Small bowls are a simple, inexpensive way of keeping aquarium plants and moving on to bigger things. A YouTube video (‘The Simplest Planted Aquarium With Diana Walstad’) shows the setup of 1-gal and 5-gal planted bowls. Lisa and John Hudson of KGTropicals (keepfishkeeping.com) made this happen. Video is a fantastic learning piece for those of you rightly intimidated by setting up aquascaped tanks, using soil in aquariums, or maintaining high-tech tanks. Photo shows me and Lisa with our bowls. She’s got the bigger one, but I’ve got three little ones. Not surprisingly, all bowls are doing great since setup!
I am displaying bowls with Neocaridina shrimp for the Raleigh Aquarium Society’s annual workshop. I set up two 1-gal bowls with shrimp taken from my guppy breeding tanks. I used a 7.5 watt reptile heating pad to keep bowl water temp at a nice warm 74F for good plant growth. (Winter house temp is 65F.) Shrimp article on my aquarium page here describes setup for bowls. Lighting for red shrimp’s bowl is 13 watt CFL. For blue shrimp’s bowl, I have a 3 watt LED desk lamp plus window light.
My Blue Dream shrimp crawling on the heating pad
For first 1-2 weeks I have had to change 80% of water almost every day to remove ammonia and nitrites. (The 2 cups of potting soil was probably too fertile; I probably should have diluted it with sand.) Most important for shrimp health, I only use aged aquarium water from the guppy tanks for water changes. [The DOC (dissolved organic carbon) in aged aquarium water protects the shrimp.] I don’t need or use the drip method, but I when I pour water into the bowls, I always use a small cup to block the water’s force. That way, the incoming water does not disturb the soil layer.
Bowl for Red Neocaridina Shrimp (RCS)
Bowl for Blue Neocaridina Shrimp
The RAS workshop [March 24-26, 2023, Raleigh, NC (USA)] will have native fish collecting, talks by fish, plant and shrimp experts, an auction, shrimp judging contest, banquet, etc. I have been going for decades. Later in the year, I’ll revise my shrimp article based on what I learn at the workshop from a shrimp expert (Robert Lupton) and from setting up these new 2023 bowls!
