Just want to say in advance that this is more a rant than a question.
I have a tank dedicated to experimenting sexy shrimp breeding. It's got 6 sexy shrimps (3 male, 3 female), bristle worms and pods.
The sole purpose of the tank is to produce shrimp larvae for me to try to raise while keeping the maintenance minimal. Although the attempts to grow them to adult have mostly been a failure (only one success out of over a thousand), the shrimps have constantly supplied me with the batches of baby shrimps every time without fail. So the tank is doing its job perfectly well.
I know the conventional wisdom in this hobby is 'don't fix it if it ain't broken' but I'm really tempted to put in a mushroom coral (or other cheap, easy, low light, low flow soft coral) in the tank.
I've never kept any coral btw.
I try my best to keep the tank maintenance minimal and if putting in a soft coral means doing more work to care for them, I wouldn't really want to go there. For instance, if I need to be on the look out for the soft corals consuming certain elements from the water and requiring more frequent water changes than I do now (I rarely do any water changes currently, once every several months, thanks to the low bioload and the ATS).
Also, I don't have any quarantine tank or dip and not willing enough to invest on them just to get a small soft coral. So I guess there's the risk of some pest hitchhiker ruining current tank and the shrimp breeding cycle.
Yet I browse the local soft coral adverts, keep on asking myself the question I already know the answer to, 'should I get a soft coral?'.
In my head, I'm thinking,
... the tank water might be too clean for them anyway,
... but the sexys will host on them and it will be super cool,
... I will need to turn up the light settings and it'll use up more electricity,
.... but they look good, and I get this feeling they'll grow really well in the current setup,
... but nothing's broken, do not risk anything,
... and so on.
I have a tank dedicated to experimenting sexy shrimp breeding. It's got 6 sexy shrimps (3 male, 3 female), bristle worms and pods.
The sole purpose of the tank is to produce shrimp larvae for me to try to raise while keeping the maintenance minimal. Although the attempts to grow them to adult have mostly been a failure (only one success out of over a thousand), the shrimps have constantly supplied me with the batches of baby shrimps every time without fail. So the tank is doing its job perfectly well.
I know the conventional wisdom in this hobby is 'don't fix it if it ain't broken' but I'm really tempted to put in a mushroom coral (or other cheap, easy, low light, low flow soft coral) in the tank.
I've never kept any coral btw.
I try my best to keep the tank maintenance minimal and if putting in a soft coral means doing more work to care for them, I wouldn't really want to go there. For instance, if I need to be on the look out for the soft corals consuming certain elements from the water and requiring more frequent water changes than I do now (I rarely do any water changes currently, once every several months, thanks to the low bioload and the ATS).
Also, I don't have any quarantine tank or dip and not willing enough to invest on them just to get a small soft coral. So I guess there's the risk of some pest hitchhiker ruining current tank and the shrimp breeding cycle.
Yet I browse the local soft coral adverts, keep on asking myself the question I already know the answer to, 'should I get a soft coral?'.
In my head, I'm thinking,
... the tank water might be too clean for them anyway,
... but the sexys will host on them and it will be super cool,
... I will need to turn up the light settings and it'll use up more electricity,
.... but they look good, and I get this feeling they'll grow really well in the current setup,
... but nothing's broken, do not risk anything,
... and so on.
