What the fuck does this have to do with self-improvement?
Well, I think this all kicked off because I saw one too many videos showcasing old sea monkey accessories and, for some reason, it sparked my interest and I started researching shrimp. I live in a small place and I'm on a limited budget with very limited energy so a freshwater shrimp tank feels like an ideal way to provide enrichment in my enclosure.
My intention is to have a fairly closed loop system that is self-sustaining with minimal input or intervention from me, which meets my constraints, and because I intend to only have a heater and a fan for temperature control during weather extremes plus a light (for obvious reasons) I will need to ensure that I have the right environment and especially the right plants to maintain the water quality. In the initial phase I'm expecting there to be an excess of nutrients and so I'm planning on getting a fast-growing semi-aquatic vining houseplant, Pothos, to help maintain the water quality.
Because this particular plant will have all of its water and nutrient requirements being met by the tank that it will be planted in, if things go well then really the only thing that I should need to do will be to stick some inconspicuous hooks on the wall for it to grow along.
Likewise with the tank, the inputs from me should be minimal and I expect that they will be able to be done on an ad-hoc basis rather than needing constant attention and intervention after it has been established.
It will be nice to have something that I am making for myself, for my own appreciation and to make my environment more inviting for me.
I think it will be a nice use of my knowledge too because there's some things that are less commonly done in aquarium-keeping which I plan to try out - there's this one riparian plant that is very popular as an edible vegetable, especially in East Asia, that I know how to cultivate and I suspect will be really suitable for feeding shrimp with. It's also very fast growing, high in nutritional content, and actually quite pretty (with a tiny bit of maintenance). I haven't seen any discussion about this plant as food for shrimp, or any aquatic animals tbh, but I think it's going to be a really good fit. It would be really nice to be able to rip off a little piece of leaf every now and then for shrimp food from a plant which has grown in the very same tank, removing the excess nutrients that would otherwise cause it to become inhospitable to the shrimp. Plus it will cost a couple of dollars to get a few cuttings going and then with a little luck it should be a perpetual food source.
Likewise, if I decide to scale up and make a bigger shrimp tank then I can use my gardening skills to propagate the plants that I will already have to start planting out a larger aquascape and I have already figured out a good supplementary food to give shrimp to encourage breeding and to feed baby shrimplets if I do choose to scale up. It's probably tedious to read about but for a few bucks of input I should be able to make an extremely low maintenance micro worm culture which relies upon apple cider vinegar - something you can buy fairly cheaply but if I am going to make it a fixture then I have the knowledge of how to make a simple, very low cost operation to produce apple cider vinegar from store bought apple juice because I am very comfortable with brewing and I am familiar with how to maintain cultures like mother of vinegar.
I'm sure it sounds complicated but it's really just going to be one bottle of apple juice fermenting away, a vessel of apple wine being converted into vinegar, and a couple of bottles of vinegar eels culturing away - all of which would probably require an hour of time all up which would be spread out over the course of 6 months, including the time it takes to harvest the worms for feeding the tank with.
So I bought a large vase that will be suitable as a shrimp tank the other day on semi-impulse and I'm hoping to turn it into a redoubt against the part of me that wants to give up and check out, without turning it into something that will put huge demands on me.
Maybe someday I'll be able to post a few pictures to show the progress I have made.
It's a very cool thing to aim for and I hope you find permanent housing soon so you can do this for yourself comrade.
Idk your circumstances so excuse me if I'm being presumptuous here but you might be able to practice for this in the future by settings up a little terrarium or aquarium now - you can even just have a little bit of dirt in a jar with some springtails, a few rocks and twigs and maybe a bit of moss. Obviously an aquarium doesn't need to have animals in it either but a snail or two can survive pretty adverse conditions if you wanted something besides a plant or two in an aquarium jar.
Something reasonably small and with a lid is ideal if you move often but you have a roof over your head because it would be pretty portable.
At it's simplest you could even just have a ball or two of marimo moss hanging out in a jar of water with some dirt at the bottom, covered by a few cm of sand, to provide CO2 and nutrients.
This guy knows what's up!
I'm going for a dirted shrimp tank similar to his setup but I won't have the space for rasboras or khuli loaches, as much as I'd love to have some. (You can tell that the tank is happy because his smaller shrimp don't seem to be bothered by the loaches.) I think that will be what I aim for to upgrade to when I'm ready. But at that stage I'd have to choose between getting some smaller gourami and getting pea puffers, which would be a very difficult decision to make.
I think my realistic dream aquarium would be a decent sized tank with some hardscape driftwood emerging from one corner with variegated Pothos vining up across my wall from that point and having that juxtaposed with a small, dark coloured waterfall in the opposite corner - just a small one that only sits a few inches above the water line and made of sculpted black expanding foam (I promise that there are ways to make it look far nicer than that sounds) - maybe with a mist fogger too if I'm going wild. It would be really neat to have a little atmospheric water feature like that and it would add a whole lot of interest. I'd be more inclined to sit and watch that than watching TV tbh.