Tiny (Aquatic) Houses

Really tiny homes, at least aquatic ones, have some inherent difficulties. The less water you have, the more prone it is to having swings in temperature and nutrient composition, so the smaller the tank, the less stable it is. By nature, small tanks have less places to hide hardware. Lastly, small aquariums leave you limited options for fish because they are easy to overload based on the first couple limitations we outlined. It's for all these reasons that we most often recommend having aquariums that are at least 10 gallons, if not 20. But what about those of you with limited desk space, or very small counters in your very small houses? We see aquariums for sale all the time that are between two and five gallons; what are they good for? In a word, desktops.

Desktop aquariums are amazing, especially for a large portion of our workforce who are still and might be forever, working from home. This lucky group of people gets to have a desktop tank as a backdrop for the rest of their career. So, how does one go about having a healthy tank that is five gallons or less? Straight of the bat, we want to reinforce the idea that this is not an exercise for beginners. They are more work, and more technically demanding than larger aquariums. A tiny desktop aquarium isn't the easiest aquarium to have, but it can be one of the most rewarding as it will be the one that is right in front of you every day

One of our favorite desktop tanks is a simply planted shrimp tank. Neocardinia shrimp are very resilient and can tolerate some moderate changes in water chemistry, and temperature (which are two of the biggest struggles in smaller aquariums). Aquatropic store partners have access to a wide variety of freshwater ornamental shrimp, and you can see many of them here on our website.

As you can see, there is a huge selection of them, and if one so chose, you could keep as many different colors and species as you'd like or will fit. However, we suggest keeping only one color as your shrimp are nearly sure to breed and when crossbreeding shrimp, the vast majority of the offspring will revert to their wild color in a generation or two, leaving you with a huge number of brown and clear shrimp. If that's what you want, then go for it. We figure most people will want to keep their colors true.

Neocardinia do not require a lot of physical space and thus make perfect inhabitants for desktop aquaria. They require only nominal amounts of food, which also helps keep nitrogen-based issues in check. This being said they will still need some filtration. Ornamental shrimp do well with sponge filters and under gravel filters, as these utilize nominal space, and their intake process are shrimp safe. If you utilize a hang-on-back filter, cover the intake with a sponge to prevent your shrimp from being sucked into the filtration. This is especially important when your shrimp start to breed.

All the ornamental shrimp in the Genus we're talking about are bio-film eaters. The more surfaces there are for biofilm to grow on, the better they (and especially their babies) will do. There is an excellent selection of freshwater appropriate décor available to you through your Local Fish Store. The Ecoscape line we sell offers many driftwood and rock types that are all safe for your freshwater designs and the shrimp we're planning. We especially like the Dragon Stone line for all its pores. These are great hiding places for juvenile shrimp and offer a huge amount of surface area for biofilm growth

Another great way to add surface area (and stability) is to look into some plants. As this aquarium will be low tech and very small, we suggest sticking to moss. Both Java Moss and Christmas Moss from us are also available through your LFS and Neocardinia Shrimp love them. Juvenile shrimp will utilize this space for cover and both adults and juveniles will eat the biofilm that grows on the moss. These plants are from the genus Taxiphyllum. These plants are very durable, require little in the way of light or supplemental carbon dioxide and thus are great choices for this size of tank. Your shrimp will also love other plants, but Taxiphyllum is uniquely well adapted to the use case we are building.

Another great reason that Neocardinia shrimp make good choices for tiny aquariums is that they generally do not require elevated temperatures so if your room is stable between 65 and 75 Fahrenheit, room temperature will be fine for your fish and a heater won't be necessary, an added benefit in a tiny tank where there is only so much room. If your space has big temperature fluctuations, a quality heater will still be a good idea. If your room is routinely over 80 degrees, you may need to rethink your choice of office space or give up on a desktop tank.

As far as keeping the shrimp, start with a small number. One or two per gallon is plenty. If you have a 3-gallon aquarium, and you add five shrimp to it, they will quickly stock it to its maximum. Keep an eye on your water parameters and if you start needing to feed too much for your filter system, you'll get elevated nitrogen levels. At this point, you'll need to start removing some shrimp. These can be sold back to your LFS, or given to friends, or moved into more tanks to start your shrimp farm! Feeding your shrimp is pretty easy, and if your tank is established and has lots of surface area, your shrimp will need only nominal (if any) extra feeding. Nutramar's algae boost shot are a good supplemental food, though they will need to be cut into smaller sizes to avoid over feeding in small aquaria.

The actual maintenance of this kind of tank isn't hugely different than any other tank you'll keep. You still need to do water changes and you'll need to clean filters. When doing water changes, the smaller the aquarium is, the more important it is that the water you put back in, is the same temperature as the water you take out. For those of you with room temperature tanks, this is easy. Just leave the makeup water in the same room for a day and it will come to the same temperature naturally. If your aquarium temperature is being held above the natural normal room temp via a heater (or strong lighting), you'll need to heat the makeup water as well. Use the same water source that you always use. See our primer on water in another article.

Your shrimp will not bother fish, and you can pick some small fish like little Tetras and Dwarf Corydoras that might not bother adult fish, to share this tank, but any fish would certainly eat any offspring they can get their mouths around. Adding any fish will add to the nitrogen load and make your tiny desktop aquarium much harder to manage successfully; it will also reduce the number of shrimps you can keep. We'll go into tiny fish choices for tiny tanks in another article!

If you think you are up to the challenge of a tiny desktop shrimp garden, then head over to your LFS and peruse some choices. Once you get it set up and cycled, head back and pick up some shrimp and plants from Aquatropic today!