plants and their roots. So we removed everything in front.

Now it was only time to place the plants in it, give them a nice little push in the ground and hope they will stay at their place. After we planted everything and placed the stones and stuff like we wanted it was time to add countless buckets of water in there. Actually since we have a 5 l bucket it should have been not more than 25 buckets. So not rly countless but a lot ^^

Next we connected all the electronics for light, the water pump and the heater and yeah we finally did it!

2 (almost) lifeless weeks in our tank

For now we need to wait 14 days until the water is prepared as the surrounding for the little rowdies. Every 3 days we'll add 5 ml of "All-in-one elixier" to the water.

This adds a lot of important things for the plants and lifeforms to the water we are not really aware about right now. We are pure rookies in aquaristics and have a lot to learn.

Also we need to check and adjust the water temperature over the whole time since our heater has no sensor. But that's easy by measuring the temperature and adjusting a little wheel of the heater. So not rly worth to put another picture in here ;)

after 14 days

After waiting two weeks we will take a probe of this water to the pet store and they will check if we did a good job. If yes, we can take our little buddies home and watch them get familiar with their new home. I can not wait but the current time is really important for them and since we are animal loving people we really care a lot about their life's and that they will have a good place to live here.

In around 2 weeks we will take around 30 of those shrimps home:

(source bz-berlin.de)

And of course there is more space / water levels in that 126 liter tank and we will be able to team the shrimps up with boraras and more.

(source garnelaxia.at)

new series

Of course I will keep you updated about this little new space in our flat and I'll probably make a video about this project of course :) Thanks for reading until here buddy. I am not a writer but I feel that I get better and better over time so feel free to give some suggestions :)

Peace!