Eco Complete and Cardinal Shrimp?

[Red Bee Shrimp Fan]

Has anybody had any success using Eco Complete as a substrate for Cardinal (Sulawesi) Shrimp? I have revamped my tank and currently am setting up a 15 gallon using this as a substrate. Feedback would be most helpful.

Stuart

[fearNOshrimp]

Hi ! Stuat,

I am using coral sand as substrate for Sulawesi shrimp tank. Have been keeping Cardinal shrimps since last Oct. Have managed 50% survival rate and got 2 batches of offsprings. Now, 2 females has berried again.

Cheers !

[Justin12345]

i am using gex soil as substrate
dun try mine
just sharing
most people use coral sand as sulawasi shrimps need higher ph water where coral sand can mantain it
=D

[Red Bee Shrimp Fan]

Thank You Justin123456 and FearNOShrimp. Eco-Complete has a tendancy to increase PH (I have extremely soft/acidic water). I am also using crushed coral as a buffering agent in my Eheim 2232. If anybody has been able to successfully rear Cardinal shrimp in this substrate, I would welcome some insight from you too .

[Canshrimp]

I collapsed my Sulawasi setup and sold all the adults around 6mo ago. I found some babies (probaby 5th or 6th gen) a few weeks afterwards and threw them in my CRS tank. The substrate is a blend of EcoComplete\ADA\some other porous substrait. To this date I have one left and its doing real well. PH=7.6, KH=2, GH=3-4, Temp 76F. I also experimented and had them in my planted Discus tank with a bunch of cherries. They were doing well for 3mo until I started to mess around with my filtration system and spiked the Nitrate (60-90) for a very extended time. From my experience, I found important items are lighting (creates food), stable PH (not too high so plants and aglae\diatoms can grow more readily), stable temperature, med\fine substrate that can support plant growth (CC works fine, but I found it hard for algae to "natually" grow on it in abundance to support large populations), and good (does not have to be excellent) water quality. I could have probably saved more of the babies if I had changed my bulb as it was 3yrs old. Reason why I say this is that once I changed the bulb, the CRS population exploded. Currently I have my lone Cardinal with my RCS\CRS\Gold Bees all in a 47gal tank with the same parameters as above, but with better lighting.

[Ray_075]

I made a simple box. The sand, moss, do not put a lot of chemicals, do not stir too much shrimp. Installed it a week.