Cycling with raw shrimp

harlequinnut

Active Member
How many shrimp should I put into a 20g tank and should the shrimp be peeled or not? How long to leave it in the tank? Thanks.
 

col

Active Member
Put 1 shrimp in until you get a decent ammonia reading.
Don't know about peeled or not, probably doesn't matter.
 

bang guy

Moderator
only one shrimp.
Doesn't matter if you peel it.
Leave it in until you add a fish.
Don't add a fish until the tank is fully cycled.
Alternately you can just use flake food. This allows you some flexibility on how high the ammonia spike goes if you're trying to keep the critters in your live rock alive.
 

bang guy

Moderator
The shrimp is unneccessary with uncured rock IMO. I believe it would raise the ammonia level too high and unneccessarily kill off hitchhikers.
 

harlequinnut

Active Member
I have one shrimp in my 20g right now, just bought a bottle of CYCLE solution made by Nutrafin from LFS. Its suppose to decrease cycling time by introducing "massive amounts of beneficial bacteria" in to the aquarium. My question is can I use this along with the shrimp and will it accelerate cycling time even more or is this overkill?
 

dacia

Active Member
I cycled 2 tanks simultaneously. In one I used Cycle with a shrimp, and in the other, just the shrimp alone. To my surprise, the tank without the Cycle completed the cycle in 2 and a half weeks whereas the one with the Cycle did not finish for another 2 weeks. Both tanks are now beautiful FOWLRs, but I feel that the "bacteria in a bottle" products are best left on the shelf. For SW, anyway. Cycle and Stress-Zyme have worked wonderfully in my freshwater tanks, just not the marine tanks.
 

badkharma

Member
Does adding a raw shrimp make the tank smell pretty bad?? My wife cannot take "fishy" smells, but as long as it doesn't smell that much I might go get one to accelerate my cycle - which is in it's third week (and going slowly) :) ...
 
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