Everything we wish someone had told us before our first colony. Ten minutes here will save you months of head-scratching.
1 · Your first shrimp tank, step by step
You need surprisingly little: a tank of 20 litres or more, a gentle sponge filter, a heater if your room swings cold, substrate, and more plants and botanicals than feel reasonable. Shrimp graze biofilm all day, and biofilm grows on surfaces, so moss, wood and leaf litter are not decoration, they are the buffet.
Set the tank up, then cycle it before any shrimp arrive. Cycling means growing the bacteria that convert toxic ammonia into harmless nitrate, and it takes four to six weeks. Add a small ammonia source, test weekly, and when the tank converts ammonia to nitrate within 24 hours with zero nitrite, you are ready. Patience here matters more than anything else you will buy. A mature tank is hard to get wrong; a brand new one is fragile.
2 · Neocaridina vs Caridina: which to choose
Neocaridina (Cherry Reds, Blue Dreams, Orange Sakura…) are the easy ones. They are happy in most UK tap water once dechlorinated, tolerate a wide range of parameters, and breed readily. Start here. Really, start here.
Caridina (Crystal Reds, Blue Bolts, Pintos…) are the fancy ones. They want soft, slightly acidic water, which usually means remineralised RO water over an active substrate. It is not difficult once set up, but it is more kit, more discipline and less forgiveness. A brilliant second tank.
3 · Water parameters, minus the jargon
GH is general hardness, the minerals shrimp need to build their shells. KH is carbonate hardness, which stops pH swinging about. TDS is total dissolved solids, a rough measure of how much is in the water overall. You will find target ranges on every product page.
The secret most beginners miss: stability beats perfection. Shrimp cope fine with slightly-off numbers that never move; they cope badly with perfect numbers that bounce around. Small weekly water changes with temperature-matched, remineralised water are the whole game.
4 · Feeding: little, rarely, and why
A mature planted tank feeds a colony almost by itself. Top up with a quality shrimp food two or three times a week, in portions they finish within a couple of hours, and remove anything left over. Overfeeding is the number one shrimp killer. It fouls the water and invites pests. When in doubt, feed less. Then less than that.
