7L/2G unheated shrimp tank?

Hi all,

I know I've mentioned before a 7 litre tank I had, which was too small and I upgraded to a 29 litre, then I got fed up with my fish being in a tiny box so I outed my old lounge shelf unit and added a 54 litre tank... anyway..

So the story goes, my 54 litre is now my community tank, home to 5 Endlers (plus 5 fry who survived and are now each about 15mm), 4 panda corydoras and about a dozen shrimp, the 29 litre has been set up and is now cycling for Endler fry. My two-weeks-and-day-old Endler fry, all about 19 of them, are currently staying toasty in the 7 litre while the 29 litre warms up (I use API QuickStart, so no need to cycle). They will be the lucky ones, in future, my fry will be in a battle of survival of the fittest

Once the fry have been transferred over, I'd like to aquascape the 7 litre, which is in our bedroom, and set it up as a shrimp-only tank. I love watching my blue diamonds at night while I'm trying to sleep. With the tank light on, they're like my living, moving bedside lamp!

My question is this, is it necessary to heat such a small tank? I kind of feel like with a tank that size, even with a small 25W nano tank heater, the tank is basically all filter and heater and little room for shrimp. Our home thermostat is set at 20 degrees C, (sorry US folks, I'm British ) so it's never going to freeze up anyway. At the very least, they might drop to about 16 degrees.

If I'm going to be honest, I'm starting off with half a dozen but I am hoping they'll breed. I want to raise enough that my clean-up crews in my other tanks will be somewhat self-sustaining. If numbers seem low, I can acclimatise a few more and add them in. I'd like a bigger tank in the bedroom for shrimp only, but my husband is a big meanie who won't let me

Over to you lovely people, has anyone else run a small shrimp tank with no heater? How successful was it with breeding?

 

you'll be OK now and through the summer the problem you'll face in our British weather is if the temperature dose fall to 16c the chances are they will die and the water will not get back to ambient temperature through the day with the result any that did live will go lethargic get stressed and probably die, you can get very small heaters for your size that take no room and there as a backup when temperatures do go low,

 

that I suppose is the problem. We're just into May so it's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security. I'll do some digging around. I use the NICREW H7 25W in there at the moment, very good heaters (even the 50W in my 54L and I have a bad relationship with 50Ws) but they are quite chunky and take up a lot of room. I'll head on over to Amazon again, thankyou.

 

I use the Fluval slimline heaters but there's this from finest filters which is cheap if you want to keep the cost down
15w Micro Plastic Aquarium Fish Tank Heater Preset to 25 Degrees

 

you are a star. I'll get one ordered now, thankyou. I could tuck that behind the fake plant I've set aside for the shrimp tank and you wouldn't even know it was there. I've got some moss as well and some white glass pebbles with black sand substrate. My plan is to create a kind of small shrimp garden landscape. Hopefully it'll go well!

 

Just make sure the measurements are OK,
Plenty of photos as the build takes on its new looks

 

I shall do.
Don't say that.. I aquascaped my 29L prior to setting it up for endler fry. I didn't photograph that, just got the job done. I don't think of these things